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Former University of Kentucky head coach Gary Conelly has been dropped as a defendant in the lawsuit against the university over the alleged behavior of his successor Lars Jorgensen, he revealed in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
“Today I got official notice that I am no longer a part of the ugly lawsuit against (the University of Kentucky) and the coach who took over after I left,” he wrote. “The whole thing was very unpleasant. It was pretty revolting to be even tangentially involved in the big ugly mess. I was dismissed from the case with prejudice, meaning they can’t change their minds and drag me back into that nasty circus. So now I can return my focus to being retired and battling hurricanes.”
Conelly currently lives in Bradenton, Florida, which has been impacted by both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton in recent weeks.
Court documents filed Tuesday confirm that Conelly was dismissed with prejudice. The documents say that his was a voluntary dismissal by the Plaintiffs after Conelly’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss.
Conelly, 72, was a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic Team in Munich, Germany, where he swam in the heats of the 400 and 800 free relay. Those relays would go on to win gold in finals, though based on the rules in place at the time, prelims-only swimmers did not receive medals.
Conelly served as the head coach at Kentucky for 22 years before retiring in 2013. Jorgensen took over as head coach later that year after spending the 2012-2013 season as Conelly’s assistant.
Conelly’s tenure as head coach saw him coach more than 60 All-Americans, guiding teams to 15 top-20 NCAA finishes in 22 years. He also coached U.S. Olympian Rachel Komisarz, who won gold and silver medals at the 2004 Olympics.
He was named SEC Swimming Coach of the Year in 1994-1995.
The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in April that coach Mark Howard sent an email to Conelly in 2012 warning him about Jorgsensen’s behavior as head coach at Toledo from 2004 to 2010.
In April, a lawsuit was filed against Jorgensen, Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnart, and Conelly. The suit was filed by two former University of Kentucky swimmers alleging that the department was complicit in allowing ex-head coach Lars Jorgensen “to foster a toxic, sexually hostile environment within the swim program and to prey on, sexually harass, and commit horrific sexual assaults and violent rapes against young female coaches and collegiate athletes who were reliant on him.”
The 53-year-old Jorgensen resigned last summer amid an investigation after a decade in Lexington, receiving a $75,000 settlement and foregoing the rest of the $402,500 left on his contract through the 2024-25 season. He appeared in SafeSport’s disciplinary database in November for unspecified allegations of misconduct. Details of those allegations surfaced Friday in an article by The Athletic.
The first alleged assault dates back to December of 2013, at a team Christmas party that Jorgensen hosted at his house. A former swim team staffer told The Athletic that Jorgensen forced her into his bedroom and raped her. He is accused of continuing to abuse the staffer over the next two years and telling her that nobody would believe her if she told anyone. She ultimately left in 2016 for a job at a “less prominent program.”
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is Briggs Alexander, a former team captain and an assistant coach with the Wildcats. The complaint claims that Jorgensen “groomed” Alexander during her time on the women’s team from 2014-18.
“Jorgensen isolated Alexander, sought to gain her trust, strove to control every facet of her life, and repeatedly made sexualized comments in an attempt to desensitize sexual topics,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
In December of 2019, after the team’s annual Christmas party at Jorgensen’s house, Alexander alleges that Jorgensen forced her into his bedroom, pinned her down by the wrists, and raped her. She also described three more sexual assaults while working as a volunteer assistant coach (2019-20) and assistant coach (2020-22) and a fourth that allegedly occurred in April of 2023, almost a year after resigning in May of 2022.
Alexander now identifies as male, but the lawsuit uses gender pronouns that align with his transition timeline so readers can understand “who I was in the moment when I was being abused.”
Barnhard and Conelly were named as defendants for their “deliberate indifference.”
Tuesday’s order also extended the deadline until November 8, 2024 to file a response to the University of Kentucky’s Motion to Dismiss.