Neumann Goretti’s Andrea Peterson is more than a girls’ basketball coach. She’s a tenacious leader.

The Neumann Goretti girls’ basketball team bus was almost as quiet as the church it was in the day before. Everyone sat in its usual places. Saints coach Andrea “Petey” Peterson was in the front right seat, her hair in its familiar bun, her head resting on her outstretched arm across the windowsill, her AirPods in, a way to insulate herself from the world that Saturday morning in early December. In the back, the Neumann Goretti team whispered, the volume down from the blaring noise that typically wends through the bus during chartered away trips.

None of Peterson’s players were surprised their coach was on the bus with them, traveling to their season opener against St. Mary’s in Long Island, New York.

“I remember that trip,” said Saints senior guard Kamora Berry. “I remember seeing Coach Petey’s hair bun in the back of the bus and thinking we have to do this for her. There was no doubt in my mind she would be there that day. She is so strong. I would be a mess. Anyone would be. Think about it. Coach Petey is on a bus with us going to a game the day after her mother’s funeral. Who does that?”

Apparently, Andrea Peterson.

She is in her 12th season as Neumann Goretti’s head coach. She is the most accomplished girls’ high school basketball coach in the area, with six state championships (two in Class 2A, three in 3A), including last season’s first Class 4A title in school history, two Catholic League championships, and six District 12 titles. In 2015, Peterson was named the national Naismith Coach of the Year, guiding the Saints to a 30-0 finish and a No. 1 ranking nationally by USA Today. Her team will compete in the first round of state playoffs on Saturday against Susquenita of Perry County on Saturday.

Somehow, she manages to run her childcare business, Christopher’s Footprints, in Norwood, Delaware County, coaches Neumann Goretti, which is really a 12-month long responsibility, runs her AAU Philly Legacy program, all while raising her sibling’s three children on her own, and easily working between 70 to 80 hours a week during the four-month high school basketball season.

Who does that?

Apparently, she does.

Peterson says she derives her wrought-iron will power from her parents, Thomas and Alice, who unfortunately died within 133 days of each other last year, though in many ways she channels old-world coaches like the raspy-voiced John Chaney and towering John Thompson. Her friends and family joke there is a cuddly side to her, you just have to peel away the prickly cactus thorns. She has no filter. What she says, she means. She is demanding. Unbending. Stubborn. And incredibly loyal and giving.

The loyal and giving side, Peterson says, comes from her mom, who once fostered three children one Christmas after they were taken from their parents when their house burned down. The diamond-hard edges, she laughs, comes from Thomas, a Vietnam veteran who fought PTSD most of his adult life and worked countless hours in baggage claim at the Philadelphia airport.

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Her players say that if you do not know “Coach Petey,” as they affectionately call her, she can be intimidating and cold. Peterson will also be the first to admit that she is not looking to be anyone’s buddy, because no one comes between her and her players. And she wins. She has won many times with players from hard, sometimes unimaginable backgrounds.

Westtown’s legendary coach Fran Burbidge has known Peterson since she was 11, a pigtailed stubby little girl who used to play tackle football for the Brookhaven Jets. She’s the sixth of seven children who wanted to be like her older brothers Joey and Chris.

Burbidge remembers when his daughter Chrissy played for the AAU Comets and Cardinal O’Hara, and Peterson was playing for the Philadelphia Belles and Archbishop Carroll. Burbidge became good friends with her father, Thomas, and followed Peterson’s path to Carroll, where she won two Catholic League championships, one time canning the winning free throw with 5.3 seconds left to win the 2003 PCL title over O’Hara.

Burbidge, who has known Peterson for 30 years, now coaches against her.

“Through coaching AAU and here at Westtown, I have coached a lot of different kids, from a lot of different backgrounds, and there are certain things that you have to deal with as a coach, and with Andrea, she coaches great kids at Neumann Goretti, but she coaches kids who take the train home at night, and kids that are homeless,” Burbidge said. “She coaches kids who come from some rough situations. I don’t think a lot of people understand that about Andrea and what she does, because she’s been so successful as a basketball coach. Because Neumann Goretti, under her, has been so successful, they have the misconception Neumann Goretti is a basketball factory with talented kids that flock to them. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

Peterson had players, according to many associated with the program, who were from broken backgrounds, some homeless, some abused, and a few survivors of domestic abuse. She was a four-year starter for Carroll Hall of Fame coach Barry Kirsch. How Peterson maintains everything she does is beyond him. Kirsch knows of her tireless work ethic as a player, which she continues as a coach.

She has an ability to relate to inner-city players, because in many ways, she comes from the same row home, working class existence as they do.

“Andrea always understood the game beyond her years,” Kirsch said. “You never had to explain anything to her. She was like having a coach on the court in high school. Her teammates respected her and loved her. You could see then Andrea was going to be a great coach. The relationship she has with her players is beyond reproach.

“She does not want the attention on her. She wants it on her team. Andrea has always been incredibly hard on herself, because I had her as a student. Maybe it’s why she takes on Neumann Goretti, because no one in the Catholic League has a harder job than her. Look at Carroll, O’Hara, [Archbishop] Wood, they get players from solid homes, and she is dealing with kids with challenging situations.”

Peterson originally grew up in Brookhaven, and moved to Norwood. She was one of seven in a three-bedroom home, with the five girls sleeping in bunk beds, and Joey in a separate room. After her older brother Christopher passed away on Mother’s Day 1994 in a tragic car accident, when Peterson was 10, Alice began sleeping by the door. Alice, one of 10 with South Philadelphia roots, would get so nervous watching Andrea play at Carroll she would rock back and forth in her seat. She did not know much about basketball, so she would yell, “Score that touchdown,” at Andrea’s games. Alice and Thomas more than a few times put up the family rent so Andrea could play summer AAU basketball.

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“Seeing my mom at my games, knowing I was her baby girl in these big games, made me happy. My parents always made sure I had what I wanted, and that is what drives me today,” Peterson said. “I was spoiled. We never wanted for anything. But as you get older, you realize how life really is, and what your parents sacrificed. We knew we weren’t living in a mansion.”

Growing up, Joey would take “Angie,” as her family calls her, to Norwood Park to play with grown men when she was 13 on the asphalt courts. Peterson would get knocked around, and Joey never ran to pick her up.

“That’s where Angie got her toughness, and we weren’t about to help her up,” Joey said. “I think it’s why Angie was able to get on that bus the next day after our mother’s funeral. That tells you who she is, and about her commitment. I have to tell her to slow down sometimes. Our whole family tells her that. It is nonstop, between the basketball, the daycare, taking on our dad a few years ago, and now my sister’s kids. She is able to get focused on the moment in the moment.”

Peterson first went to St. John’s out of Carroll but decided to come home to nurse her parents, who were in ill health. She transferred to Drexel, where she received her undergraduate in sports management and graduate degree in higher education, becoming the first college graduate in her family. One time Peterson quit basketball while in grade school, because she felt her father was living too vicariously through her, and nothing was good enough in his eyes.

They had a heart-to-heart to settle their differences. Peterson felt that was a coming-of-age moment.

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“I was always stubborn, like my dad, and if that conversation doesn’t take place, I don’t know if I would have left basketball, but I wanted to show him I could do this on my own,” said Peterson, who wore the No. 22 because it was Christopher’s birthday and her daycare business is named after him. “I knew what I had to do to get a college scholarship. I knew I was in love with basketball, and I knew that was where my path would go. I was told I wouldn’t make it at St. John’s. I was considered too small, too slow. I love being told I can’t do something. You can tell me 10 things, nine positive and one negative. I’ll hear the one negative and turn that into a positive.

“I hear it every year that Neumann Goretti isn’t good enough. You do not have to like us, but you have to respect my kids and our program, and the culture that we built.”

Thomas wanted more for his daughter, and he was even coaching her while she was coaching. Thomas would keep the articles written about his little “Angie” tucked under his bed.

During the last months of her father’s failing health, Peterson was his sole caretaker. Before he died, she said, he told her, “Thank you for making me proud.”

After each practice this season, her players have made it a habit to hug Peterson and tell her they love her.

“We know what Coach Petey has been through,” Berry said. “It’s why we dedicated this season to her. She buried both her parents last year and never missed a practice or training session. She was always there for us. We have to be there for her. I think high school players take for granted what their coaches do. We don’t. Coach Petey was on the bus with us going to a game the day after she buried her mother. I mean, who does that?”

Apparently, Andrea Peterson.