University of North Carolina Athletics
GoHeels Exclusive: Back With Track
December 4, 2017 | Track & Field, Featured Writers
by Matt Hodgin
Former student-athlete and assistant coach Jeff Gorski, 62, is returning to the University of North Carolina as a volunteer assistant to coach the javelin for the 2018 track and field season.
Gorski, a 1977 Carolina graduate and three-time All-ACC performer in javelin, is a highly-respected javelin instructor around the world having worked with elite athletes from high school national champions to Olympians.
He first began his coaching career shorty after graduation while teaching health and physical education at Wake Chapel, an elementary/junior high school in Fuquay-Varina, N.C.
As a monogram winner while at UNC, he received seats directly behind the Tar Heel bench in Carmichael Arena and attended just about every men's basketball game his freshman year. He even became friends with some of the Tar Heel players.
Those relationships and opportunities to watch Dean Smith first peaked his coaching interest - inspiring him to test his abilities with the Wake Chapel basketball team.
"We were right there, and I had guys like John Kuester, Phil Ford and Walter Davis who were really great friends of mine," Gorski said. "I really understood and learned a lot about basketball from those guys before I got out of college. Then I'm trying to incorporate this with these kids who are having trouble walking and chewing gum, and the ideas and the techniques were a little bit advanced for their physical abilities."
His stint of coaching basketball was short-lived given his team of mostly elementary-school age kids was severely under matched playing in a league of junior high school players.
"In the first game, one kid on the other team got called for goaltending because he literally went up and took a ball off the rim," Gorski said. "I think my basketball record at that school was something like 1-35."
Luckily, he was contacted shortly into his basketball coaching career to return to Chapel Hill.Â
THE START OF A CAREER
In 1981, Gorski was given the opportunity to coach Carolina throwers as a part-time assistant for the program. So, he and his wife, Elaine, packed up in Fuquay-Varina and moved to their Chapel Hill home - and it turns out the move was for good, as they have never left, never moved out of that very house.Â
Gorski worked with Tar Heel student-athletes periodically over the next decade, coaching the likes of All-Americas Lynda Lipson, Sherrie MacKinney and Sean Murray until 1991.
"I was being paid as a part-time coach," Gorski said "I was doing everything I could to show that I could be a full-time coach."
Following the 1991 season, he began coaching independently and would notably go on to work with six-time U.S. javelin champion and 1992 and 1996 Olympian Tom Pukstys, who under Gorski's tutelage set six American records in the javelin and was ranked top 10 in the world.
Then from 1999-2003, Gorski served as the men's javelin development chair for USA Track & Field, the highest-ranking individual event position at the national level.
Over the next decade, Gorski took odd jobs around the Chapel Hill community - everything from working with a track-building company to selling throwing implements with his wife out of his home. No matter what he did, he was always coaching, jumping at any opportunity to work with young javelin athletes.
He finally made his return to consistent coaching when The National Scholastic Athletic Foundation came to him in 2011 and asked Gorski to design and run an elite javelin development high school program.Â
As he began coaching elite high school athletes over the next few years, that undeniable itch to coach at UNC grew even stronger.
THE RETURN TO CAROLINA
Of all of his former athletes, one that always stood out was Harlis Meaders, now director and throws coach of the UNC track and field program.
Under Gorski's guidance, Meaders, a 1992 graduate of Carolina, won back-to-back ACC titles in the discus (1991-92) and a conference crown in the weight throw in 1992. He also made the 1992 Olympic Trials and set a Carolina discus record that stood for 23 years.
The two have maintained a close relationship. And, with Gorski having always wanted to return to coaching at his alma mater, they have bounced around the idea of Gorski coming back since Meaders became the program's director in 2012.
Gorski always let Meaders know that if he ever needed a hand, he was just one phone call away.Â
Finally, in 2015, Gorski got the call. Meaders asked him to assist with throwers at the team's holiday camp that winter.
Coming back full-time now seemed a possibility with the discussions becoming serious as he returned the following winter for the 2016 holiday camp and was available as a mentor to Meaders ahead during the 2017 outdoor season.
"I had the most fun in decades working with him this past winter at the holiday track and field camp," Gorski said. "There were so many things that we connected on - verbal cues that I used on him 30 years ago that he is using with his kids."
And that bond runs beyond the track. Meaders was not only one of Gorski's best student-athletes, but over time he became a great friend.
Meaders was one of the first people to visit Gorski the evening of Elaine's passing in March 2017.
"He showed up out of the blue, unannounced, and it really meant a lot to me at the time, Gorski said "Still does. I coached him for three years, but he was such a great young man. Seeing him grow up to be the kind of leader that he is, and the kind of coach that he is, and just the kind of guy that he is."Â
That relationship makes it now feel like Gorski's return was inevitable. So, it felt right when Gorski was finally filing the paperwork this fall to come back full-time.
And no one would be more proud than Elaine.
"This is great," Elaine told him in the spring as he first began helping with the Tar Heel javelin throwers. "You've always wanted to coach there. You've gone down there where the coach has asked you to come down on a varying basis and different times, but now you get to be running the show with the javelin throwers."
BACK WITH TRACK
"It's exciting to have Coach Gorski rejoin the Carolina family," Meaders said. "He is part of our history and is going to help us write the future of the program. Coach Gorski is an extremely decorated coach. He's probably one of the better javelin coaches in the country, and for him to volunteer his time to be a part of our staff is really flattering."
Gorski could not be more thrilled to be back. Not only will he coach elite athletes at his alma mater, but he will also coach with his pupil and friend.
"The kids I have to work with are really talented," Gorski said. "But Coach Meaders being there is icing on the cake."
"It's really fun," Meaders said. "He told me one day I could call him Jeff, and I don't think I could ever just call him Jeff. He will always be Coach Gorski. But he understands that it's my turn to lead, and he's here to support me and my vision and everything that we do, and that's humbling. I have a great deal of respect for him, and I'm excited that he's once again back with the Carolina family and continuing to help us develop the program."
For Gorski, this is the dream. It has always been here, in Chapel Hill, where he has lived and breathed javelin, even turning his own property into Klub Keihas, or what has been referred to as Gorski's "field of dreams" - facilities he has equipped with everything from a weight room to a 70-foot javelin runway.Â
To be back at Carolina tops it all.
"He's here in the community," Meaders said. "It ties him back with his alma mater. It gives him the chance to impart some of his wisdom on the kids and also to share his wisdom with me and to give back to the university that has given both of us so much."
Beginning this winter, this is exactly where Gorski wants to be.
"I am officially back partying with the track team."
