Clemson fired former gymnastics coach Amy Smith in April following alleged “verbal and mental abuse,” according to a report Monday from The Post and Courier.
The South Carolina-based school reportedly cited sections on “responsible treatment of athletes,” “demonstrating concern for their welfare” and “physical and/or emotional abuse” in its termination letter.
One parent of a Clemson gymnast thanked athletic director Graham Neff for dismissing Smith on April 18 after he notified the athletes’ parents, stating in an email how it would “make a statement in the gymnastics community the abuse in any form is not and will not be tolerated.”
“No one ever wants anyone to lose a job, but we also have hopes and expectations that people will do their jobs and do it without using any type of verbal and mental abuse,” the parent wrote.
Clemson began moving toward firing Smith following an increase in messages to the school’s anonymous hotline “regarding the program’s culture and environment,” per the report.
Stephanie Ellison-Johnson, Clemson’s executive senior associate athletic director for sport administration and senior woman administrator, revealed in an April 10 email that there had been a bump in messages from the fall of 2024 to the spring of 2025, including “emotional/mental abuse within the gymnastics team.”
She called for a “deeper dive,” per the outlet, which led to a survey in January and one-on-one meetings with 15 of 20 gymnasts.
The school reportedly had a “midyear review” on Feb. 17 with Smith, Ellison-Johnson and Neff before bringing in the parents for a March discussion.
Clemson later met with Smith on April 6 regarding “team culture and environment and roster management plans” for 2025-26, before the athletics office “engaged legal counsel” for guidance and information sharing on April 9, as relayed by Ellison-Johnson and reported by the paper.
The school had an April 11 meeting set between Neff and the gymnasts before firing Smith one week later.
One parent responded to Neff’s email about the move, per the outlet: “It’s been a long, long, long, hard season and these girls have handled it and done so much with so much stress and adversity.”
Clemson hired Smith in April 2022 to lead the school’s new women’s gymnastics program despite concern from her previous head coaching stint at Utah State from 2017-22 and time at North Carolina.
Former Tar Heel Raine Gordon alleged that Smith — who served as an assistant coach at the school from 2012-13 and then became the assistant head coach from 2014-17 — body shamed her, as detailed in a 2023 report from The Washington Post.
She claimed that Smith once said she bruised a calf during a fall because she was “fat.”
The paper further reported that 10 Utah State gymnasts left Smith’s program in 2019.
Clemson told The Washington Post it did an “extensive amount of research” into Smith’s background before hiring her, and Neff praised his new coach’s culture-building skills upon bringing her into the fold.
“Amy knows college gymnastics inside and out, and has demonstrated the ability to help student-athletes achieve both in and out of the gym,” Neff said in a press release at the time. “We are attempting to build this program the right way, and Amy and our administration share a vision for how great Clemson Gymnastics can be, and that she can help create a strong culture.”