Colgate University failed to protect players from ‘abusive’ lacrosse coach, athlete claims

Colgate University did nothing to protect its women’s lacrosse players from an allegedly abusive coach who belittled them, forced them to play through injury and pushed some to attempt suicide, a former team member contends in a lawsuit.

At least 20 players left in the five years Kathy Taylor oversaw the Colgate Raiders –and three were believed to have attempted suicide, Amelia Cunningham claimed in legal papers.

Cunningham, 23, a high school lacrosse star from Rye High School who got a 50% athletic scholarship to the $87,000 a year upstate New York school in 2019, said her experience playing for Taylor ruined her dream of becoming an orthopedic surgeon.

“Colgate knew the danger that Coach Taylor posed. Over and over again, students and parents sounded the alarm,” Cunningham said in a bombshell Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

Cunningham claimed she was forced to play through numerous injuries and illness under Taylor, who allegedly “abused her student athletes and treated injuries as moral failures,” the athlete said in court papers.

When she hurt her wrist freshman year, Taylor allegedly “discouraged” Cunningham from getting surgery.

“When Ms. Cunningham finally got surgery after her freshman year, it was too late: Her injury had become too significant to fully repair,” she said in the litigation.

She now struggles with pain and numbness in her wrist, and drops things unexpectedly — dashing her dreams of becoming an orthopedic surgeon, Cunningham alleged.

Instead of proper rest and treatment when she came down with bronchitis, Taylor allegedly forced Cunningham to keep playing, until she later contracted the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes extreme fatigue and other symptoms, and post-obstructive reactive airway disease, which required an inhaler.

The Manhattan native was also later diagnosed with “major depressive disorder and trauma- and stressor-related disorder, in large part caused by stress that resulted from her experience on the lacrosse team,” she said in the lawsuit.

Cunningham, who ultimate had five surgeries for lacrosse-related injuries, attempted suicide in 2022, and survived.

Colgate conducted an “inadequate” investigation, and cleared Taylor of any wrongdoing, according to the lawsuit. The coach resigned in 2024.

The school had a responsibility to its students, said Cunningham’s attorney Carolin Guentert.

“This has had an enormous impact on her,” Guentert said. 

Colgate, whose famous alumni include filmmaker John Cassavetes and journalist Andy Rooney among others, declined comment on the litigation. Taylor could not be reached.