Mike Rutt

Frank “Gags” Gagliano, the Hall of Fame coach who guided more than a dozen Olympians across six decades, has died. He was 89. Gagliano coached at nearly every level of the sport. As an assistant at Manhattan College, he helped the Jaspers win the 1973 NCAA indoor team title. He spent 18 years leading Georgetown, where his teams won 23 Big East championships and produced 140 All-Americans, and he was twice named national coach of the year. At an age when most coaches retire, he became one of the country’s top professional coaches. He led the Reebok Enclave, the Nike Farm Team, Oregon Track Club Elite and, from 2010, the New Jersey-New York Track Club. His Olympians included John Trautmann, Steve Holman, Nicole Teter, Jonathon Riley, Nick Symmonds, Christian Smith, Julie Culley and Donn Cabral. At the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials, Symmonds and Smith were part of the famous “Oregon Sweep” of the men’s 800m at Hayward Field. A Bronx native, Gagliano was a quarterback at the University of Richmond, not a runner. He began coaching track in 1960 at Roselle Catholic High School in New Jersey, which had hired him with the promise of starting a football team that never came. In 1965, Roselle Catholic became the first high school to win both the DMR and 2-mile relay at the Penn Relays. “I didn’t know anything about track,” he said in a 2014 interview. “But I accepted the offer because I really wanted to coach.” Gags became one of the most influential coaches in American distance running. His philosophy was simple: strength plus speed. And when you hear “Hit it!” on the final turn, change gears. Gagliano was inducted into the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame in 2003. This July, USA Track and Field named the men’s 800m at its national championships in his honor.