WASHINGTON, D.C. — Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., is mourning Frank Gagliano, the Hall of Fame track and cross country coach known across the sport simply as Gags, who died Sunday night at 89.
Gagliano took over the Hoyas program in 1983 and ran it through 1999. His athletes piled up 140 All-America honors, seven individual national titles, five Olympians and 46 school records, while his teams claimed 23 BIG EAST crowns and eight Penn Relays Championship of America wins, one of them a world-record distance medley relay.
Gagliano won National Coach of the Year honors twice and helped build up the women’s program. Early in the 1990s he began training former Hoyas as pros, and Steve Holman and John Trautmann both reached the 1992 Olympics for the United States.
Born in the Bronx in 1937, Gagliano was a college quarterback at Richmond before a high school in New Jersey asked him to start a track team. He later coached professionals in Palo Alto, Eugene and the New York area.
He entered the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame in 2003 and the Georgetown Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006. In July, USA Track & Field put his name on the men’s 800 meters at its outdoor national championships.
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