John Gilmore bringing a taste of the Wilson Bulldogs to Florida football

When the Sunlake Seahawks gather at the end of football practice today they’ll hear Gerry Slemmer and Doug Dahms — Wilson football coaches, past and present — speaking to them.

They’ll hear Joe Paterno, the legendary Penn State coach.

They’ll hear Jon Gruden’s voice, too.

Those men are all a part of what shaped John Gilmore as a football player and a man, and what shapes the daily messages he now sends out to his players at Sunlake High School in Land O’Lakes, Fla., 20 miles north of Tampa.

Gilmore, 42 and a 1997 Wilson graduate, is in the third week of his head football coaching journey, a trip he never planned to take.

The former Penn State and NFL tight end, who lives in the Sunlake school district and was a member of the booster club, offered a motivational speech to the players in the summer.

He saw they didn’t have an offensive line coach and volunteered to do the job.

Two games into the season, and on the night of the Seahawks’ first loss, he was fired from that position, along with two other assistant coaches.

Before the tumultous Labor Day weekend was over Sunlake principal Kara Merlin fired the head coach, Alex Suber II, and installed Gilmore as the interim head coach.

“I’ve never seen anything (like that),” Gilmore said of the in-season firing of assistant coaches at the high school level, and the events that followed. “It’s been a crazy couple weeks in my life.”

Gilmore’s plate was already full before he became the Seahawks’ line coach. He has two children — Grayson, a sophomore defensive end on the team, and 11-year-old Lilianna — he’s involved in several business ventures in the Tampa area and does pregame and postgame stints on the Pewter Report, which covers the Buccaneers.

Gilmore couldn’t say no when asked to coach the team for the remainder of the season, as challenging a task as it has become. He had to hire three new coaches, install a new offense and new defense, and do it all on the fly. He was overwhelmed, to say the least.

“The biggest thing is trying to change the culture,” Gilmore said. “It’s not like the Wilson Bulldogs of old. These kids think they can get away with whatever they want based on their talent and that’s not how I function.

“What I learned pretty quickly is that disciplined football wins games. If there’s no discipline you’re gonna be hard-pressed to win on talent alone.

“Success for me now (is) about cleaning up this program and getting it in place for whoever’s at the helm next year, whether it’s me or somebody else. Unless the culture gets fixed we’re not going to be able to move forward.”

To accomplish that Gilmore is drawing upon the men who influenced his football life. He huddled with Gruden, his coach at Tampa Bay. He had a lengthy call with Dahms, an assistant coach with the Bulldogs when Gilmore was named both Offensive and Defensive Lineman of the Year in Section 1 of the Lancaster-Lebanon League and to the All-State team as a senior in 1996.

In the first letter he sent to parents he quoted Paterno, whom he played for from 1998-2001.

The late Penn State coach remains a voice in Gilmore’s head. In that letter to parents he spoke about core values that were near and dear to Paterno: Discipline, accountability, respect, humility.

Gilmore considers Slemmer a major influence in his life — “If it wasn’t for him, I would’n’t have had the career that I had,” he said — and draws upon his values on a daily basis, on and off the field.

“A commitment to excellence is what that (Wilson) program stood for and it’s where I’m trying to get this program now,” Gilmore said. “Discipline, hard work, work ethic — that’s lost now on some of these kids. They think you can just wave a magic wand and everything’s going to be OK.

“When you’re playing for Gerry Slemmer you’re gonna get the raw, uncut truth on what it takes to be great. And he’ll show you the way — it’s not the easy way, but it’s the right way. These kids don’t even know what that looks like.”

Gilmore was the centerpiece of back-to-back Lancaster-Lebanon League Section 1 championship teams in 1995 and 1995; the Bulldogs went a combined 20-3 over his junior and senior seasons.

He led Berks with 35 receptions and 666 receiving yards, had seven TD receptions and set a program single-game record with 175 receiving yards — pretty rare feats for a tight end.

Gilmore was named a captain at Penn State as a senior in 2001 and was selected in the sixth round of the NFL draft the following spring.

He spent six seasons with the Chicago Bears, including 2006 when they reached Super Bowl XLI, losing to Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts, 29-17. He also spent three seasons with Tampa Bay.

In his final season, 2011, he played with Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints, when Brees set the NFL single-season passing record.

In the years since he has been involved in business and civic ventures, most notable on a local level the Gilmore/Henne Community Fund, which he and former Wilson quarterback Chad Henne formed to help revitalize local playgrounds.

Gilmore’s not sure what his coaching future looks like; he’s just trying to get through this season. He sounds as though he wants to continue what he’s started.

“I’m pulling out all stops for these kids,” he said. “Football’s something that I’ve been doing since I was 6 years old. I love it. I’m always studying football. It’s chess, not checkers, and I still enjoy it.”