TOPSAIL BASKETBALL COACH ALSO GETS SOFTBALL POST
HAMPSTEAD— Topsail High School principal Marcus Skipper and athletic director B.J. Horne have announced that Jeff Gainey will take over as head coach of the Topsail softball program.
Gainey has been the head men’s basketball coach at Topsail the last two years, with his teams going 15-12 in each of the last two seasons. He will replace Dean Coston, who resigned as softball coach after the 2011 season.
“Jeff has installed tremendous discipline and structure in the boys’ basketball program and we felt he’d be a good fit for the softball program,” Horne said, according to the Topsail Voice newspaper. “With him being a physical education teacher for 20 years and dealing with female students we just felt he would do a solid job.”
Gainey does not have experience in coaching girls, or in coaching softball, buthe feels confident that he will be able to make the adjustment. He played both basketball and baseball in high school, and at Mt. Olive College.
“For 20 years I taught girls and never coached them but I am looking forward to it,” Gainey said. “The big thing is to surround yourself with people that know what’s going on, and I feel a few of them are already in place.”
