First published in the July 23 print issue of the Glendale News-Press.
Former players, parent volunteers and assistants gathered last week to surprise longtime Glendale area basketball coach Michael Gayle and celebrate his retirement after decades of mentoring area children in the sport.
Gayle, who helped form the Los Angeles Hawks basketball amateur league club in 2009 and had coached it since, also spent nearly two decades coaching the Falcon Youth Basketball League in La Crescenta from 1990-2008. He was also the freshman basketball coach at Glendale High School from 2014 onward and coached the sport at Wilson Middle School starting in 2015.
In his decades as a coach, Gayle counted more than 1,000 athletes under his tutelage, many of whom went on to play college ball here and in Missouri, Minnesota, Louisiana, Georgia and Oregon.
