- January 22, 2025
-
-
Loading
Loading
Sarasota High boys varsity basketball Head Coach BJ Ivey is an artist. Not in the literal sense — Ivey is the Athletic Director at Sarasota High, not the art teacher — but in the basketball sense.
Everything at the Sailors practice on Dec. 3 is color coded, from the jerseys the players wear — orange for much of the starting lineup and black for the rest of the team — to the practice schedule, timed out with militaristic efficiency, to the effort level of his players.
While orange and black might be Sarasota High’s colors, green, gray and red are the colors that matter most in Ivey’s gym.
These colors indicate a player’s intensity level — green is for a player that exceeds the expectations of the team’s five standards, gray is for the players that meet the bare minimum of what Ivey expects from his team and red signifies a glaring issue in the player’s behavior. Prior to the practice, 11 members of the team voted that three players were green 90% of the time. The trick, Ivey said, is turning every gray player into a green one.
“The guys come up with what they feel our green standards are and we hold them accountable to that all year,” said Ivey. “The standards should help us accomplish our goals that we’ve set. This season, our five standards are EGBS, or having energy generating behaviors, staying positive with one another, being diligent in our work every day, holding each other accountable for our actions and being selfless as teammates.”
So far, Ivey’s system of standards has worked. In 2022, his first year with the team, Ivey led the Sailors to a 21-6 record before losing the Class 7A-District 12 title game 52-49 to Riverview. Last season, Sarasota ran the table, posting a 24-3 record en route to a dominant 63-36 victory over North Port in the district championship game. As of Dec. 8, Sarasota has a 5-1 record, with its only loss to IMG Academy on Nov. 19.
This year, Ivey’s team looks a little different in its quest for back-to-back district titles. Gone are several of the key seniors that made the Sailors' run possible. Franklin Liriano, who led Sarasota in assists per game with 3.2 and was third in points per game at 10.3, has graduated. 6-foot-3 forward Michael Drayton, who averaged 12.9 points per game, good for second on the team, has moved on and 6-foot-6 Danny Munn, the team’s second-leading rebounding at 3.8 per game, is also gone.
Despite the departure of his key seniors, Ivey believes in the strengths of his team.
“I think that our culture is really close to what we had last year, but I’d say that this season our guys’ skill sets complement each other a little more than last year,” said Ivey. “Last year I felt like we had a couple of guys that were really good at a certain style that not everyone else was good at. There was a little more to be done in finding that balance between styles whereas this year it seems like everybody’s natural way of playing meshes together.”
Stepping into larger roles this season for Sarasota are sophomore guard Johnny Lackaff and senior forward Oliver Boyle. Lackaff, who led the team in scoring last season with 13.0 points per game, remains the focal point of the Sailors offense.
His growth – Lackaff put on roughly 10 pounds of muscle in the offense to jump from 165 to 175 lbs – has been more than just a physical maturation, said Ivey.
“He’s matured a lot as a leader and in understanding how to lead,” said Ivey. “Last season, he did a great job of leading by example — he’s in the gym every morning at 6 a.m. working his tail off. Everybody knows how hard he works. This year, he’s doing a much better job of being an encourager and also an enforcer, holding his teammates accountable when he needs to.”
Boyle, who led the Sailors in rebounds per game last season with 6.7, is a tenacious 6-foot-3 small forward who transferred to Sarasota from Riverview as a sophomore, the same year Ivey took over as head coach.
Now in his third year with the program, Boyle’s experience has allowed him to function as a coach on the court, he said. While knocking down shots with his mid-range jump shot is important, his ability to rebound and get his other teammates involved is tantamount to the team’s success. It’s a style of play that is resemblant of Sarasota’s team-first attitude.
“We really try to instill the values of you have to be a star in your role,” said Boyle. “No matter if you’re a practice player or a starter, your role is just as important as the guy next to you. Without you, this team isn’t complete.”
Every practice at Sarasota ends with the same ritual: sugar and hot sauce. The players gather around in a circle at center court and hold one another accountable. It starts off sweet — members of the team tell each other what the others did well — Lackaff praises transfer junior forward David Young for his rebounding, before it turns spicy.
Boyle tells a teammate to increase his effort on the pick and roll. None of it is personal, the teammates embrace afterwards, but all of it is integral to the team’s success. Last season, Boyle said, the team readily gave out sugar, but struggled to dish out the hot sauce. This year, that’s far from the case.
“We were scared of conflict,” said Boyle. “We understand that to be the team we want to be, we have to have uncomfortable conversations. We have to have conflict and if we can make it through that, we’re going to be stronger for it.”
