College Achievers: Barrington product is No. 1 Wisconsin’s top goal scorer
In the University of Wisconsin’s last women’s hockey game before the holiday break, the Badgers beat host Ohio State 6-1.
That capped Wisconsin’s two-game sweep between the nation’s Nos. 1-2 teams, just as the Big Ten Conference powers left it at the end of the 2024-25 season when Wisconsin won its eighth national title with a 4-3 overtime win over the Buckeyes.
“It was extremely physical and you can just feel the animosity still there from last year,” said Barrington High School graduate Kelly Gorbatenko, a junior who skates on Wisconsin’s second forward line.
“Those are the fun games to play, that’s what you wake up for on game day, and you’re just fired up,” she said.
Gorbatenko capitalized on that emotion to score 2 goals on 3 shots in the 6-1 victory, her fourth 2-goal game of the season for coach Mark Johnson’s Badgers (18-1-1).
Entering Wisconsin’s first game back from the break, Friday at No. 5 Minnesota-Duluth, the 5-foot-11 skater has scored a team-high 15 goals and is sixth in points with 25. Gorbatenko is also second on Wisconsin in faceoff percentage and third in shot percentage.
She’s played in every Wisconsin game, all 102, since recruited out of Barrington’s Class of 2023. Last season Gorbatenko registered 38 points on 15 goals and 23 assists while posting a plus-42 and earning Big Ten Conference academic honors.
Though they had lived in Minnesota, neither of her parents, Greg and Karen Gorbatenko, played hockey. Coming to Illinois, first Streamwood and then Barrington, they directed their children to the rink. Shortly after their oldest, Mark, hit the ice Kelly followed at around 2 years old.
Seven Gorbatenko kids made for constant competition — “whether it’s in street hockey or Monopoly,” Kelly said.
“Seventh grade is when I realized I could take this beyond youth hockey, and that’s kind of when I flipped from playing hockey to being a hockey player,” she said.
Gorbatenko called the university in Madison a perfect fit given the coaching, team culture, business school, proximity to Barrington, and lots to do for an “outdoorsy” person such as herself.
Freshman twin sisters Nicole and Rachel Gorbatenko have joined their older sister on the Badgers.
Nicole is a forward and Rachel a defender, both bringing experience with the Chicago Mission as Kelly Gorbatenko did before them. She won a national title with the Mission her sophomore year at Barrington.
The Gorbatenko sisters also played with the Barrington Fillies combined girls hockey program. The twins played on repeat state champions in 2023 and 2024.
“I have to pinch myself sometimes realizing that I get to play with them,” said Kelly Gorbatenko, whose age difference never allowed much ice time together on the same teams.
“Going to college with them, it helps (with) the homesickness. You have somebody in your corner, you just have a little piece of family with you,” she said.
Their connection translates to practice, where they have an innate ability to know where they’re going to be on the ice.
“It’s a ton of fun. We play really well together. It was our childhood dream to get to play together, and we get to live that out, which is a real blessing,” Kelly Gorbatenko said.
Having won the 2025 NCAA title and maintaining its No. 1 ranking all season, Wisconsin plays with a proverbial target on its back.
Gorbatenko is fine with that.
“We get everybody’s best game, and it’s similar to playing for the Mission, the same thing growing up, where you’re the best team and everybody’s coming for you,” she said.
“It’s nothing new to me but no matter what team you’re playing it’s going to be a battle. And I think that is what pushes us to excellence, because we can never take our foot off the gas, because there’s always somebody coming for us.”