Gary Taylor, the head coach of Cavalier Aquatics, the Piedmont Family YMCA competitive swim team, and an assistant coach with UVA Swimming, is currently serving a two-year probation handed down by the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
The probation was handed down after an investigation that concluded with Taylor admitting to emotional misconduct while coaching swimmers from 2015 to 2022 at North Carolina State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics.
The Notice of Decision in the case from SafeSport was made official on March 17, and was shared with officials with the Piedmont Family YMCA and with Todd DeSorbo, the head coach of the UVA Swimming team.
DeSorbo is familiar as the rock-star coach on Grounds who has led the women’s swim team to five straight national titles, and also served as the head coach of the USA Women’s Swimming Team in the 2024 Summer Olympics, where his team won 19 medals, including six golds.
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The probation and the details of the investigation into Taylor, all involving female swimmers, have not previously been made public, in line with SafeSport’s policies regarding its investigations, which limit the reporting on investigatory findings to people directly associated with the case, and “prohibit Claimants and Respondents from sharing any confidential notices (e.g., Notice of Allegations, Notice of Decision) or the Investigation Report.”
A SafeSport process navigator, Maria Pulido, also advised one party to the case in an email dated March 24 that while people with knowledge of the outcome of an investigation are “able to speak freely about the case, they must do so accurately and not cross any lines into harassment, retaliation, or emotional misconduct, which may open additional SafeSport investigations.”
Against this backdrop, which can seem to serve as a bit of a muzzle on findings of misconduct from getting into the public domain, I’ve been able to speak with parents of victims named in the case, and obtain emails detailing the efforts of a wider group of parents to have their concerns addressed at the local level before things escalated to the investigation by the SafeSport body.
I want to note here that I reached out last week to both the Piedmont Family YMCA and to UVA Athletics, to request an interview with Gary Taylor, with Jessica Taylor, the CEO at the Piedmont Family YMCA, who is also the wife of Gary Taylor, with Todd DeSorbo, and with Carla Williams, the athletics director at UVA, to discuss the SafeSport investigatory findings.
Included in the requests to both entities was an outline of what we were about to report – generally, Taylor’s admission of guilt to all claims that the U.S. Center for SafeSport determined violated SafeSport Code, and specifically that Taylor admitted to emotional misconduct while coaching swimmers at NC State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics.
An athletics department spokesperson wrote back to say that UVA Athletics would “respectfully decline” the interview requests and the opportunity to comment.
Jessica Taylor did not respond to the request that I made of her.
All were given a chance to talk with me or to offer comment.
The lack of response from UVA Athletics and from the Piedmont Family YMCA would seem to concede the veracity of what you’re about to read.
***
Taylor was named the head coach of Cavalier Aquatics in 2021, four months after he left the head-coaching job at Auburn – that conscious uncoupling was described at the time as the two having “mutually agreed to part ways.”
Taylor came on board with the enthusiastic backing of Todd DeSorbo, who had worked with Taylor at NC State, where DeSorbo was an assistant from 2011-2017, and Taylor was an assistant from 2012-2018.
“I’m excited that Gary has chosen to take over the helm of Cavalier Aquatics,” DeSorbo wrote in a note included in an Aug. 26, 2021, email to Cavalier Aquatics parents announcing the hiring of Taylor. “I’ve known Gary for over 10 years, as a peer, a competitor, and a friend. While working together at NC State previously, I was able to witness firsthand his dedication to the sport, the cause, and his athletes.”
DeSorbo, it should be noted, is also listed as being on the staff at Cavalier Aquatics, with the title Director of High Performance.
DeSorbo’s wife, Lauren Suggs, meanwhile, is a member of the board of directors at the Piedmont Family YMCA.
To reset: Todd DeSorbo was instrumental in bringing Gary Taylor to Charlottesville, DeSorbo’s wife is a member of the board of the Piedmont Family YMCA, the non-profit that oversees Cavalier Aquatics, and Taylor went on to marry the CEO of the Piedmont Family YMCA after settling in Charlottesville.
That background is important to note because complaints from parents about abusive behavior from Taylor toward young competitive swimmers on the Cavalier Aquatics team surfaced soon after Taylor took the job, and from what I’ve been told by several parents, their concerns were never addressed by YMCA leaders.
As the complaints mounted, and the attempts to get leadership at the Piedmont Family YMCA, and DeSorbo, to intervene, began to surface, the program started losing swimmers in droves – parents of swimmers in the senior group coached by Taylor kept track of departing swimmers, and identified 31 swimmers out of 62 in that group who left the team during Taylor’s first year on the job.
One swim parent, searching for answers, reached out to swimmers at Auburn who had been on the team during Taylor’s years there to try to find out if there had been similar issues with him ahead of his departure.
It was this interaction that would be the seed toward the launch of the SafeSport investigation into Gary Taylor.
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“The way that you speak to some of your swimmers is extremely degrading. … I feel like you feel the need to treat me like I am a child, which is something I am not,” one long-time member of the Cavalier Aquatics swim program wrote in a text to Taylor to tell him that she was quitting the team.
“Basically telling us that we weren’t good enough is unacceptable. It seems like you have no concern for your swimmers’ lives and assume that swimming is their highest priority, which for some of them, it might be. I think you fail to realize that your swimmers have lives outside of club swimming,” the young swimmer wrote.
There were multiple efforts made by parents to get leaders at the YMCA to address the issues with Taylor.
One parent, on June 6, 2022, requested a “confidential meeting” with Bob Bremer, a principal with The Bremer Consulting Group and the former associate dean for management and finance at the University of Virginia School of Engineering, who, in June 2022, was the chair of the board of the Piedmont Family YMCA.
In the email request, the parent noted to Bremer the desire to meet confidentially because “those before me who have spoken with Y staff have gotten nowhere,” and the parent feared that additional meetings with staff “would be counterproductive and result in retaliation.”
The parent later presented Bremer an unsigned letter detailing concerns from a group of parents that highlighted the issues with emotional abuse, which Bremer then forwarded to Jessica Taylor, then known as Jessica Maslaney, who, in a July 15, 2022, email back to the parent, dismissed the “credibility” of the letter.
“There are several claims raised in the letter without specific facts or examples,” Maslaney/Taylor wrote in an email back to the parent. “If facts and examples exist to substantiate any claim in the letter, then we encourage the author to come forward and share them with us. Otherwise, those claims are not something we will or can investigate.”
Maslaney/Taylor went on to issue what appears to be at the least a veiled threat to the parent in the reply email.
“There are a number of statements in the letter that are false and represent accusations that could be damaging to personal and professional careers and reputations. We will take all appropriate actions to support any YMCA Employee who is inappropriately and unfairly maligned or disrespected, regardless of the forum,” Maslaney/Taylor wrote, later concluding her reply:
“What started as a disappointment in a group placement has escalated into unsubstantiated and damaging accusations against our staff, violates our Parent Code of Conduct and will not continue to be tolerated.”
***
At this point, one of the YMCA swim parents made the reach-out to Taylor’s former swimmers at Auburn, on the hunch that the abusive behavior that parents were witnessing from the coach in Charlottesville didn’t begin out of the blue when he moved north.
After that initial contact, Taylor’s former Auburn swimmers began to communicate with each other, with some expressing surprise that Taylor had landed another coaching job after his departure from Auburn.
The group there would eventually share with parents in Charlottesville and later with SafeSport statements detailing the emotional abuse that they had endured during their time swimming under Taylor at Auburn.
I was given access to a document in which the Auburn swimmers had highlighted the abuse they had endured.
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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.”
“Gary has also mentioned on a number of occasions that he prides himself on being able to make girls cry very easily,” the swimmer wrote.
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One 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.”
“I don’t think that a lot of girls would be able to overcome some of the things that he said to me,” the swimmer wrote. “I think that he will continue to tear people down again and again, all from things that he has made up in his head. I wish I could count on two hands the amount of people that have told me that Gary has made them feel so small and worthless. He will continue to tarnish athletes’ confidence until change happens.”
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An example of “tarnishing athletes’ confidence” would come from another swimmer, who wrote about an assistant coach under Taylor who came to practice with a children’s book called The Pout Pout Fish, which tells the story of a gloomy fish who believes his destiny is to spread dreariness, and transforms into the “Kiss-Kiss Fish” and dedicates himself to spreading happiness instead.
The assistant, the swimmer wrote, said he would start giving it out at the end of the week “to the person with the worst attitude.”
“I unfortunately got the book,” the swimmer wrote. “I don’t know if it does much giving a 20-year-old a children’s book about attitudes, but it certainly made me angry and questioned the coach’s ability to lead and teach.”
“They truly only care about swimming, not even the swimmer, but solely their performance, and it’s ruining people from the inside out,” the swimmer wrote, going on to relate that she had been diagnosed with ADHD, seasonal depression and anxiety caused by the stress that she had endured from Taylor and his staff.
“I never in a million years would’ve thought I’d be having to decide if I wanted to take anti-depressants or question if I wanted to continue doing the sport I love,” the swimmer wrote.
“I’ve been scared, I’ve had numerous anxiety attacks and days where I just lay in bed and cry thinking about how much different I thought my college swimming experience should be. But enough is enough, and I’m done being scared of him and being scared to express my emotions.”
***
Another swimmer who had been recruited by Taylor’s predecessor, Brett Hawke, described being bullied by Taylor to quit the team, but persisting because of her commitment to the Auburn swim program, and to her teammates.
“I entered Auburn with a deep love and passion for swimming, and I could not wait to represent Auburn. After swimming for Gary for two years, I dreamed of my final practice, final race, and most importantly final interaction with Gary,” the swimmer wrote.
“He killed my love for the sport. Getting to go to practice and see my teammates used to be the highlight of my day, but having to go interact with Gary made me absolutely dread going to practice every day. I got to the point that I had to go see a therapist every week or two just to be able to mentally survive week to week.”
***
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.
In a team meeting, she wrote, Taylor used the comment to make a point to his swimmers “about how we do not deserve to say or be a part of Auburn’s legacy because we did not have the winning record or accomplishments they did.”
“At one point, he made me stand up in front of everyone and made an example out of me as to why we shouldn’t say the word ‘legacy’ in that connotation,” she wrote. “He embarrassed me so much, taken this was the first time he said anything to me in person. After that meeting, he made comments and gestures to the original conversation we had multiple times the rest of the year, and again multiple times my sophomore year.
“I felt like an absolute fool for telling him how I felt in that moment, and looking back I would have never said that in the first place had I known I would be paying the repercussions for it a year and two years after.
“Looking back, this was the beginning of an exhausting reality that I would participate in with the coaches: that of an unsafe, untrustworthy, toxic environment of poor communication,” the swimmer wrote.
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A captain of one of Taylor’s teams at Auburn wrote that she would come to regret accepting that leadership role because of the approach that Taylor took to berating and ridiculing captains in meetings.
“’I do not matter, I am such a failure, I am messing up everyone’s season, It would be better for everyone if I just left.’ These were my thoughts walking out of his office,” the swimmer wrote. “I would sit in my car in the colosseum parking lot and cry, praying no one I knew would walk by. Sometimes I wouldn’t even make it out of the elevator before the tears started.
“All I am going to say is, good thing you can’t see crying underneath the goggles that we wear,” the swimmer wrote.
***
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?”
“That comment forced me to see the sports psych more often and to have a one-on-one with Gary with another coach monitoring our conversation. The meeting went poorly, and our relationship was very toxic,” the swimmer wrote, detailing later in her testimonial that she “ended up becoming clinically depressed and became a harm to myself.”
When she told Taylor about her mental health struggles, he assigned her to another group “and repeated the fact that he had given up on me and doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“I feel like an outcast, unwanted, a failure, and a constant reminder to him of his failure,” the swimmer wrote. “My main fear in telling him about my mental health struggles was the treatment and stigma that comes with it, which he promised he wouldn’t judge. Instead, his decision for not trusting me or considering me for captain was my mental instability and my depression I expressed the year I swam with him. He holds my struggle over my head and makes me feel like an unwanted monster.
“Gary’s inflexibility, ego, sexism and overall inappropriate comments have been super harmful towards me,” the swimmer wrote. “I am a huge believer that college sports are a business, and I was always prepared to have a difficult boss. I was never prepared to be harassed and mistreated in this way.”
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The SafeSport investigation into Gary Taylor was already under way when UVA Athletics announced on May 28, 2024, that Taylor had been named associate head coach for the UVA Swimming program.
ICYMI
As had been the case when Taylor was hired to head up Cavalier Aquatics, Todd DeSorbo offered up a glowing quote for the press release from the athletics department.
“I have known Gary for over 10 years and worked alongside him for five years while we were both at NC State,” DeSorbo said. “He’s a fantastic coach with great vision, but an even better person and friend. I’ve been fortunate to also work alongside him the past three years as he’s led our local Club Cavalier Aquatics to new heights and many successes.
“He’s coached athletes to the Olympics, World Championships, he’s coached NCAA champions, and he’s also coached 9- and 10-year-old age group swimmers. He knows how to push athletes to be their best and how to relate and make the sport fun at all levels. I’m excited to have him joining our staff and looking forward to our program continuing to advance with the addition of Gary.”
Taylor had this to say in the press release:
“I am honored to have this coaching opportunity with UVA swimming and diving,” Taylor said. “Todd and his staff have done phenomenal work in setting a culture of high expectations and performances both in and out of the pool. UVA Swimming and Diving has a long, illustrious history and during his time in Charlottesville, Coach DeSorbo has set a standard measured in NCAA and Olympic successes. I am extremely excited to work alongside Todd again and look forward to a bright future.”
A Cavaliers Aquatics swim parent reached out to Carla Williams, the athletics director at UVA, the next day, on May 29, 2024, “to give you a heads up that you should start preparing for some blowback,” with mention of the ongoing investigation that the parent wrote “may result in a temporary or complete suspension from coaching in the sport.”
“Taylor has been sheltered at the YMCA because his new wife is its CEO, and his good friend is Todd DeSorbo, whom I respect, but believe he is blinded by friendship. I fear that Taylor’s reputation and behavior will become a blemish on UVA’s swimming successes,” the parent wrote in the May 29, 2024, email to Williams, which concluded: “You should start preparing a response as to why such a coach was hired and whether he will be retained, given his anticipated suspension.”
The parent reached out to Williams again on Sept. 30, 2024, with an update on the progress of the investigation, concluding with a line that “UVA should anticipate having one of its coaches sanctioned for misconduct – not a good look for the team or university.”
Williams replied to that email with a “(t)hanks for the update,” and a note that “with all related correspondence, we will forward your communication to the University’s Office of the General Counsel.”
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The March 17 Notice of Decision focuses on complaints made against Taylor during his time at NC State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics, which is to say, there were no findings against him in that Notice of Decision related to members of the UVA Swimming program, where Taylor would be wrapping up his first full academic sports year as a coach.
Because of the secrecy that seems to be inherent with the SafeSport investigatory process, I have not been able to ascertain the details of how the two-year probation might affect Taylor’s ability to continue coaching, and any repercussions for any additional findings against him.
From what I’ve learned from doing background work on this story, it seems that Taylor is still coaching with both Cavalier Aquatics and UVA Athletics.
UVA Athletics, coincidentally, is coming off a big long weekend at the 2025 Toyota National Championships, with eight members of the UVA Swimming team earning invites to the 2025 World Championships, and another seven securing berths on the U.S. team that will compete in the 2025 World University Games.
ICYMI
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Chris Graham
