One way to deal with allegations of emotional misconduct involving a coach is what the Piedmont Family YMCA and UVA Swimming have done with Gary Taylor: pretending that nothing happened, and hoping the story goes away.
Clemson took another approach.
“The specific reasons supporting the termination decision have been discussed with you prior to issuing this notice,” Clemson senior associate athletic director Kyle Young wrote in a letter to gymnastics coach Amy Smith, who was fired in April after the school found that she had violated clauses in her contract regarding “safe and responsible treatment” of athletes, including “physical and/or emotional abuse of student-athletes” and “personal conduct.”
According to documents obtained by The State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C., from a public-records request, Clemson began its review of the gymnastics program during the 2025 season after receiving “an increased number of messages” from athletes in late fall 2024 and early spring 2025.
Multiple gymnasts and parents requested meetings with administrators in March and April, as the team, runner-up in the ACC in its inaugural season in 2024, after which Smith was named the ACC Coach of the Year, tumbled to a 5-7 finish.
After collecting end-of-season surveys from the student-athletes, administrators met with the gymnastics team on April 11 to give athletes an opportunity to “speak directly with Graham Neff,” the AD at Clemson, “directly to voice their concerns,” according to emails.
Neff moved quickly. After meeting with Neff, also on April 11, Smith’s firing would come a week later, on April 18, with an announcement to the team and to the public via a press release.
Before we heap too much praise on the athletics department for moving quickly, it needs to be noted that Neff had publicly backed Smith after a Washington Post article published on the eve of the 2024 season detailed allegations against her from gymnasts at North Carolina, where she had been an assistant from 2012-2017, and at Utah State, where she was the head coach from 2017-2022.
This kind of head-in-the-sand approach to allegations against a coach from previous jobs might sound familiar to those who have been following the story involving Gary Taylor, who is serving out a two-year probation after admitting to emotional misconduct of athletes at NC State, Auburn and the Cavalier Aquatics swim program at the Piedmont Family YMCA from 2015-2022.
ICYMI
Taylor was hired to the job of associate head coach of the UVA Swimming program in 2024 as he was being investigated by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which issued a Notice of Decision putting him on probation on March 17.
Allegations against Taylor involving emotional misconduct had been talked about publicly dating back to his departure from the head coach job at Auburn in 2021, and parents of swimmers in the Cavalier Aquatics program had brought complaints about Taylor to YMCA staff and administration within the first four months of him being on the job with the youth program, which Y officials dismissed as lacking merit.
The allegations against Smith from her previous jobs came from four former gymnasts, according to reporting by The State, who said Smith had fostered “a culture of disordered eating” and verbally berated student-athletes.
“As we do with all searches, Clemson did an extensive amount of research into Coach Smith’s background, including checking references from previous employers as well as third-party evaluators. During this process, Clemson was not made aware of formal or informal investigations of Coach Smith from her previous institutions,” Clemson Athletics said in a statement regarding the Washington Post story on abuse allegations against Smith back in 2023.
“We take student-athlete treatment seriously and have confidence in Amy’s commitment to her student-athletes, as we’ve seen firsthand during her time at Clemson. We have invested significant resources into the support systems around our student-athletes, including anonymous reporting platforms, nutrition, sports performance, sports medicine, and mental health, to help address concerns should they arise. It is our charge, in collaboration with the staff, to create an environment at Clemson where our student-athletes feel supported physically, mentally and emotionally,” the statement concluded.
Turns out, in the case of Amy Smith, where there was smoke, it was because of fire.
The reporting from The State on Smith’s dismissal included an email from a Clemson gymnastics parent who wrote to Neff after Smith had been fired thanking him for making the move.
“You may not see the results right away, but it has and will make a statement in the gymnastics community that abuse in any form is not and will not be tolerated,” the parent wrote, adding later: “We thank you and your staff for hearing our girls and taking their experience seriously. No one ever wants anyone to lose a job, but we also have hopes and expectations that people will do their jobs and do it without using any type of verbal and mental abuse.”
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Chris Graham
