Boys Basketball Head Coach Terrell Ivory ’00 first joined the Andover community as a postgraduate student, playing Varsity basketball. He went on to have a successful career at Davidson College and had his first basketball coaching experience with a local Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) team. After college, Ivory took his first official coaching position at Blair Academy.
Ivory’s connection to the Andover community remained strong throughout his period away, as he constantly connected with his former Andover coach, Leon Modeste (Mo). Coach Mo played a pivotal role in Ivory’s return to the Andover campus.
“I had a good experience here as a student, and I played football and basketball. I enjoyed, appreciated a lot of the relationships, the connections I made with other kids, but also with the adults here. I always stayed in touch with Coach Mo. We always sort of talked it up, me coming back to be a coach. At some point, I think he decided that he was moving away from coaching basketball, and he reached out to me while I was coaching at Colgate,” said Ivory.
After being drawn back to Andover, he immediately made his mark on the boys basketball program. Beyond basketball instruction, Ivory strives to teach his players skills applicable to the outside world, such as resilience and sportsmanship.
“I think of coaching as being a teacher, but not necessarily in the classroom. There are a lot of things that I can do to help athletes that play for me that have nothing to do with basketball. Like, how to deal with adversity, how to be a good sport, how to be a good teammate, how to learn, how to deal with failure, how to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. So there’s just a lot of resiliency, the ability to persevere through challenges. There’s so many things that as a coach, I feel I can help my kids with. Those things have a lot to do with basketball, but again, it’s about how those kids handle obstacles that really matter, which is life stuff,” said Ivory.
As a new player on the team, David Fridia PG’25 noted that all players on the team have distinct skills and roles. Ivory makes the best of these individual skills so that they combine to make for a great overall collection.
Fridia said, “He really goes off of our personnel. There’s a lot of us, and we all have different talents. We can all do a lot. So, he makes sure to include everybody in the play. Everybody has a role, and we all come together. We make sure we go through plays and that everyone understands their skills and their role. So, in the game, it works.”
Ivory focuses on small increments of improvement, whether that be in a practice or game. Along with good discipline and endeavor, he believes those small advancements can culminate into successful results.
“For me, I obviously want to win games, but in order to do that, you have to take care of the little things and make sure that we focus on the details that put us in the position to be successful or win games. And that is, for us, every time we step on the court, every time we practice, every time we play a game, we get at least one percent better. We do a good job of making sure we play with good effort and a good attitude, so if we get one percent better, and if we win games that puts us in a position to make the playoffs, and if we make the playoffs, that puts us in a position to win the championship,” said Ivory.
Jeremy Woodley ’26 appreciates the supportive environment that Ivory creates during games. Specifically, Ivory understands that mistakes may happen, which offers players multiple chances, and always helps his players with marking and positions.
Woodley said, “I’d say he makes everybody feel very comfortable with making mistakes because he knows that we can never be perfect all the time. He’s always calling people on the court, making sure they know what their assignment is and if that’s not working then he’ll call a timeout to slow us down and get us in the right mindset that we need to be in and get us doing what we need to do to win. He never pulls somebody off for making one mistake. He gives us more than one chance which helps our players just feel more comfortable playing.”
Ultimately, Ivory loves the deep relationships that he fosters with his student-athletes, all of which go beyond the basketball court. Whether or not his players continue at the next level of basketball, he’s proud to see their successes and happy to keep in connection.
“One of the reasons why I love my job is because I’ve been able to develop really strong relationships with the kids that I work with, but at a place like Andover, it’s not just about the relationship you have with them as a coach. You get to see the kids in the community, get to see them in the dining hall,” said Ivory.
Ivory continued, “One of the things I really appreciate about being a coach is seeing how successful they are after they leave here and seeing all the amazing things they do. Even if they don’t play basketball at the next level, watching some of the kids and seeing what they’re doing and how they’re playing is always a great way to build up other skills that are applicable outside of basketball. That is really important to me. So when those kids come back or when I talk to them, when they send me a text or when they stay I touch, it means the world to me.”
