By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
Former University of Kentucky head swim coach Lars Jorgensen has settled a lawsuit accusing him of sexual harassment and sexual assault that was brought by two of his former swimmers in U.S. District Court.
Terms of the agreement were not released, though it was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs cannot file the same lawsuit again.
The settlement does not affect the claims against the other defendants in the case, which are the University of Kentucky, and former Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart. Former head swim coach Gary Conelly was dismissed as a defendant in 2024.
Alleged Assaults
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. The other is a Jane Doe (anonymous) plaintiff.
“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.”
Jorgensen has also been accused of sending a member of the women’s swim team photos of his penis and videos of him masturbating, and sending suggestive messages to swimmers over social media.
Jorgensen represented the United States at the 1988 Olympic Games in the 1500 free, finishing 23rd. He went on to swim at the University of Tennessee, graduating in 1994, and became a graduate assistant coach there.
After a few brief stints as a club coach, he was an assistant at LSU from 1999 until 2004, when Toledo hired him as head coach.
In 2010, he returned to Tennessee as the successor to John Trembley, his former coach. In 2012, Trembley was fired after sending sexually explicit text emails from his university email account. Jorgensen took over as the interim head coach for the remainder of the 2011-2012 season.
In June 2012, he was hired by Kentucky as the successor to Gary Conelly.
Jorgensen resigned as the school’s head swim coach in 2023 amid an investigation, and was given a $75,000 settlement on money owed from the remainder of his contract. At the time of his resignation, $402,500 remained on his contract through the 2024-2025 season.
In 2025, Jorgensen was banned from participation in the Olympic movement, including youth sports, by the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
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