“In 2021, SafeSport received three complaints from Cavalier Aquatics Families. These complaints were investigated by the YMCA, and then independent of the YMCA by SafeSport. In each of these cases, we found no wrongdoing, and SafeSport dismissed the complaints. Throughout any SafeSport investigation, SafeSport requires confidentiality from all parties (including the YMCA). To respect this process, the YMCA did not release the full details of the complaints to the team.”
The email was signed by Chris Carr, the chief operating officer of the Piedmont Family YMCA, the parent organization of Cavalier Aquatics.
The email does not address the Y’s silence on complaints brought against Taylor in 2022 that were included in his admission in the emotional-misconduct case.
A Notice of Decision from SafeSport dated March 17 included Taylor’s admission to emotional misconduct of athletes at NC State, where he had served as an assistant coach from 2012-2018, at Auburn, where he was the head swim coach from 2018-2021, and at Cavalier Aquatics, where he was hired as the head coach in 2021.
ICYMI
The full time frame for the admitted emotional misconduct was 2015-2022, so, encompassing at least a year of his tenure at Cav Aquatics.
With that as the background, I’m not sure the Y, by bringing up three additional complaints that were brought in his first few months on the job and then apparently dismissed, is actually helping itself out here.
The email under Carr’s signature acknowledges that there had been issues raised with Taylor early in his tenure, ahead of the complaints lodged against him later that ended up being included in the Notice of Decision from SafeSport.
As these issues were initially being raised, the swim team was 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 – and the administration at the YMCA, led by CEO Jessica Maslaney, who married Gary Taylor in 2023 and is now known as Jessica Taylor, dismissed the concerns of parents as lacking “credibility.”
The “credibility” issue appears to have been addressed by the Y with the quiet removal of Taylor’s bio from the Cav Aquatics website shortly after the publication of our first report on the two-year probation on June 9, and a subsequent email under Carr’s signature distancing the swim program from Taylor, noting that Taylor “has been primarily at UVA for the last year,” a reference to Taylor being hired to the position of associate head coach for the UVA Swimming program in 2024.
ICYMI
- Piedmont Family YMCA addresses status of embattled swim coach Gary Taylor
- Piedmont Family YMCA board member steps down: Related to swim coach probation?
That’s why I’m struggling to make sense of this week’s email update from Carr.
The Y had already moved on from Taylor, but now it appears that they’re picking another fight, when the focus should be on making amends.
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Chris Graham
