UVA Swimming All-American David King offered a rather unique take on our story published on Monday on a former Cavalier Aquatics teammate who recounted a harrowing tale of emotional abuse at the hands of her coach, Gary Taylor, now the associate head coach of the UVA Swimming program.
“The kids that quit at Cavalier Aquatics had horrible attitudes and couldn’t take constructive criticism (which is given by any coach around the country in any sport who wants their athletes to succeed),” King wrote me in the first of a series of emails triggered by his reading of “The toll of emotional abuse on a young swimmer: ‘I haven’t been able to get through a practice without planning how I’d end my life,’” which we published on Monday.
That is, yes, a hot take there from our new friend, David King, a Western Albemarle alum who qualified for the 2025 World University Games, which begin next week in Berlin.
Just from the headline on the Monday story, you get that the reporting involves a young teen who was made to feel so down on herself that she was, daily, contemplating suicide.
To King, the story is actually that of a quitter with a horrible attitude who can’t take criticism.
That’s certainly another way to look at it.
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The backstory here is our reporting on June 9 on a SafeSport investigation encompassing complaints from swimmers at Cavalier Aquatics and two of Taylor’s previous stops, NC State, where he was an assistant coach, and Auburn, where he was the head coach from 2018-2021.
Taylor has since admitted to emotional misconduct involving athletes at his two college jobs and at Cav Aquatics dating back to 2015.
A Notice of Decision from SafeSport putting Taylor on a two-year probation was handed down on March 17.
ICYMI
The probation does not prevent Taylor from continuing to serve as a coach with either UVA Swimming or Cavalier Aquatics, the competitive swim program at the Piedmont Family YMCA.
King is the first UVA swimmer to come forward to me with a defense for Taylor.
And it’s an interesting defense.
“I’d like to know why people and/or you are providing information to the public that is simply incorrect and made up,” King wrote, apparently oblivious to the previous reporting on the Taylor case, so we’ll repeat it for him here.
To resert: we have to start with Taylor being hired to be the head coach at Cavalier Aquatics in 2021, four months after leaving his job as the head coach at Auburn, an uncoupling described at the time as the two having “mutually agreed to part ways.”
Turns out, there were whispers even before Taylor left Auburn about swimmers in the Auburn program having lodged complaints against Taylor, and a group of 15 would eventually file complaints against the coach with SafeSport.
Those complaints were later shared with me.
A sampling:
- One athlete who wrote that Taylor had confronted her about taking a mental-health break to go home one weekend said the coach “never once asked if I was okay or anything and made me feel guilty for my mental health and trying to take care of it.”
- Taylor, in a meeting with another swimmer, who he had told repeatedly one swim season that she was not getting results in the pool because she “lacked confidence,” asked her, when she pushed back against another assertion on her lack of confidence, “Are you on your period?”
- Another swimmer described how Taylor had taken an innocuous comment that she had made to him during a recruiting phone call – that she was “excited to race for something bigger than myself and be a part of the outstanding legacy that Auburn possesses” – against her for the next two years.
- Another swimmer who had an asthma attack during a dry-land training exercise, and said Taylor advised a trainer, “don’t help her, she’s fine,” and later lost her spot on the team, wrote that she is “terrified for the girls that are still being coached by him and will have to put up with his verbal abuse.”
The Cav Aquatics swimmer whose story was featured in Monday’s article might have the most difficult story to hear.
She shared with me her complaint to SafeSport written in 2022, when she was a high-school junior.
“All of my life, I have been living through the doubt of myself, faltered confidence and overthinking. I have never thought that I was good enough, and when Gary convinced me that I was doing nothing right, I believed him,” the swimmer, who now swims at an ACC school, wrote three years ago.
“Here I am now. I haven’t been able to get through a practice without planning how I’d end my life, and I love this sport, I really do, and always have, but not like this. By my choice, my life has always revolved around swimming; it means everything to me. I have always attempted to detach my worth from swimming. Now that time has come with ruthless force, for I am no longer able to love myself while loving this sport.”
The sum of these experiences:
- a swimmer made to feel guilty for taking a mental health break.
- another told that her pushback to coaching was the result of her being on her period.
- a third denied aid while having an asthma attack.
- the sad story of a teen girl who confided her struggles to her coach, was told she was doing nothing right, and contemplated suicide.
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“I’ve been one of Gary’s swimmers for all my years on club and during my first year at UVA. Some of the details that you are providing in your article are not even remotely close to the person that Gary is,” King wrote me, adding later: “You can ask ANYONE on UVA this year as everyone is in college, mature, and knows how a coach should act, about anything regarding Gary. I can guarantee you that there will be nothing but positive comments.”
Here, King would seem to be unwittingly confirming something that swimmers at NC State, Auburn and Cav Aquatics who I’ve been in touch with tell me they had noticed with Taylor’s approach – that he treats males and females differently, that he plays favorites, and that these two tendencies, in concert, work to divide members of his team against each other.
To this point, one of his former Auburn swimmers noted it was clear to her that Taylor “admired and favorited kids who would meet his every demand and followed his lead like little robots”; another offered up that he often “turns teammates against each other by manipulating a situation so that you believe that you and your peers are in the wrong.”
As we traded emails back and forth on his original email, King’s responses to included one reiterating that the reporting on Taylor “seems very made up,” and then a request that his name not be used in this story.
To clarify on that last point: King isn’t being given anonymity here because he’s not a victim in this case, which, again, was resolved by SafeSport with a finding that put Taylor on a two-year probation after admitting to emotional misconduct, so, if on one side of this case, we have the coach admitting to misconduct and accepting a two-year probation, that means that, on the other side, the young women in this case are victims.
King’s role in this story is, he initiated an email back-and-forth with a journalist who reported on the issues involving his coach, in which King tried to both dismiss the emotional misconduct as being kids with “horrible attitudes” who can’t take “constructive criticism,” and also cast the reporting itself as having been “made up.”
Sorry, but you don’t get the shield of anonymity to attack victims and the veracity of reporting on their experiences.
I forwarded King’s initial email to a UVA Athletics spokesperson – and to Carla Williams, the athletics director at UVA, and Todd DeSorbo, the head coach at UVA Swimming – for comment.
“We are committed to providing a safe and supportive environment where all of our student-athletes can thrive,” an athletics department spokesperson wrote to us in an email later in the day on Tuesday. “Any form of abuse or harmful behavior is taken very seriously and won’t be tolerated. Per UVA policy, we are unable to comment on specific matters involving student-athletes or personnel.”
I’m not sure this feels like a direct response to what the All-American swimmer wrote to us in the first of his several emails attacking the integrity of the reporting and the validity of the victims in the Taylor case, but this is what we have.
Last word, then, I guess, should go to David King, since he wanted to make himself a point of focus:
“I really wish you would stop wasting your time and energy with salty families who are praying on this dude’s downfall. It’s really sad,” King wrote.
With that attitude, good luck in Berlin, kid.
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Chris Graham
