- March 20, 2025
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How do you fix a directionless basketball program with a long history of losing?
You hire the coach who beat you every time he faced you.
BJ Ivey knew he had his work cut out for him when he accepted the position of head coach of the Sarasota High boys basketball team ahead of the 2022-23 season.
A former Riverview High boys basketball player and coach, Ivey’s Rams routinely routed the Sailors year after year as they dominated Sarasota-area basketball.
Now, Ivey has Sarasota (27-2) one win away from advancing to the state semifinals for the first time since 1968.
“I would say that it’s very affirming that the process works,” Ivey said. “I always looked at it like we had a lot of success at Riverview. It was something like 37 wins in a row over Sarasota, something silly. So I thought to myself, ‘Well, OK, If you can turn this around, then obviously what you believe in and what you preach on a daily basis truly works.’”
It’s hard to argue the Sailors have ever played a better stretch of basketball than they have the past three years under Ivey, and likely would have never happened if not for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ivey parlayed his success at Riverview — a 173-53 record and six district championships over 10 years — into becoming the Director of Basketball Operations with Florida Gulf Coast University in June of 2019.
However, when the pandemic shut down the final few months of the 2019-20 season, Ivey was faced with a suddenly uncertain future.
“They started furloughing people and salaries were reduced,” Ivey said. “The guy below me had his spot terminated. They canceled all the camps and everything that summer. I have a wife and two kids. I needed to have a full-time job.”
Ivey made his return to high school basketball at Out-of-Door Academy, and compiled a 12-26 record in two seasons before joining the Sailors.
Sarasota went 5-20 in the 2021-22 season prior to Ivey’s arrival and hadn’t had a winning season in eight years.
Those losing ways changed in Year 1 of the Ivey Era as Sarasota went 21-6.
That immediate turnaround was no accident, and it required buy-in from Sailors players who weren’t used to being held accountable.
“He always tells us, ‘Winning isn’t easy, and it’s not for everyone,’ so we had to adjust to that,” said senior forward Harris Hawke, who added that even showing up a couple of minutes late to practice has meant extra running and push-ups. “The original group my sophomore year, the first year coach (Ivey was here) hadn’t been used to anything like that.”
Ivey brought a winning mentality and culture with him to Sarasota, and with that also came the addition of talented players and diehard assistant coaches.
Brian Drechsler played for the Sarasota boys basketball team from 1998-2002 during a time when the Sailors ‘weren’t very good’ and said the difference in the culture is night-and-day.
The former Sailor said he joined the dark side when he joined the Riverview coaching staff when Ivey was hired as the Rams head coach in 2009.
Drechsler’s coaching career likely would have ended when Ivey left Riverview for FGCU, he said, but Ivey’s return to the high school basketball scene was too hard to resist.
“We’ve never had this kind of success, so it’s really changed the culture of what people believe about Sarasota High,” Drechsler said. “It used to be, well, if you can’t play at Riverview or somewhere else, you come to Sarasota. Now, it’s the opposite. If you’re the best player, you want to come to Sarasota because you want to be coached by the best.”
Drechsler has been by Ivey’s side through his entire high school boys basketball career, but he’s far from the only person to join a program because of him.
Oliver Boyle spent his freshman year at Riverview, but jumped at the chance to transfer to Sarasota when he heard that Ivey had been hired.
Now a senior, Boyle isn’t someone who has shied away from putting in extra work. He said he shows up to the gym before school every day at 6 a.m., and Ivey has always been there to open the doors.
“You can see how much he loves the game and the hard work he puts into this,” Boyle said. “I’ve never met someone with his level of work ethic. He’s willing to give up his time to other players and willing to get extra workouts in with players so they can be the best version of themselves. He’s very selfless.”
Ivey has turned the Sailors from a perennial bottom-feeder into a team that has gone 51-5 over the past two seasons.
His players credit that success to the relationships they’ve built.
The team has done team-building exercises together, shared meals and had some fun, like going out to Pop Stroke.
One of the most impactful ways they’ve grown closer happened earlier this season.
“We’ll just go around and we start to get really honest with each other,” Boyle said. “We sat down in a circle earlier this year and we told each other how much the season meant to us. How much what’s happened in the past meant to us and how important it was for us to meet our goals and live up to our standards.
“A lot of this has just been getting vulnerable. The more vulnerable you are, the easier you are to trust.”
The Sailors will have to lean on the relationships they’ve built with each other in the coming days — and possibly weeks.
Sarasota (Ranked No. 32 overall in FL) will continue its playoff push with a trip to Kissimmee Osceola to face the top-seeded Kowboys (25-3), who are ranked No. 20 overall in the state by the Florida High School Athletic Association.
Win that game, and Sarasota would be two wins away from capturing the first state championship in program history.
“I grew up in this area,” Ivey said. “I feel like it’s a special place, a special school district, and it’s just a blessing to have an opportunity to pour into these kids.”
