Frank Gagliano, who sent 27 runners to the Olympics, dies at 89

Frank "Gags" Gagliano died Sunday night at 89, Georgetown University and Manhattan University announced Monday. He had coached track and field and cross country for six decades, most recently with the New Jersey-New York Track Club.

Gagliano started coaching track almost by accident, assigned to the team at Roselle Catholic High School in New Jersey in 1960 after expecting to take over the football program. By 1965 his Roselle Catholic team was the first high school to win both the distance medley relay and the two-mile relay at the Penn Relays. He joined Manhattan College as an assistant in 1969, then moved to Rutgers in 1974.

His longest stop was Georgetown, where he coached from 1983 to 1999, the last 14 years as director of the program. His Hoyas won 23 Big East team titles, produced 140 All-America honors and set a world record in the distance medley relay at the Penn Relays. He won national coach of the year twice.

After Georgetown, Gagliano ran a string of post-collegiate training groups: the Enclave from 1993 to 2001, then the Nike Farm Team, the Oregon Track Club Elite, and from 2010 the New Jersey-New York Track Club. Across his career he coached 27 Olympians and guided more than 40 runners to sub-four-minute miles.

In July, USA Track and Field named the men's 800 meters at its outdoor national championships after him, with Gagliano on hand at Icahn Stadium in New York to see it. No cause of death has been made public.

Six decades, one event after another, and the same answer every time someone asked why he kept coaching: the next athlete who needed him.

Sources: Georgetown Athletics; Manhattan University Athletics; EssentiallySports.