Saturday afternoon the gymnasium at Lathrop High will be christened Greg Leland Gym.
The gym will open for the ceremony at 1:30 p.m. with the dedication at 2 p.m.
I have had the pleasure of knowing Greg for nearly 30 years.
Through all the triumph and tragedy, he is a beacon of consistency and humility. His resume of accomplishments is as long as my arm, and I will get to those in a minute.
But first, I must describe our inauspicious meeting.
My son was playing freshman football for Sierra in 1996 and Greg was the varsity coach.
I had coached youth football in town for a number of years and for multiple reasons, that was to be my last year doing so.
While at my mom’s in Redding that September I saw a commercial for an opposition high school coach from when I played and he was grateful for the opportunity to continue his coaching as an off-campus coach.
That gave me an idea of approaching Greg with the possibility of joining the Sierra program. S
o on back-to-school night I did just that and what was Greg’s response? He rolled his eyes at me, gave me some boiler-plate speech on how every year some dads ask to do what I was asking and told me that if I was serious to get him three letters of recommendation by a certain date.
With the eye roll and the boiler-plate talk I was, well, motivated.
I got him his three letters — including one from the lady who used to babysit his kids — (yes, I was stacking the deck.)
He seemed surprised that I followed through, but thus began my high-school coaching career.
Greg was also the track and field coach — Sierra won a Sac-Joaquin Section title in 1999 and Greg was named the Northern California State Track and Field Coach in 2000.
Prior to taking over the reigns as inaugural head football and track coach at Sierra in 1994, Greg was an assistant track coach at both Manteca and East Union beginning in 1985.
He ran the track program until 1999 and football program until 2005 before transitioning to Sierra athletic director. He was the Sac-Joaquin Section Athletic Director of the Year in 2009, the same year he did double duty as Sierra High freshman softball coach.
(And as an aside, I long for the days of a Greg Leland-run track meet. A lot of people today could take lessons from him on how to get things done in a timely manner.)
Moving into administration after hanging up his whistle, Greg was vice principal at Sierra from 2011-2016 before becoming assistant principal at Lathrop High for a year and then principal until he retired until 2023.
Along that path, Greg accumulated accolades too numerous to mention, not the least of which was his induction into the Manteca Hall of Fame for Education in 2013.
Other career highlights include, but are not limited to: Manteca Unified School District Outstanding Young Educator 1987-1988; M.U.S.D. Teacher of the Year 1995-1996; San Joaquin County E.P.I.C. Teacher of the Year 1996-1997; Ferlito Alejandro/San Joaquin County Sportsmanship Commission Award 1999; Prudential Foundation Outstanding Educator 2001; Best of Manteca-Best School Administrator 2010; American Cancer Society Region 7 Co-Administrator of the Year 2016 and SJCOE Principal of the Arts 2023.
Retirement marks the end of the road for many people, but not Greg.
He continues to be the Western Athletic Conference commissioner and is currently serving his second term as Lathrop Rotary President.
