More players have raised concerns about the former University of Florida men’s water polo coach who was fired from UF and Gainesville High School (GHS) after a university report detailed allegations of him being “overly touchy” with UF athletes.

The new allegations, from college-age players on UF’s men’s team, say David William Huelsman, 43, drunkenly touched a sleeping player’s face, suggested a player wear tight shorts, and repeatedly pressured hugs from players on the pool deck.

In the university report made on Feb. 22, club leadership alleged Huelsman pressured athletes to share the same bed as him on away matches, causing some players to leave the team.

In a June 6 interview, he denied the initial allegations and said he was unaware of the report that characterized his behavior as sexual harassment. Huelsman, who remains banned from UF’s campus for three years, said he believed the complaint was filed by one athlete who disagreed with Huelsman over club logistics. 

He has stopped responding to inquiries from Mainstreet as new allegations have surfaced.

One player who spoke on the condition of anonymity over his fear of backlash from the water polo community discussed how Huelsman repeatedly made problematic comments about his clothing. 

In his freshman year, Player 1 wore a pair of cut-off jean shorts to a competition. He said Huelsman tried too hard to connect with him over his fashion choice. 

“I love jean shorts on you,” he said the former coach told him. 

Afterward, it became normal for Huelsman to bring up jean shorts during conversation, this player said. He said Huelsman would repeatedly propose they both wear cut-offs at games. He never requested other athletes wear cut-offs, this player said. 

This player said he began to wonder about how much Huelsman was thinking about his body. It became increasingly difficult for him to wear his Speedo—the standard uniform for water polo—around the former coach, he said.

One year after Huelsman’s initial comment, the former coach sent this player an unprompted image of himself from the waist down wearing cut-offs with the caption, “Joining?”

Player 1 didn’t voice his discomfort, he said, because he wanted to qualify for the competition team, a decision Huelsman was involved in making, according to numerous other players with intimate knowledge of team dynamics. 

“There’s a severe power dynamic where we feel uncomfortable speaking out against this guy,” Player 1 said. 

Huelsman did not respond to multiple phone calls, voicemails, text messages and emails over a seven-day period requesting to discuss his relationship with Player 1. 

Touching on an airplane

Player 2 said Huelsman touched his face while he was trying to sleep on an overnight flight returning from a competition in 2022. He spoke with Mainstreet on the condition of anonymity due to concern about hurting his job prospects. 

Player 2 said the night began when Huelsman went to a cocktail lounge in the airport with a few other players as they waited for their flight. When he returned, Player 2 said Huelsman was drunk. 

Two other players corroborated Huelsman’s state. One called him “destroyed.” 

Luke Carey, a former captain, said he drank with Huelsman. Carey, who has known Huelsman since high school, said Huelsman used his guest pass to allow Carey free entry into the lounge. Two or three other students joined them, he said. 

Carey said he and Huelsman only had one or two drinks.

“No one was drunk,” he said. 

Upon boarding the plane, Player 2 said Huelsman, who was speaking loudly, repeatedly touched players on the shoulders and poked the back of their seats while the group settled into their seats. Player 2 said it appeared Huelsman was trying to provoke reactions from each person he interacted with. 

“I think that was the worst moment,” said a player who was present on the plane. “He was blatantly touching the players without their consent in public.”

Huelsman and Player 2 sat in the aisle seats. At first, Player 2 said Huelsman was trying to get his attention by interacting with the in-flight console on his seat. Then, Huelsman began touching Player 2 on the shoulder. Exhausted from the trip and uninterested in interacting with his coach, he closed his eyes to try and sleep. 

He said he stopped reacting so Huelsman would stop bothering him, but then Huelsman touched his face. Player 2 shouted at his coach.

“The only two people that can touch my face are my mom and my girlfriend,” he yelled. “If you touch my face again, I’m going to break your hand.”

Player 2 said Huelsman muttered an apology.

The exchange was independently confirmed by two other players, but Huelsman did not respond to multiple phone calls, voicemails, text messages and emails requesting to discuss the incident. 

Carey, who drank with Huelsman that night, said he didn’t remember anything unusual about Huelsman’s behavior on the flight. 

A third player, who wished to remain anonymous due to his fear over perceived backlash from the water polo community, said Huelsman flicked his ear a few times on the flight. He said he was aware his coach had been drinking, so he excused Huelsman’s behavior as “just a slightly intoxicated person goofing off.” 

Hannah Farrell, a spokeswoman for the university’s athletic organization RecSports, declined to talk about Huelsman. 

Forcing hugs

Another player said during his last two years with the UF men’s team, Huelsman would often request hugs from players as they walked out onto the pool deck after changing into their Speedos. Player 4 spoke with Mainstreet on the condition of anonymity due to his concern over a pending employment situation. 

Player 4 said some athletes, including himself, would reject the offer and would give a handshake instead. When this happened, he said Huelsman would exaggerate his annoyance and — in a somewhat playful way — draw attention to the rejection. 

Player 1 also said Huelsman would protest if you gave him a handshake. Then his mood would change, and Player 1 said he felt uncomfortable.

The coach made such a show of things, Player 1 said, that he would usually end up giving Huelsman a hug to end the moody behavior. Player 4 said rejecting Huelsman was too uncomfortable, so he ended up hugging Huelsman even though he didn’t want to.  

Player 4 said he noticed the former coach would only hug the younger, undergraduate members of the team. He said he never saw him try to hug any of the graduate students who were in their late 20s. 

Huelsman did not respond to multiple phone calls, voicemails, text messages and emails requesting to discuss hugging athletes. 

Player 3, however, said Huelsman infrequently asked for hugs. 

While he didn’t participate in them because he wanted his relationship with his coach to stay professional, he said he couldn’t remember Huelsman pressuring athletes to participate or making a scene about rejecting hugs. 

Carey said he never remembered his coach asking for hugs.

Former player Ali Shahin, who played from 2016 to 2018, said water polo is an inherently physical sport. 

“We’ve always been touchy with each other,” he said. However, he said the physical nature of the sport does not excuse inappropriate contact. 

Shahin and Carey said they had a hard time believing the initial concerns were made to the university in good faith. 

Carey said if Huelsman was sexually harassing players, “it would be more blatantly obvious.” 

“People would have talked about it more,” he said. Then, he paused and added, “if someone’s a victim, they may not want to speak up about it or think it’s that big of a deal,” he said.

Player 4 said it was only after Huelsman retired from the UF men’s team in May 2023 that players began to talk about the coach’s behaviors.

Ten months later, the university fired Huelsman on March 7, two weeks after it filed its report documenting what it characterized as Huelsman’s sexual harassment. Documents in his personnel file said Huelsman was four days away from starting a new role as information technology director for UF’s College of Education, a position he had already accepted with a $140,000 salary.

UF declined Mainstreet requests to explain its decision to fire Huelsman, who said he was given no justification for his dismissal. Personnel records show his termination letter said he was “not in good standing” with the university.

Huelsman has not been charged with any crime, and UF Police Department declined to confirm or deny whether it was still investigating claims about him.

Huelsman is widely regarded as a key figure in establishing water polo in North Central Florida. He is the president and head coach of Gator Water Polo Inc., a non-profit that operates youth camps for scores of players between 10 and 18 years old, according to its website. 

In 2016, he founded the GHS water polo program, which he coached until earlier this month when he was fired and trespassed from UF’s campus on the same day. 

Session one of Gator Water Polo’s summer event began July 24, according to its website. Huelsman is no longer listed as a coach on the summer webpage. However, he is still considered the president and head coach of Gator Water Polo on the About page. 

Gator Water Polo generated more than $316,000 in annual revenues, according to copies of the most recent financial records publicly available, including $112,600 in athletic grants from Alachua County, between 2021 to 2023. Records show Huelsman was not paid in his role with the organization.

Editor’s note: Matthew Cupelli (mcupelli@ufl.edu) is a rising senior in the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. He reported this article under the supervision of Prof. Ted Bridis, who teaches investigative reporting in the college and runs the Fresh Take Florida news service.