‘This is my sanctuary’: Cancer controlled, Gilmore ready for 26th year guiding CCU baseball
Gary Gilmore’s 26th season as head coach of the Coastal Carolina baseball team will soon begin, and he intends to be present for every moment it affords.
Gilmore, 63, traveled to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in December for his third three-month checkup on the progress of his cancer battle, and he received further good news.
“Today I feel awesome,” he said Friday. “It’s continued success. There is no further cancer development. Everything is at a place they want it to be at this point in time.”
Gilmore learned early in 2020 that he has cancerous tumors in his liver and on his pancreas.
It forced him to leave the team for diagnosis and treatments after just two games last February, and associate head coach and 18-year CCU assistant Kevin Schnall took over head coaching duties for the remainder of the coronavirus-shortened 2020 season.
The treatments are going well, so Gilmore plans to coach the 2021 season with few limitations.
“I’m all locked into Coastal baseball and we’re going to get after it and see how good we can be,” he said.
He fulfilled all the duties he normally would during fall team activities, and has been working along with his staff with individual position groups for about a week in advance of the first full spring practice on Jan. 29. The season starts Feb. 19 with a three-game series against Duke at Springs Brooks Stadium.
“It’s a situation where I feel baseball has been right at the very top of my life along with family and faith. At this point this is my sanctuary,” Gilmore said. “I come here every day and it’s a blessing to be here. I want to do it for a while longer, God willing.
“. . . If this COVID mess has taught me anything it’s that I get a real bad batch of cabin fever really fast. So being outside and being in and around baseball in a functioning capacity is just very huge right now in my life.”
Controlling the cancer
Gilmore is being treated for pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer, which develops from the abnormal growth of hormone-producing cells in the pancreas, and he said the tumor secretes hormones into the bloodstream that can cause further complications in his body. He said the pancreatic tumor is small and very slow-growing, and has likely existed for several years.
Doctors discovered the tumors shrunk about 20 percent at Gilmore’s first three-month checkup in June, and they haven’t grown since then.
“When we’re able to hold it completely at bay, that’s what we’re after,” Gilmore said. “I’m at that point if not still a teeny bit of shrinkage going on.”
The cancer is not operable or curable at this time, Gilmore said, but it can be very manageable.
“From what they’ve shared with me, the type of cells I have and things like that, mine is not the slowest grower of all but it’s one of the slower growers,” he said. “So hopefully God’s plan is to keep me here for another 15 to 20 years and I just have to battle this forever and ever.”
Gilmore recently completed his 10th month taking oral chemotherapy drugs in a series of 14 days of treatments followed by 14 days off, and said the plan is to go another two to three months with those before replacing them with a chemo hormonal shot designed to control the hormones potentially being released by the tumor in his pancreas.
“All that is completely under control at this moment,” Gilmore said. “I can hopefully just manage it for a while. For me, since the day I got that news last Jan. 27, it’s just one day at a time. I’m just very blessed and excited every morning when I wake up and see the sun coming up. I’m not doing a whole lot past today. I cherish every day I’ve got, and the things that used to bother me I do my very best to not let them bother me anymore.”
He has been on an aggressive chemo program despite not receiving it intravenously. “According to [the doctor] I’m on one of the highest and strictest chemo regimens that are out there,” Gilmore said. “I’ve been getting blasted with it good and thank God my body has been really responding well to it as far as what it does to your red blood cells, white blood cells, the way it beats your body’s immune system down. Mine has reacted very well.”
The side effects of his treatment including nausea, lethargy and fatigue, which is the predominant byproduct, have alleviated some, and he said he has even managed to battle appetite suppression and gain a few pounds to tip 180 while eating a healthy diet. He also has weights and exercise equipment at his Pawleys Island home that he regularly uses.
“The [side effects] have improved significantly. I’ve learned how to deal with them, manipulate them, all those good things,” Gilmore said. “Not that I don’t get them, not that they’re not on my mind, but they aren’t devastating me like they were at the beginning when I had no earthly idea how to combat them through eating and the different things I can do to enhance the side effects you get from that stuff.
“. . . I’m still able to exercise the majority of days and lift a good bit. I’ll be out throwing batting practice here in a little bit.”
Gilmore is in bed by 9 most nights, which is the earliest he has ever gone to bed in his life, and often gets up multiple times during the night and morning as a consequence of his treatment.
“The one thing that is the greatest challenge in this has been the beat down of the body and overall fatigue at times,” Gilmore said. “[Especially] if I do anything to burn the candle at both ends, which for me is staying up until 11 o’clock and watching a football game. That’s as far as burning the candle at both ends gets in my life at this point. Normally at 9 o’clock we’re in bed and I’m reading some and getting ready to close my eyes and go to sleep.”
Gilmore plans to take advantage of true off days for the program more than he has in past years.
“When we have a day off, I’m going to take a day off,” he said. “In the past there were times when the team took a day off but the coaches worked all day. Well, I won’t be doing that. I’ll cherish my opportunity to sleep in and do this and do that when possible. Outside of that I expect to do every single thing I’ve ever done.”
The complications of COVID
Gilmore is scheduled to receive a coronavirus vaccine shot on Monday, with the required second shot coming within three weeks.
“To get that process started, that will give me another, ‘Phew, thank you Lord,’ ” Gilmore said. “Not that I can’t get it, but I’ll be as protected as much as I possibly can, and instead of these 18-hour drives back and forth to Houston every three months I’ll be able to actually fly and get there in two hours and still feel safe, so I’m looking forward to that.”
He has worn a mask and kept a safe distance from his players and fellow coaches during practices.
“I’ve coached with a mask on from a little bit greater distance than I ever have,” he said. “I haven’t shook hands, I haven’t hugged guys, things that are synonymous with who I feel like I am and want to be, I haven’t been able to do those things. I’m hoping sometime before this thing’s over with I get to do that with this group of guys. But right now they’re very respectful of me.”
While the recommended COVID safe distance is 6 feet, Gilmore’s safe space is more like 10 feet, and his players will remind him if he’s invading that area.
“You get in the middle of coaching and sometimes you forget you’ve got a mask on and you’ve got cancer and you’ve got a COVID thing going on,” he said. “They’ve been awesome, though. Their respect for me and my situation is hard to describe. They’ve been incredible.”
He’ll still use caution after receiving his vaccination shots. He’ll have less anxiety to fly with the team but doesn’t plan to ride the team bus on trips of any length, instead driving himself or with a second person sharing driving duties. “The shot’s not 100 percent, so I don’t want to stare fate right in the face and challenge it,” Gilmore said.
At least one more season
In his 25 seasons at CCU, his alma mater, Gilmore has led the Chants to an NCAA Division I national championship in 2016 and to a record of 974-507-2.
In his 31-year head coaching career, he has amassed a record of 1,227-609-4, giving him the sixth-most wins among active Division I coaches, including 253 wins in six seasons at USC Aiken from 1990-95.
Schnall led the team to an 11-5 record in Gilmore’s absence before the 2020 season was cut short last March 12 because of the pandemic.
Schnall, pitching coach Drew Thomas and assistant Matt Schilling – who have all spent at least 14 years on the Chants coaching staff and were part of the 2016 NCAA championship – are all in place again this season.
“I’ve been incredibly blessed with this group of people: their loyalty, their professionalism, how good they are as coaches and people. I’m very fortunate,” Gilmore said. “When and if I do step down things are in place. The only thing that’s going to change around here is there will be people shifting offices a little bit, but the same people will be running and guiding this place.”
Gilmore said that if his health permits he intends to coach at least a few more years.
“This is not a walk in the park down memory lane for an old guy that’s just trying to hang on,” Gilmore said. “I swore I would never be that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want to hold this program at bay because I’m not doing what I need to be doing.
“. . . If at any point in time I can’t do my job it’ll be time to retire. I’m not going to be a hands-off guy and let everybody else do my job for me.”
Leading the program back to the College World Series is one accomplishment in particular that drives Gilmore to continue.
“If there’s anything personal it’s that I want to get back to Omaha again for anyone that’s a naysayer about how we got things done in 2016, to prove we can do it again, that it wasn’t some kind of a once-in-a-50-year fluke,” he said. “This program can do it. There’s a culture here that creates this opportunity along with talent and we’re going to do it again.”
This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 10:00 AM.
