Tom Gilmore (American football)

Tom Gilmore (born September 25, 1964) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the head coach of the Lehigh University Mountain Hawks.

Gilmore is second on the all-time coaching wins list at Holy Cross. He took over a program that suffered 10 losing seasons in the previous 11 years and turned in a winning season in just his second year, including a win over the #10 ranked Lehigh, his previous coaching stop. His teams progressively improved, just narrowly missing three championships by a total of 5 points before claiming Patriot League title in 2009. That 2009 team lost a close match-up with eventual national champion Villanova in the national playoffs and finished with a #14 national ranking. He coached winning teams in eight of his 14 seasons.

Gilmore is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and a former defensive lineman on the Penn Quakers football team. Gilmore also played one summer for the British Columbia Lions of the Canadian Football League and one summer for the New York Knights of the Arena Football League. Prior to taking the head coaching position at Holy Cross, Gilmore served as an assistant at Penn, Columbia University, Dartmouth College and Lehigh University.

Gilmore was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Irish-born parents; Jack Gilmore & Sarah "Sadie" (Boyce) Gilmore. He has older brothers John and Jim (Ohio State & NFL player) & two younger siblings, Mike (Lycoming College Athletic Hall of Fame) and sister Mary Ann (LaSalle College). He attended St Bartholomew Parish grade school and then Northeast Catholic High School for Boys. At North, he was selected to the All-Catholic League teams in three separate sports - football, wrestling and track. He graduated in 1982 from North Catholic with high honors and received the school's most prestigious award, the Provincial's Medal of Honor. He was inducted into the North Catholic Alumni Hall of Fame in 2014, Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2009 and Football Hall of Fame in 2014.

As a football player at the University of Pennsylvania, he was a 4-time Ivy league Champion. He was named team captain in 1985 and was a 3-time All-Ivy League selection as a defensive lineman, as well as second team All-American in 1984 and third team All-American in 1985. He established new school career records for quarterback sacks and tackles for loss and received numerous team awards including the George Munger Award (Team MVP) and the Chuck Bednarik Award (Top Lineman).^{[citation needed]} As a senior, he was named the Ivy League Player of the Year (Asa S. Bushnell Award), one of only two linemen to ever win the award before it was divided into two awards for Offense and Defense in 2012.

An Academic All-American at the University of Pennsylvania, Gilmore graduated in 1986 with a bachelor's degree in computer mathematics.^[1] He received the Class of 1915 Award as Penn's top male Scholar-Athlete at graduation. He was also selected as one of the 12 members of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame Scholar-Athlete Team in December, 1985. He was named to the University of Pennsylvania Football All-Time Team in 2020, All-Century Team in 2000 and was inducted into the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.

Head coaching record[]

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External links[]

• Lehigh profile