Lehigh announces head football coach, Tom Gilmore

Lehigh announced former defensive coordinator Tom Gilmore as its new head football coach Tuesday afternoon.

He will be replacing Andy Coen, who retired due to early-onset Alzheimer’s in December. Gilmore will be the 29th head coach in Mountain Hawks history.  

“There’s a lot of things that connected me to Lehigh, and I feel this is a perfect fit for me,” Gilmore said in his press conference on Tuesday.

Previously, he served as the Lehigh defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for four years, in the 2000-2003 seasons before becoming the head coach of Holy Cross. He spent 14 seasons at Holy Cross and mounted a 41-40 Patriot League record.

Gilmore spent last season working as a defensive analyst for Wake Forest, which is the only non-Patriot or Ivy league school he has coached at.

Gilmore is a Philadelphia native. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he played as a defensive linemen and garnered All-America honors in his last two seasons.

In his press conference, Gilmore said he is excited to learn from the people at Lehigh and work with them to not only win games but to develop men of character.

In a press release Gilmore issued this statement: “I’d like to thank President John Simon and Joe Sterrett for giving me this opportunity. Lehigh is a place I’ve always held in high regard. I worked here as an assistant for four years and thoroughly enjoyed everything about that experience; the campus, the athletic department, the community. We had really good teams. Everything about those four years I spent here, was awesome. It’s close to home for me, so it really feels like I’m coming home in a lot of ways. I’m really excited to get going and looking forward to meeting the team and the staff and personnel within the department.”