Nearly 50 former lacrosse players, coaches and parents have signed a letter defending Kathy Taylor, the former Colgate University women’s lacrosse coach at the center of a civil lawsuit alleging abuse and institutional failure, sharply criticizing The Colgate Maroon-News’s coverage and arguing that Taylor’s treatment of players has been mischaracterized. The letter was not submitted by the signatories themselves. It arrived via Gail Gitcho, a crisis communications professional, who sent it to the Maroon-News on their behalf and requested it be published in full.

The Maroon-News declined to publish the letter as submitted, offering instead to run it as a news story with full attribution and substantial excerpts, or in the Letters to the Editor section with a contextualizing editor’s note. Gitcho did not respond to that offer. This article is the result of the first option.

The letter, titled “We Played for Coach Taylor. Here’s What the Maroon-News Didn’t Tell You,” arrived one week after the Maroon-News reported on a lawsuit in February, filed by former Colgate goalkeeper Amelia Cunningham ’24. Cunningham alleged that Taylor forced her to practice through serious injuries, subjected her to verbal and emotional abuse, questioned her about her sexuality and that Colgate repeatedly failed to act despite warnings. Since the Maroon-News published that initial story, the case has escalated significantly. Colgate filed a motion to dismiss all nine counts of the complaint, attached Cunningham’s suicide note and medical records to its public court filings without prior notice and a federal judge has temporarily sealed those documents while the motion to dismiss is pending. Cunningham’s legal team filed an amended complaint on March 13. 

In her cover email, Gitcho described the signatories as “fifty former players who played for Coach Kathy Taylor across four programs and three decades,” adding that “the signatories include U.S. military officers, Division I coaches, corporate executives, educators, and medical professionals.” 

Gitcho leveled a series of criticisms at the original article, arguing it failed to include the fact that Colgate’s 2022 investigation cleared Taylor, failed to note that Taylor was not a named defendant in the lawsuit and “failed to seek or include the perspective of a single one of the fifty former players, coaches and parents who have now come forward.”

Reporting that the University investigated and retained Taylor was included in the original article, and an institution reaching a certain conclusion in an internal investigation does not preclude civil litigation or render allegations unfounded. The Maroon-News had reached out to multiple players before publication, none of whom agreed to speak on the record.  

The letter’s 47 signatories included former players from Taylor’s tenures at Fayetteville-Manlius High School, SUNY Cortland, Le Moyne College and Colgate; three parents of Colgate players; and Jessica Becker, who served as Taylor’s associate head coach at Colgate and is referenced in Cunningham’s lawsuit. The majority of signatures came from players who knew Taylor before she arrived at Colgate. Absent were current Colgate lacrosse players and any players from Cunningham’s recruiting class. According to both the lawsuit and previous Maroon-News reporting, eight of the nine players in Cunningham’s class left the team before graduating.

Central to the letter’s argument was Colgate’s 2022 internal investigation, which the signatories say “cleared” Taylor after more than 30 interviews conducted over five months. 

“Universities facing credible abuse allegations do not offer contract extensions,” the letter read, referring to what it described as Colgate’s attempt to extend Taylor’s contract following the investigation’s conclusion.

The investigation, conducted by independent investigator Ryan Thompson, found no violation of University policy. However, Colgate simultaneously announced adjustments to the women’s lacrosse program’s leadership and support structure, and offered any player the option to leave while retaining their athletic scholarship — an offer ten players accepted, according to Cunningham’s complaint. Taylor did not leave her position until May 2024, more than a year and a half after Cunningham’s alleged suicide attempt.

The letter pushed back directly on Cunningham’s allegation that Taylor pressured injured players to practice. Several signatories described their own injury experiences under Taylor as evidence to the contrary. Olivia Lynch, identified in the letter as the sole senior captain at Colgate during the period in question, was described as having experienced shin splints, an ACL tear and tendonitis — and as having been pulled from activity each time by Taylor, who “prioritized her recovery.”

At Le Moyne, Julia Sardella was described as having suffered a season-ending injury and found Taylor’s response “deeply empathetic.” Nicole Delany Brown recalled Taylor personally driving her to urgent care before a national championship game.

The letter also took aim at what it describes as an internal contradiction in Cunningham’s complaint.

“The article noted that Cunningham won Patriot League Rookie of the Year during the very season she claims her wrist was so damaged it ended her surgical aspirations,” the letter read. “That contradiction deserves scrutiny.”

The letter contested the Maroon-News’s reporting that more than 20 players left the team during Taylor’s tenure, arguing that the statistic was “presented without essential context.” 

It attributed departures to the University’s post-investigation offer allowing players to leave while keeping their scholarships, as well as to transfers, graduation, playing time decisions and “the challenge of adjusting to a new coach’s higher standards.” The letter added that over a five-year tenure that included a global pandemic, that level of turnover “is not unusual. It is normal.”

Cunningham’s lawsuit alleged that Taylor interrogated her about her sexuality and asserted that a relationship between two teammates “would be bad for the team,” forming the basis of Cunningham’s Title IX claim. The letter directly disputed that Taylor harbored any bias on that basis. Signatory Jackie Pardee, described as a two-year captain at Le Moyne and senior captain during the 2018 national championship season, is quoted as saying Taylor “fully supported her as she came out as queer to her team.”

The letter also stated that “it is documented in emails that Coach Taylor proactively requested additional counseling resources for her team months before any crisis occurred” — an apparent reference to the events of Fall 2022 — though the letter does not provide or describe those emails in detail. Madison Pritchard Killen, who the letter said struggled with her mental health before joining Taylor’s program, is quoted as saying Taylor “opened her team and her heart to me when I needed it most.”

In terms of the broader argument of the lawsuit, the letter did not dispute that playing for Taylor was demanding.

“Was playing for Coach Taylor hard? Yes,” the letter read. “She demanded early mornings, relentless conditioning, and accountability to standards that some players found uncomfortable. That is Division I athletics.” 

U.S. Army Major Jordan Miller was quoted as distinguishing “toxic leadership and demanding leadership,” calling Taylor “the gold standard of the latter.”

Carolin Guentert, a partner at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight who co-chairs the firm’s Sexual Violence, Title IX and Victims’ Rights practice group, is representing Cunningham. Guentert noted that Taylor’s decision to be associated with the letter carries its own implications for the litigation.

“Coach Taylor is not a defendant in the lawsuit,” Guentert said. “Of course, my client is making factual claims about her, and we fully expect that she’ll be deposed — she’s a witness. Now that there is this letter out there, that will absolutely be a subject of what we depose her on, if we get the opportunity to do so.”

Guentert acknowledged the letter’s signatories directly, but was careful to distinguish their experiences from those of her client.

“I’m glad that not every student who has played with her has had the experiences that my client did,” Guentert said. “That does not invalidate the experiences of my client.”

After Gitcho did not respond to the Maroon-News’s final email, Lynch wrote separately on the same correspondence chain to press the case for publishing the letter in full. Her email introduced a specific factual dispute worth examining.

Lynch took issue with a statistic in the Maroon-News’s original article — drawn directly from paragraph 39 of Cunningham’s complaint — stating that ten players, approximately one-third of the team, quit within two weeks of the start of Taylor’s first fall season in 2019.

“I was shocked to read such an assertion, which was clearly uncorroborated,” Lynch wrote. “I was there that first year and played for Coach Taylor for three years during the period described as marked by ‘abuse.’ I can count on one hand the number of players who left during that first month, and I vividly remember each of their reasons.”

Guentert also addressed Lynch’s counterclaims regarding the initial December 2025 complaint.  

“The allegations in the complaint are based on my client’s best understanding of the situation, and that includes conversations with former players, her personal experience and observations,” Guentert said. 

Guentert added that exact attrition figures — year by year, before and during Taylor’s tenure — are among the records her team will seek if the case moves to discovery.

Lynch also accused The Maroon-News of relying on New York Post reporting — a claim the editors addressed directly, clarifying that the article was based entirely on the 49-page legal complaint filed in New York County Supreme Court, not on any secondary coverage.

“We did not work with New York Post reporting in any capacity,” The Maroon-News editors wrote back.

The Maroon-News invited Lynch to speak on the record for a follow-up story, but Lynch did not respond.

Lynch’s email also included links to several websites and media placements supporting Taylor, including an OK Magazine piece, a podcast appearance, a dedicated Taylor website featuring player testimonials and multiple articles appearing to draw on similar sourcing. The Maroon-News is continuing to assess the scope of that effort.

The letter and the correspondence surrounding it swirl as the lawsuit itself is at a critical juncture. Colgate has filed a motion to dismiss all nine counts of Cunningham’s complaint. Cunningham’s legal team filed an amended complaint on March 13, and Colgate now has an opportunity to refile its answer and motion before the judge rules. Separately, the judge has temporarily sealed Cunningham’s suicide note and medical records, which Colgate had attached to its public court filings without prior notice. The fate of those documents will be decided alongside the motion to dismiss.