By ANDREW CRUM |The Brownsville Herald
In a special board meeting last week, the Brownsville Independent School District chose a new athletic director to lead its athletics.
Gilbert Leal, a former head coach at Mercedes and Harlingen South and most recently, the offensive coordinator at San Benito, has become the new athletic director at BISD. He replaces Tom Chavez, who was working in an interim capacity along with his duties at Rivera as head football coach/athletic coordinator for the better part of two years after Mark Guess, the last full-time athletic director, returned to the sidelines to coach football and take over athletic coordinator duties at Hanna after Rene Medrano retired.
“I’m good friends with all the coaches in the Brownsville area,” Leal said. “We share a lot of ideas, so the way I look at it is I’m not going to be their boss … we work in the same profession and I’m trying to serve them and help them in any way possible.”
Leal is no stranger to the Rio Grande Valley, he grew up in Harlingen and played three sports at Harlingen High, football, basketball and baseball, and became captain on each squad competing against several athletes from Brownsville that are now friends and fellow coaches.
“My entire life in athletics has been competing with the Brownsville schools,” he said.
After Leal played football at University of Texas-El Paso and Sul Ross State University, he began his coaching career at Harlingen High as an assistant for the next 12 years, including the last five as an offensive coordinator. He got his first experience as an athletic director at
Mercedes and was the head football coach from 2005-2008 and took the Harlingen South job from 2009-11. He went to San Antonio Jefferson as a special teams coordinator, then to Hidalgo as an offensive coordinator until Dan Gomez hired him in the same capacity to run his offense at San Benito.
Leal said he is one of three sons to a former college president and that each has some type of leadership position. Leal learned a lot at Mercedes in a similar position and hopes to use those early experiences to apply to his new position at BISD.
Leal will finish out the school year at San Benito until its graduation on June 1 and start at BISD on June 4 and he’s anxious to get started.
“It’s my natural personality to build,” he said. “I love building programs, building relationships. I’m a people person so we’ll work together collaboratively and put together a plan that those coaches need across all sports in boys and girls and then we’ll go from there and form a plan that works. It just something that I naturally like to do, to work with people and move objects from point A to B and try to do it the right way.”
Leal believes this position is a good fit for him and hopes to continue what became a mission when he was at Mercedes and making sure that athletes from the Valley were on equal playing fields with schools across the state, especially with hosting duties during regionals and other postseason play.
“I love competition,” he said. “Now I can pour all my energy, my vision and my support to help all six schools and 12 middle schools. I’m trying to help the athletes of the Rio Grande Valley. Fight for those athletes and especially those in BISD.”
Andrew Crum covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him at (956) 982-6629 or via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @andrewmcrum.