A New Coach, a Fresh Start

In football, there’s a lot of literature. There are playbooks, and there are rulebooks. There are binders full of trick plays, flashcards to help learn routes and media guides to match numbers to faces.

But when Tom Gilmore took the helm as Holy Cross’ new head football coach at the end of 2003, there was no chapter in any book in any library to help him in the task set before him.

Not only did Gilmore have to turn around a team that had just finished an abysmal 1-11 season, but he was coming into a program where the onfield losses were deepened by the loss of a beloved coach to tragic illness and eventually death.

Gilmore’s predecessor Dan Allen spent most of the 2003 season on the sidelines confined to a wheelchair. Stricken with multiple chemical sensitivity after exposure to toxins at a construction site more than a year before, by the beginning of the season Allen was unable to walk unaided and eventually lost all mobility below the neck. Despite his debilitating condition, Allen remained at the position he had held since 1996, fighting simultaneously for his own health and his struggling Holy Cross team.

But compassion for the beloved coach warred with the athletic department’s need for a contending football team, and Allen was relieved of his duties as head coach at season’s end. The president of the college cited a need for new leadership and direction. The community and Allen’s players expressed both sadness and outrage. And when Gilmore was appointed new head coach at the end of December, he knew that he was sailing into rough, uncharted waters.

“When you get into a situation like that, there’s no easy way,” Gilmore said. “Really, there’s no book that tells you how to approach it. So my philosophy was really to just get started and put my nose to the grindstone, just keeping moving the football program forward.”

That meant revitalizing a team that didn’t win a single game in non-league play last season. This was a team that held none of its 2003 opponents below 24 points, and allowed more than 40 points in seven of its contests. This was a team that lost an all-American wide receiver in Ari Confesor ’04, as well as seven other graduating starters.

And this team hasn’t won a game since before it last encountered Harvard on Sept. 20, 2003, when the Crimson pummeled the Crusaders 43-23 and set off their current 12-game losing streak.

So from the get-go, Gilmore had to bring both sensitivity and intense focus to his new role. With a fresh coach, the team was going to get a fresh start.

“Most of our players went through the month of December and all of Christmas break, having a chance to step away from school and away from the situation last year,” Gilmore said. “When they came back, they came back to a new coaching staff, and they knew that things had changed, and therefore they really took on the same kind of philosophy: it’s a fresh start, let’s just move forward.”

It was impossible for the players to disregard what their old coach had taught them, or what his self-sacrifice, game after aching game, had meant. The team was dealt a further blow when Allen finally succumbed to his illness, passing away just as school ended in May.

But ultimately the focus had to return to the game.

“[The players] didn’t want to forget the personal stuff they had with Coach Allen,” Gilmore said, “because they had a tremendous amount of respect and a very close personal relationship with him. But at the same time they knew from a football standpoint that there had to be some changes,” Gilmore said.

“We had to get to work, and we did,” he added. “Our players did a great job in the offseason and so far this year have worked very very hard. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten off to a good start, but we have seen significant improvement since the start of the season.”

This start may be fresh, but it seems an awful lot like the stale leftovers of last year. Holy Cross has picked up right where it left off, giving up more than 30 points in two season-opening losses to mid-majors Duquesne and San Diego.

Despite this, Harvard coach Tim Murphy refuses to count out the Crusaders as a potential tripping block to an as yet untested 2004 Crimson team.

“Obviously with two games under their belt, they’re a bit more up to speed than us in terms of game experience,” Murphy said of Holy Cross. “I know a little bit about Tom Gilmore...and his kids are gonna play extremely hard.”

Murphy commended Gilmore’s discipline and intensity in his previous coaching efforts against Harvard. Gilmore spent the past four years as defensive coordinator at Lehigh, and before that was a defensive coordinator, offensive line coach and linebacker coach with the Crimson’s Ivy rival Dartmouth.

Experience was something Gilmore had coming into Holy Cross, as both a player and as an assistant coach. And now, firmly entrenched as head coach of a program that has had more than its fair share of troubles, he’s learned how to handle something they just don’t cover in the coaching manual.

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.