CCU baseball coach Gary Gilmore confirms he has cancer, details the plan moving forward

Gary Gilmore took the field as the leader of the Coastal Carolina baseball team on Friday, as he has for the past 24 seasons.

How many games he will coach as the active head coach this season remains to be seen, however.

Gilmore, 62, confirmed following CCU’s 12-4 win over UNC Greensboro at Springs Brooks Stadium that he has a form of liver cancer.

He discovered from preliminary tests in late January that he has a large mass on his liver and has been undergoing further testing over the past couple weeks to determine the nature of the problem and the next steps.

“Everything is confined in one area so I have some pluses going for me, so I’m going to fight like hell and keep this thing going,” said Gilmore, who learned of the mass when he received treatment for a kidney stone.

Gilmore said he is at the top of a waiting list to be treated at one of the top cancer centers in the world, the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. When he receives the call, he will leave the team when necessary for treatment.

“If they called me right now I wouldn’t be here tomorrow,” Gilmore said. “We’ll see how that plays itself out. If everything goes according to where it’s set right now I’ll get through a part of the season before I have to go do whatever I have to do to move forward in this situation. I don’t plan to miss until I get to that point.

“. . . When it’s time for me to go I will miss some games at that point in time because I have no earthly idea what the plan of action will be. I’m hoping I can still coach but . . . when we get to that point I’ll do what I need to do for myself.”

MD Anderson is the largest cancer center in the United States and one of the original three comprehensive cancer centers in the country.

“It’s one of the most difficult places in the world to get in,” Gilmore said. “Their success rate with cancer just blows everybody else out of the water. Anyone who gets it wants to go to that place so it’s very difficult to get in. Just to get in period I’m very fortunate, and I’m very fortunate I assume at this point to not be in a situation where I can’t afford to let those three or four weeks go by before I actually get to go there.

“I know God is leading me to that place. I felt him tugging at me for a long time, ever since I heard that word and I have all the faith in the doctor they’ve assigned to my case, he’s one of the very best in the world and he specializes in what I have.”

The start of the college baseball season Friday provided Gilmore a distraction to the battle that he is facing.

“Any time you hear those words it overwhelms every thought and every action,” Gilmore said. “Probably there today, that’s probably the first time since I’ve heard those words that I’ve gone three hours and hadn’t thought about it, to be honest with you. It was awesome.”

So it remains unclear if Gilmore will miss part or most of the 2020 season. He is in his 25th season as CCU head coach. He led the Chanticleers to the 2016 NCAA national championship and has amassed a career record of 1,217-604-4 in 30 seasons as a head coach, giving him the sixth-most wins among active Division I coaches. He is 964-502-2 at CCU and won 253 games in six seasons at USC Aiken from 1990-95.

Associate head coach Kevin Schnall will take over head coaching duties in Gilmore’s absence, whenever that occurs.

“We’re prepared if it was tomorrow,” Gilmore said. “He’s one of the better coaches in the country. We won’t miss a beat.”

Schnall, a former catcher at CCU who is also the team’s recruiting coordinator and catching instructor, has been with Gilmore at CCU for 17 years over two stints.

He has twice been recognized by Baseball America in a survey of college head coaches as one of the nation’s top assistant coaches, ranking seventh prior to the 2013 season and sixth prior to the 2018 season. Also in 2018, Schnall was named one of the top 15 assistant coaches in the NCAA by D1Baseball.com.

The other assistants are experienced as well, as pitching coach Drew Thomas and assistant Matt Schilling have both spent 14 years on the Chants coaching staff. All three assistants were part of the 2016 NCAA championship.

The Chants have two days of the Brittain Resorts Baseball at the Beach tournament remaining, and will face San Diego State on Saturday and Virginia Tech on Sunday, with both games scheduled to start at 3 p.m.

Coastal is seeking its third Sun Belt Conference regular season title and third conference tournament title in their fourth season in the league in 2020.

Those conference championships are just the latest successes for Gilmore’s teams. His CCU teams have played in 16 NCAA regionals and three super regionals, and have won a total of 12 Big South or Sun Belt conference regular season titles and 13 conference tournament titles. He also reached the 1993 Division II College World Series with USC Aiken.

Gilmore, who played at CCU in 1979-80, was named the unanimous 2016 national coach of the year, is a two-time ABCA Atlantic Region Coach of the Year (2005, ‘16), and was inducted into the USC Aiken Athletics Hall of Fame in 2014.

He has received a tremendous outpouring of support from former players and others associated with CCU, the Grand Strand community and college baseball.

“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever been a part of,” Gilmore said. “I was humbled immensely as a coach and a human being winning the College World Series and all the people who reached out to me, and this thing is like on steroids in all honesty. The only tears I’ve shed throughout this whole thing is over that, just how many people have reached out and they’re shedding tears while I’m smiling. It’s unbelievable. I’m so blessed.”

Gilmore said he is also receiving support from virtual strangers through prayer lists and a few devotion groups he belongs to. “How many people have reached out and thrown love on me and reached out to God and they’re asking him to help me, and just like in the World Series I feel it. I feel it inside me,” Gilmore said.

His current players also have his back, and have an added purpose this season. He was given the game ball by the team in the clubhouse following Friday’s win.

“We’re praying for coach every day,” said junior pitcher Zach McCambley, who got the win over UNC Greensboro. “None of us really know what he’s going through right now so the only thing we can do is kind of just lift his spirits and be his backbone. I think we’re in high spirits. If it’s going to happen to somebody we know Gilley’s going to beat this. Whatever happens with that we believe in him 100 percent. . . . He’s a fighter and he knows we love him.”