OXFORD — Call it poetry, call it perfect symmetry, call it blissful happenstance. There’s something remarkable about where the biggest game of Jared Ivey’s life will take place. After all, it’s the same spot the formative moment in his football career unfolded years earlier.
Ivey, a 6-foot-5, 265-pound senior defensive end at Ole Miss, starred at North Gwinnett High School as a football and basketball player — he was first-team all-state in both in Georgia’s highest classification as a senior. North Gwinnett is in Suwanee, Georgia, about 35 miles from Mercedes-Benz Stadium. He’s played there before: while at Georgia Tech, he played in the stadium against North Carolina in 2021, and he also played there the first game his sophomore year of high school.
North Gwinnett’s defensive line coach, R.J. Luke, had previously gone to bat for Ivey to head coach Bill Stewart, as he had shown flashes in practice. Ivey previously considered quitting football; he thought the coaches didn’t like him. He entered that game and immediately made a mistake. He came in too high, allowing the opposing quarterback to cut up field. Lesson learned. He was determined to come lower the next play. This time, the quarterback broke contain and threw a first down. Ivey’s mother, Tracey, long conditioned her youngest son to seize opportunities. Follow the coaches on the sideline. You never know when your moment may come, she told him.
On a third down later, Stewart grabbed Ivey’s shoulder pads. He didn’t know if he should put him back in, so he moved Jared back and forth with his arm. The sophomore hung on every movement. He just needed one more chance.
Stewart ended up pushing rather than pulling. Jared proceeded to notch the first sack of his high school career and force a fumble. He played 20 or 30 plays the rest of that game and went on to start the next five.
Jared needed that confidence.
“I even get chills retelling the story,” Jared said. “ … If I don’t make that play, Lord knows what happens.”
When Jared steps onto the field Saturday for No. 11 Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl, things will have come full circle.
To understand Jared’s journey is to know it has been a group effort. His father, Gary, died of a heart attack when Jared was in second grade, leaving Tracey to raise two boys. Suwanee rallied around the Iveys. At times growing up, Jared had trouble controlling his emotions. Coaches helped him harness his passion. And then there’s Tracey, who has supported every ebb and flow in her son’s journey.
Jared didn’t make it to this point without the investment of countless others. And he takes every opportunity to pay loyalty forward.
“He’s going to make sure his people are taken care of,” Luke said. “ … He knows he’s where he’s at because people poured into him. And he has every intention of pouring it back into other people.”
Built different
Jared will tell you basketball was his first love. But Tracey knows it was baseball that first caught his attention. She laughs, remembering sitting next to her late husband in the stands as Jared picked grass in the outfield.
“I’m yelling, ‘Baseball ready, Jared Ivey!,’” she said. “ … And I’m looking at my husband like, what is wrong with your child?”
Suwanee is a city of just under 22,500 people, per the latest census data. It’s located about 40 minutes northeast of Atlanta. The median household income in Suwanee from 2018-22 was $100,780, and better than 63% of adults 25 or older received bachelor’s degrees over that span. It’s the type of place you’d want to raise a family if possible. That’s how Tracey and Gary ended up there.
Tracey’s family immigrated from Jamaica in the 1970s. She was born in Brooklyn and moved to Texas when she was 12, later attending Clark University in Atlanta. Tracey would meet Gary there before her senior year.
Gary was drawn to the schools in Suwanee. Education has always been important to Tracey — she and her sister were the first college graduates in her family. North Gwinnett is ranked as the No. 9 high school in the Atlanta area by U.S. News and World Report.
“There’s a bubble aspect to it from the standpoint of, there’s a lot of wealth in this community, but there also (are) some families that don’t necessarily experience that wealth but find ways to live in our community,” Matt Garner, North Gwinnett’s varsity basketball coach, said.
Jared distinctly remembers doing book reports for his mother over summers, not being allowed to go play until he turned in his work. He read Harper Lee’s classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” when he was 11. He still enjoys anime and Marvel movies. Tracey said Jared is also trying to pick guitar back up and is currently rereading the “Harry Potter” series.
“We’re more than just what we do. I want them to be good humans, just good people,” Tracey said. “ … Nobody wants a one-dimensional-type person.”
Everyone knows everyone in Suwanee. Jared is still a tad upset, Tracey said, she didn’t let him play football his eighth-grade year. He had been giving her some typical teenager “attitude”, she said, and the team — filled with his friends — won the championship.
After the baseball experiment, Jared briefly moved onto football before finding basketball. He started playing basketball with a five-and-under team, not getting fully into football until he was nine or so.
Garner learned about Jared when he was in middle school. To this day, he’s still not sure he’ll ever find another player like him.
Jared was an elite defender with an uncanny ability to anticipate, part of that coming from his memorizing scouting reports. His shot blocking was spectacular, but he also understood situations. If someone was out-of-control, Jared knew he could slide over and take a charge, creating a turnover and drawing a foul in the process.
Jared started three years on varsity as North Gwinnett’s center. Garner jokes that if NIL had existed back then, there would have been a lot of Jared Ivey jerseys sold. He was a hometown hero.
“If I get to coach another one like him, I’ll be blessed,” Garner said. “Because we literally changed everything we did as a program defensively because he existed.”
‘They put their arms around us’
Jared, his older brother Garrison and Gary used to hold sleepovers in the living room and watch wrestling. Gary was the “fun” dad, Tracey remembers fondly. Even now she finds herself thinking how much both look like him and walk like him. They even laugh like him.
Gary worked in the music business and was Garrison’s youth football coach. One night after practice, he came home feeling under the weather. He was nowhere to be found the next morning, not uncommon given the all-hours nature of studio recording. Tracey got a call from the hospital saying Gary drove himself in. Doctors discovered an enlarged heart.
Gary spent a week on life support before being moved to intensive care. Garrison was set to attend a football jamboree one weekend, but a blood clot was discovered in Gary’s leg. Surgery was successful, and that Sunday, Tracey sat in the hospital room. Gary was going to lose weight and start working out. It started now, he said, and he ordered a plate of fruit. He never made it through the snack.
Doctors called a Code Blue. Gary, 36, suffered a heart attack and died.
“ … That was a hard day,” Tracey said. “That was a hard day.”
Moving back to Texas made sense after Gary’s death, but Garrison and Jared wanted to stay in Suwanee. They wanted to grow up and graduate with their friends. Tracey made it work despite a one-person income with her motto: Keep putting one foot in front of the other.
“She’s my rock,” Jared said. “ … She went through hell to give us the life that we had and keep us in the place that we were at. … Seeing somebody work that hard with hardly anything in return, just for us, it definitely changes the way you look at a person.”
The home Tracey lived in was located about ½ mile away from where Jim Martin lives. Martin’s son, J.R., is Jared’s best friend. Martin was a youth basketball coach and football assistant, and the two played AAU and football together. Martin has known Jared since he was about 7 or so. Jared was like “his second kid.”
Martin took Jared everywhere with J.R. — to tournaments, to practice, anywhere. While Tracey never asked for anything, Jim and other parents made sure Jared had everything he needed. The Iveys never had to pay registration fees for sports. Tracey still remembers walking to her mailbox and finding gift cards left anonymously.
“This community really just, they put their arms around us,” Tracey said.
Jared never talked about the loss of his father, Martin said. If people were discussing such matters, he would stay silent rather than look for pity. Martin remembers an AAU basketball tournament that happened to be on Father’s Day. One of the kids harmlessly asked Jared why his father never came to games.
“Jared didn’t say a word,” Martin said. “He just sat there and bawled.”
Making a commitment
Jared admits he was the last person to realize his future was on a field rather than a court.
After missing his eighth-grade football season, Jared played on the freshman team at North Gwinnett. He was not the best player on the team, Jared admitted. He also kept getting in trouble at practice for talking too much. He’s always been a talker.
“We called him the Wendy Williams of little kids. He would gossip,” Martin said. “He would tell us everything that was going on.”
Jared began making his presence felt as a sophomore on a state championship team — he had three sacks despite weighing 175 pounds — but it wasn’t perfect. Jared let his emotions pour onto the field. If he was confronted by Stewart, he talked back. He would sometimes leave practice in tears and almost quit as a freshman and sophomore. Stewart pulled Jared from games at times, and they got into it on the sidelines. But Stewart could work with passion.
“ … He probably had not been to that point where a man said, ‘Hey, you’re not going to do this, and we’re going to keep pushing you,’” Stewart said. “ … ‘We’re going to confront you on performance and behavior, period. And you’re not going to choose when you can be moody.’
“ … (But) when you see a guy tear up and cry, you know that they’re emotionally invested.”
After his sophomore season, Luke got to know Jared. The plan was to get Jared bigger. In the process, Luke learned what made him tick. Jared had built up walls, Luke said, and didn’t know how to take criticism. He thought it was personal. The key was to let him know the criticism was because people cared.
“I love Jared. He’s so emotional,” Luke said. “ … (One practice) he’s like, ‘I feel like you’re picking on me’ … And I said, ‘Well I am. I’m personally attacking you … because I think you could be great. … When I don’t talk to you or I don’t correct you or I don’t speak to you … that’s when I don’t care anymore.’”
Jared’s heart was still largely in basketball, though. He held offers from Coastal Carolina and Middle Tennessee State, frame wasn’t that of a major-college center. As Division I football coaches began to get on his trail, he had to make a choice. Luke gave Jared a hypothetical: If former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski came to the gym and saw 6-foot-6 post player Jared Ivey there, would he notice him? Of course, Jared said. No, Luke responded.
“I said, now, Kirby Smart or Nick Saban or something like that walks on a football field and you’re a 6-foot-6 defensive end, and you’re making plays, I said, ‘Do they notice you?’ I said ‘Yeah, they notice you.’ They want to know who you are.”
Now up to 205 pounds as a senior and committed to college football, Jared took off. He notched 20 sacks that season, using a unique combination of length, strength, quickness and brains. His footwork as a post player translated to football. He understood how to set people up and how to anticipate. He was the best hand at the poker table, Luke said.
Jared also learned how to harness his passion. Now a leader of the team, he had to set an example. During one game as a senior, an opposing player delivered a cheap shot. Jared might have retaliated as a junior. As a senior?
“Jared looked at him and started laughing, pointed at him. And I think Jared ended up with like four sacks,” Luke said. “ … The growth of him, watching him grow up from his sophomore, junior, to senior year was honestly probably one of my favorite moments coaching.”
Winning on and off the field
North Gwinnett won less than 15 games over Garner’s first three seasons as basketball coach. The Bulldogs were a proud program, and Garner is an alumni. He knew he needed to right the ship. Tracey remembers Garner sitting in her living room, outlining his plan. He needed Jared and wanted Jared to be great.
Even after deciding he was going to pursue college football, Jared would still show up for shootarounds at 6 a.m. He was going to leave the program better than he found it.
North Gwinnett hovered around .500 for most of Jared’s senior season until catching fire late. They won the region tournament and advanced to state and have been contenders since. Garner knows it isn’t all because of Jared, but that winning culture was largely set by him.
“When you get me talking about him, it’s personal. Because I owe him a lot,” Garner said. “I mean, I’m sure I’ve done some stuff for him, but he’s turned this situation around here for our program.”
Ivey signed to play at Georgia Tech out of high school with every intention of seeing it through. It was close to home and a proud academic institution. But losing was hard, and he needed a change. He threw his name into the transfer portal fairly late; Ole Miss was one of the first schools to reach out.
He took a weekend visit, but his flights got canceled. So Ole Miss set up a driver for him and Tracey to make it back to Atlanta. They packed up his apartment, and he started class in Oxford that Monday.
Oxford reminded him of Suwanee, Tracey said. If he ever needed anything, he knew he would be able to get it, and it wouldn’t be because of his stature as an athlete. There’s a bit of Luke that thinks it might be part of why he decided to return for one more season. Former Ole Miss teammate Tavius Robinson — the two were hotel roommates — is glad to have Ivey in his corner.
“He’s loyal to his friends, he’s loyal to his community, and that’s what makes him such a good guy. … I know he’ll have my back if it’s ever needed,” Robinson, now with the Baltimore Ravens, said. “ … I know we could pick up the phone and we’ll be chopping it up like we’ve seen each other the other day. It’s good to have a good friend like that.”
Jared doesn’t have a ton of time to return home, but he does what he can to support Suwanee. He buys raffle tickets from Garner’s children and came back for the team’s golf tournament. Luke’s kids love it when Jared is back in-town; they demand to take pictures with him. Tracey still sometimes works concession stands at games and still gets messages from Jared’s teachers, reminiscing about the days when they were taller than him.
Jared’s always preferred to show his indebtedness with actions. Even when he was younger, you could just see it in his face and his eyes, Martin said. He was grateful and wasn’t going to forget generosity. Even back when he was roaming the halls at North Gwinnett, he never met a stranger.
“You never know who’s watching. That was a really big thing that I used to tell them both. You just never know who’s watching,” Tracey said. “(Jared) knows how to treat people, because you never know when you’re going to need that person. You never know when … that person’s going to come back in your life.”
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You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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