Sirena Rowe, a professional swimmer who is a 2021 alum of NC State, where she overlapped with Gary Taylor, now an assistant at UVA Swimming, for one year, isn’t a fan of the UVA Swim program’s move to post a campy snap of Taylor on its socials this past weekend in the midst of the controversy over Taylor’s two-year probation for admitted emotional misconduct.
So, Rowe posted a comment on the UVA Swimming page on Instagram to share her feelings on the decision to post the photo.
ICYMI
“(V)ery weird to have a coach on probation on deck, no?” Rowe wrote, tagging SwimSwam, the influential competitive swimming publication, in the post.
The comment was “very swiftly deleted by the @uvaswimdive account (and they also immediately blocked me),” Rowe wrote to me by email on Thursday, noting that a friend posted a similar comment on the photo, “but her comment was deleted, and she was blocked as well.”
Rowe posted about this on her socials, tagging SwimSwam, UVA Athletics and the ACC, hoping somebody would think it newsworthy that somebody at UVA Swimming is going out of his or her way to silence critics.
No takers, so she emailed me.
“This is a blatant disregard for the damage he has done and quite frankly an insult to the athletes he has hurt, demonstrating a severe lack of seriousness and professionalism on their behalf,” Rowe wrote to me.
“Gary may be the only sanctioned abuser there, but clearly he is surrounded by a network of colleagues who permit and enable his harmful behavior,” Rowe wrote.
From the Archives
- Cav Aquatics, UVA Swimming coach Gary Taylor on probation after admitting to emotional abuse of athletes
- UVA Swimming, Piedmont Family YMCA, local media silent on Gary Taylor story
- Piedmont Family YMCA addresses status of embattled swim coach Gary Taylor
- D1 swimmer: ‘It was hard for me to go to practice every day and face Gary Taylor’
It’s hard to dispute her on that.
I wrote earlier this week that it seemed to me that UVA Swimming was going out of its way to troll us on our reporting on the Taylor case, which saw him admit to emotional misconduct involving swimmers at NC State, Auburn and Cavalier Aquatics, the Piedmont Family YMCA swim team.
The snaps, posted to Instagram and to Facebook, had Taylor poolside smiling alongside two-time Olympic gold medalist Gretchen Walsh.
As I wrote on Monday, how’s that for a flex – an endorsement on the socials from the Olympian?
Rowe, an All-American at NC State who swims internationally for Colombia, made it clear to me that she has “no personal vendetta against (Taylor) or negative personal experiences with him to speak of.”
“I do feel very strongly about the protection of athletes, particularly female athletes, from abusive coaches,” Rowe said. “I wish to do whatever I can to keep those types of people from being allowed to remain in positions where they can continue hurting others. That is why I am reaching out to you, in case any of this can be of use to you in any further publications you might make regarding the situation. I believe the UVA Swimming & Diving program needs to be held accountable in their complicity to Gary’s abuse, and their insistence upon maintaining Gary’s image on their social media, along with their denial of any expression against it, needs to be addressed and brought to light.”
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Chris Graham
