Coastal Carolina is in CWS finals, and retired coach Gary Gilmore is happy to watch from afar

OMAHA, Neb. — Considering the run Coastal Carolina's baseball team is on — 26 straight wins on the way to the College World Series finals — it would be understandable if Gary Gilmore had second thoughts about retiring after last season.

Not a one, he said by phone Thursday as he pulled out of the driveway of his home in North Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, to head to his grandson's travel team tournament.

The 67-year-old Gilmore attended no Coastal Carolina games this season until the Chanticleers' first two in the CWS last weekend. He sat in the stands at Charles Schwab Field, uncomfortable as it was for the man who spent 29 years at the helm, led the 2016 Chanticleers to the national championship and is regarded as the godfather of program.

Gilmore said he and his family would be back for the best-of-three finals against LSU starting Saturday night.

''Is there a piece of my DNA in this thing? Absolutely. There's no doubt about it,'' Gilmore said, ''and I hope it will be for all time.''

But the 2025 Chanticleers are first-year coach Kevin Schnall's team, and Gilmore said he wanted to make a clean break and not give the impression he was looking over Schnall's shoulder. Schnall was Gilmore's assistant for more than two decades.

The grind of building Coastal Carolina into a perennial NCAA Tournament team and CWS contender caused Gilmore to sacrifice time with his wife and two children to chase championships, as coaches are wont to do. When he was hired as head coach in 1996, his office was in a trailer with no plumbing behind a weed-filled outfield. Twenty years later, the Chanticleers were national champions.

Gilmore could have said his work was done at that point, but he wasn't ready quite yet.

In January 2020, he got a devastating reality check when he was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. It had spread to his liver, but it was a type that tends to be more manageable than the more common variety that invariably carries a grim prognosis. He went through chemotherapy and traveled regularly first to Houston, and now Denver, for treatments.

In 2023, he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and had surgery to remove the gland.

Gilmore tolerated his treatments for both cancers better than expected. He missed only three games and rarely a practice.

All he went through, though, made him realize the pull to dedicate more of himself to his family was getting stronger. He wanted to reconnect with his wife and children and build strong bonds with his four grandchildren.

''I feel awesome,'' he said. ''I have what I have. I've got the best doctor in the world. His goal is to manage all this stuff. At some point I'm going to have a life-changing surgery where they can get everything in my liver completely stabilized, and they have confidence that's going to last me a long time. I'll hopefully rid myself of some of this.''

Doctors initially told him the worst-case scenario was that he would live two more years; the ''dream'' was to make it 10. Now the outlook is better.

''How things have gone, God willing, they can keep me with a good quality of life and hopefully something else will get me before that,'' he said.

Gilmore acknowledges the game isn't the same now with name, image and likeness opportunities and, soon, direct payments to athletes becoming larger factors in putting together and keeping together a team.

''The NIL, the analytics, the portal,'' he said. "I honestly think this is a younger guy's game, to be honest with you. Guys like me, we coached the game with our eyes. We didn't coach with analytics and this and that. We recruited with our eyes. We didn't recruit over the internet to a large degree. We went out and saw guys play, evaluated people.

''That's not the reason I got out of it, ultimately. I've got two stage-4 cancers is my body. I feel healthy as I can, and I'm lucky and blessed I have the health I do. All that played out in my mind. You're 67 years old, you got four grandkids. What are the choices you want to make here?''

Right now, his choice is to be with his family while he enjoys watching the team he helped build chase a second national championship and see all that is possible for the 10,000-student school in the Myrtle Beach area that had no national athletic identity before 2016.

''Just because of the size of school, people want to label you Cinderella,'' Gilmore said. ''We were a Cinderella in '16, absolutely, no doubt about it. We left Omaha still explaining what our mascot was, and Kevin's still doing it today.''

Indeed, Schnall gave a stern pronunciation lesson to the media after his team beat Oregon State on Sunday, opening his news conference: ''Everybody say it with me: SHON-tuh-cleers! SHON-tuh-cleers! Not SHAN-tuh-cleers! SHON-tuh-cleers!''

However you say it, the Chanticleers are well-suited to the cavernous CWS ballpark. They don't hit many home runs, but they get on base, get timely hits, have strong pitching and play outstanding defense.

They're also hot.

''I've never seen anything like this,'' Gilmore said. ''Crazy.''

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports