Piedmont Family YMCA board member steps down: Related to swim coach probation?

The UVA Swimming program isn’t taking the outrage over the emotional misconduct case involving associate head coach Gary Taylor seriously, but there have been repercussions at his other employer, the Piedmont Family YMCA.

Lauren Suggs, the wife of UVA Swimming head coach Todd DeSorbo, has stepped down from the board of directors at the Piedmont Family YMCA.

It’s not known why she 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.

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ICYMI

• Cav Aquatics, UVA Swimming coach Gary Taylor on probation after admitting to emotional abuse of athletes

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The Y had already acted to quietly remove Taylor’s bio from the “Meet the Coaches” page on the Cavalier Aquatics website shortly after we published our first report on Taylor’s two-year probation from the U.S. Center for SafeSport – handed down after Taylor admitted to emotional misconduct while coaching swimmers from 2015 to 2022 at North Carolina State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics, the competitive swim team at the Piedmont Family YMCA.

The first public acknowledgement of the story from the Piedmont Family YMCA came in the form of an email to Cav Aquatics families following the publication of our reported story on Taylor to address “what you’ve been reading in the news.”

The email, from the Y’s chief operating officer, Chris Carr, reported to parents that Taylor “has been primarily at UVA for the last year, continuing at the Y to mentor (c)oaches Conor Hassard and Jason Swaim through their transitions to Head Senior Coach and Head Age Group Coach.”

UVA Athletics has been mum on the story, the only apparent acknowledgement coming in the form of two posts to the Instagram and Facebook pages for UVA Swimming over the weekend featuring a photo of a smiling Taylor poolside with Olympic gold medalist UVA swimming star Gretchen Walsh.

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ICYMI

• UVA Swimming posts snaps of coach on probation to Insta, Facebook

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If the photos were an attempt to get a last word on the story involving Taylor, it didn’t work.

The Taylor story has roiled the local swimming community, which I’m told, in conversations with multiple swim parents and former swimmers from UVA Swimming, Cav Aquatics and Auburn since the publication of our first report on June 9, kept the lid on the abuses that Taylor would eventually admit to out of fear of retaliation from Taylor and from DeSorbo.

This suggests to me, as I hinted yesterday, that we’re not yet done reporting on this story.

The moves involving members of the YMCA board only reinforces that to me.