Often behind a person with a great career are other key figures who go unnoticed.
Look no further than Charles Gilreath, 62, of Roosevelt, who is now enjoying his first summer of retirement after 40 years of coaching high school kids. Gilreath spent the past 28 years coaching all three seasons of running at Freeport, following a 10-year stint at his alma mater of Roosevelt. Before that, he was an assistant wrestling coach at Hempstead. He spent his final year as the coach of Freeport’s boys cross country, boys indoor track and field and boys outdoor track and field teams, but also spent several years coaching girls, too.
Former assistant German Banegas will take over Freeport’s boys cross country team, while Elmer Argueta is slated to coach the boys track team for both the indoor and outdoor seasons.
“I was able to influence kids, help them and guide them to be something positive,” Gilreath told Newsday. “I didn’t really recognize it, but I’ve coached generations. Sometimes, I’ll walk through the neighborhood to get exercise and someone will honk and wave at me as they pass. I’ll see people later on and they’ll thank me for all I’ve done, so that makes me feel good to know that I was a positive influence on so many boys and girls.”
Between Roosevelt and Freeport, Gilreath won county championships in Classes A, B and C, and posted a 340-110-2 regular-season record. He also taught physical education in Freeport Public Schools for 20 years, spending 16 at Bayview Avenue School of Arts & Sciences, one year at Caroline G. Atkinson Intermediate School and the final three at the high school. For the last 10 years, he has also served as a deacon at Greater Second Baptist Church in Freeport.
These community roles have allowed Gilreath to impact the lives of many, but much of that can be attributed to the support from his wife, Donna.
“We did the family thing and the track thing at the same time, we just had to figure it out,” Donna Gilreath said. “Sometimes we had to leave places early, sometimes we had to split up responsibilities, but it worked.”
The two have known each other since they were classmates in fifth grade and were eventually each other’s senior prom dates at Roosevelt in 1980. Now, after four decades of working, the high school sweethearts felt it was time to spend the rest of their time with each other.
“When I look at the numbers, I coached three seasons for 40 years; that’s 120 seasons,” Charles Gilreath said. “That’s a lot. Between coaching and taking care of our kids, there were things we’ve never gotten to do together. We want to spend the back half of our life doing some traveling, and we’ll see where the rest of life takes us.”
After high school, Charles Gilreath went straight into the workforce as a printer at American Bank Stationary. He took up coaching on the side, becoming an assistant wrestling coach at Hempstead to the late Basil Barnes — his former wrestling coach.
Learning how to coach at Hempstead qualified him for the coaching gig at Roosevelt, which he took while still working at American Bank Stationary. After 10 years at the factory, he spent another 10 years doing the in-house printing for Long Island Savings Bank, during which time he was hired to coach at Freeport.
At 38, with 20 years in the printing industry and 16 years of coaching on the side, Gilreath was laid off from Long Island Savings Bank once Astoria Financial Corporation purchased the company and cut his department. He was offered a printing job elsewhere, but it would have forced him to quit coaching.
Now at a crossroads in his life, with a daughter (Ebony), a young son (Charles Jr.) and another baby (Jarrett) on the way, Gilreath needed to figure out what he was going to do full-time. His wife gave him a suggestion: why not go into teaching?
“When we made that choice, it was about what was best for our family,” Donna Gilreath said. “He could’ve stayed in the printing field, but he wouldn’t have been able to coach, and I didn’t want that taken away from him. Yes, we’d have food on the table, but he wouldn’t be able to do what he was sent here to do.”
, Gilreath became a full-time student at Nassau CCC, taking classes while still coaching Freeport in the afternoons. He graduated with his associate’s degree in 2002 before transferring to Hofstra, from where he earned a bachelor’s in the fall of 2004.
All the while, Donna Gilreath helped keep the house and family in order, while also providing him the necessary support to get him through school.
“It was a little scary because I hadn’t been in school in 20 years,” Charles Gilreath said. “Because I’m a man of faith, I trusted what I was going to do. There were people who said I wasn’t going to get a job, but I trusted the process. Sometimes you have to step out on faith. Plus, I have a great spouse. She held down a lot of the load, and I did what I had to do until we finally got there.”
The Freeport district hired him as a substitute teacher in January 2005 and had made him full time by the ensuing fall.
“The whole family dynamic changed because now he could provide a certain lifestyle for the family that previously he could not,” Donna Gilreath said.
In 2009, current Holy Trinity Assistant Principal Jim Muller, who was the head boys track coach at the time, let Gilreath join the staff temporarily as an assistant to coach his son, Charles Jr. With his dad by his side, Charles Jr. won the 400-meter CHSAA championship in 48.18 seconds, which Gilreath called “one of the fondest moments of his coaching career.”
After returning to Freeport and maintaining success for its varsity teams, he founded the Long Island Elite youth track camp in 2014. Baldwin boys track coach Mike Higgins, who coached against him for many years, helped him run the Long Island Elite until it was shut down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s just a matter of time before he should be elected to the Hall of Fame,” Higgins said. “It’s not just about tenure and longevity, but also quality of work. He’s always sent athletes to the state meet. He’s produced more county champions and all-state athletes than you can count. He’s had individual championships, team championships. He’s a Hall-of-Fame coach — it’s just that simple.”
Charles Gilreath not only guided kids through his coaching, but he also provided teenagers a role model through his marriage with Donna. Roosevelt alumnus Tiffanie Poole-Gentles, an assistant principal at Jean Nuzzi Intermediate School in Queens, won 19 county titles in five years under Charles Gilreath before graduating in 1996.
Though it was his coaching that brought her success, both him and his wife left personal impacts on Poole-Gentles and her teammates.
“Coach G and Mrs. Gilreath — I call her Momma Donna — have supported us throughout our career and our lives,” Poole-Gentles said. “The cool thing is, I don’t think he understands how impactful his relationship with her was on us . . . Having that mentorship and consistency, that marital role model, allowed us as ladies to pair our lives with that role model in mind. I’ve been married for 15 years to my college sweetheart. I’m happy to say that Coach G was instrumental in that. You see the patterns?”
So now, with their professional careers in the past, Charles and Donna Gilreath can focus more on each other. The two have plans to visit the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York, as well as a two-week road trip down south, involving stops in New Orleans, Atlanta, Myrtle Beach and Washington D.C. They also intend to go to Germany to visit Charles Jr. and his family, as he is stationed there with the U.S. Army.
Though his time coaching and teaching is over, Charles Gilreath’s itch to help the community is not gone yet.
“I’ll probably do some personal training, or counseling — maybe run some camps and clinics or give some mentoring,” Gilreath said. “There’s a lot of things on my mind that I still want to give or help people with, but I just don’t want to be tied to any particular schedule.”
No matter what he does, or when he decides to do it, Donna Gilreath will be fully behind him.
“I always want him to win,” she said.
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