She earned a D1 swimming scholarship, and will begin competing at the college level in the fall. Not because of her experience with Cavalier Aquatics and its head coach, Gary Taylor, but in spite of it.
“I first want to thank you for writing these articles. I’ve been waiting and hoping that someone would call Gary out. I was never able to make much of a statement besides telling others that the time I experienced swimming under him was horrible,” the young swimmer wrote in a lengthy email, asking me not to share her name or school, because even with her scholarship, she still fears retaliation from her former coach.
She started with Cav Aquatics as high-school freshman, and said at the beginning, it was a good experience, “but one day, it was like he flipped a switch and became a monster.”
“I would wake up every morning and physically struggle to make myself go to practice. Going to practice every morning would become some sort of sick torture. I made many friends, but even with their support, it was hard for me to go to practice every day and face Gary Taylor,” the swimmer said.
This experience is like so many that I’ve been gathering from Taylor’s former swimmers since the publication of our first article on Taylor on June 9, which reported, for the first time, that he had been placed on a two-year probation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport after admitting to emotional misconduct of swimmers at NC State, where Taylor had been an assistant coach alongside the current UVA Swim coach, Todd DeSorbo, at Auburn, where Taylor was head coach from 2018-2021, and then at Cav Aquatics.
ICYMI
The Piedmont Family YMCA, the parent organization of Cavalier Aquatics, seems to be trying to distance itself from Taylor. His name was removed from the “Meet the Coaches” page on the team’s website, and an email from the Y to swim parents that went out after our June 9 report noted that Taylor had spent much of his time in the past year at UVA Swimming, where he was named the associate head coach last spring.
Those acknowledgements were the first from the YMCA after parents had raised issue with Taylor’s coaching style for years, with officials at the Y dismissing their concerns.
On Tuesday, we reported that Lauren Suggs, the wife of UVA Swimming head coach Todd DeSorbo, had stepped down from her board position.
ICYMI
- Piedmont Family YMCA addresses status of embattled swim coach Gary Taylor
- Piedmont Family YMCA board member steps down: Related to swim coach probation?
It’s not known why Suggs stepped down from her position on the board, but the consensus from observers in the local swimming community is that the YMCA board move is not coincidental to the story of the day involving Taylor.
Also new today: one parent who brought complaints to the Y staff, which works under the direction of Jessica Taylor, the CEO of the Piedmont Family YMCA, who is also married to Gary Taylor, and also made a complaint to the U.S. Center for Safesport told me that they got a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer representing Gary Taylor threatening legal action if the complaints were to continue, and shared with me a copy of the letter.
This is why swimmers and swim parents are still afraid to speak publicly about the misconduct.
“Throughout my entire experience of working with him, I wanted to quit swimming. He took all the best parts of swimming that I loved and crushed them,” the incoming D1 freshman swimmer told me. “I would sit in meetings with him and cry, and he would just look at me with a blank face and ask, Why are being so emotional? What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting like this? He would ask all these questions after insulting my swimming and me.”
I reported last week that parents kept track of the rapid attrition from the elite group coached by Taylor at Cav Aquatics, and noted that fully half of that group – 31 of the 62 swimmers he’d inherited in the summer of 2021 – had left by the end of his first full year on the job.
Our D1 swimmer noticed the steady flow of teammates leaving the program.
“My peers would be at practice one day, and then the next day, I would never hear or see them again,” she said. “I would always ask after a week where someone went, and then get a response of, They quit. I would then ask what team they left to go swim on, but many of the people that left, quit the sport for good. It didn’t matter what grade they were in, they just quit because of their awful experience.”
Our swimmer here soldiered on, because of a coping strategy that is heartbreaking to read and then think through.
“I feel like I was traumatized so much from his emotional abuse that I ended up blocking out anything bad that happened as a trauma response,” she said.
“The experience my teammates and I went through with him will never be forgotten. Swimming under him was horrible, and I think it was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. I would never wish for anyone to experience his hatred and abuse,” the swimmer said.
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Chris Graham
