Larry Ivy
Class of 2016
Before budgets and bowl bids, before NCAA citations and boardrooms, there were four third graders at East Clinton Elementary in 1952, a pickup game, and a scuffle that ended in a lifelong friendship. Larry Ivy and Phil Pickett traded shoves, then traded loyalty for the next four decades. “Phil had more influence on who I became than anybody,” Ivy says. “Hardest, most dedicated worker I’ve ever known.”
Ivy was a three-sport letterman at Huntsville High (1959–61), shaped by YMCA legends B.J. Allison and Buttermilk Johnson, and by HHS coaches Clem Gryska, Charlie Hopper, and Bob Warden. After two degrees at Alabama—and a brief stop working in the Tide athletic department—he headed to Kentucky in 1968 and began a 33-year climb that would touch every corner of an SEC department. At 25 he became the nation’s youngest director of student housing. In 1976 he moved to athletics as assistant AD, overseeing UK’s fiscal operations; C.M. Newton later promoted him to associate AD. In 1995, Ivy received the College Athletic Business Managers of America’s highest honor: NCAA Business Manager of the Year. When Newton retired in 2000, Ivy became Director of Athletics, steering the department through transition with the steady hand he’d honed over decades.
Mentors framed the journey: Bryant at Alabama; Rupp, Cliff Hagan, and Newton in Lexington. After retiring from UK in 2002, Ivy helped open Russia to Papa John’s, making nearly 20 trips to build stores in Moscow and St. Petersburg as president and CEO of Three Papas, LTC. He and his wife, Dorene, later retired to Milledgeville, Ga., close to family and football—his stepson Rob Manchester played four years for Kentucky and now coaches at Georgia Military College.
Ivy’s throughline is simple: people first, details always, and loyalty for life—especially to a best friend named Pickett.
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