Gentry head baseball coach and assistant football coach Eddie Ivory could probably be coaching and teaching just about anywhere in the state.
The offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach has only two words to say when asked why he came back to his alma mater in 2018.
“It’s home,” he said.
When Ivory graduated from college, he actually took a job in Quitman County he said. It was a great experience, and he got his first opportunity to call plays during a live-action football game.
But it wasn’t home.
When Gentry Head Football Coach Mario Young was about to take over the program in 2018, he gave Ivory a call.
“Mario Young gave me a call before he received the head coaching job, and he asked me if I wanted to come back home,” Ivory said. “I said, ‘Of course, that’s where the heart is.’ I came back home to work. I wanted to give back to my own community instead of giving it all back to the community that I didn’t grow up in.”
When Ivory arrived on the scene, the Gentry program was thin.
“When we first came in, we were averaging maybe 30 or 40 athletes coming out to play football,” he said. “We had to figure out ways to pull them out. The first idea was to get people who care around them.”
That’s right in line with Young’s strategy when he recruited Ivory.
“We wanted to add on more coaches who were from our hometown,” Ivory said. “We knew that if the children saw more familiar faces, more people they knew, maybe that would help bring the program up.”
Ivory said once the coaching staff was assembled, they needed community buy-in.
“Secondly, we focused on the community,” he said. “We wanted to pull everybody in so that everybody could understand that our program could be a top 10 program in something other than basketball.”
Ivory said the coaches started to get the kids’ attention at the school, and more athletes started to show up for tryouts.
Since 2018, Gentry football has seen a renaissance, with three consecutive years in the playoffs, and perhaps more importantly, the team is now averaging 65 players a season.
Ivory himself has been able to grow and mature as a coach, having been recently named to the elite list of Tomorrow’s 25, which is part of The Mississippi Excellence in Coaching Fellowship, presented by the University of Mississippi’s School of Education (UM SOE), the Mississippi Association of Coaches (MAC), and the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA).
Ivory said that over the past half decade, Gentry’s coaches have created new expectations, both on the field and in the classroom.
“In the beginning, we didn’t have a lot of our student athletes going to college,” Ivory said. “We were trying to figure out ways that we could create a winning mindset and create a mindset in our athletes that they could go to college.”
Ivory said that over a dozen players in the past five years have gone on to play at the next level.
Even though the coaches focus on individual training and academics, the team aspect has become a priority as well.
“We tried to get the mindset of brotherhood,” Ivory said. “It was more than just one individual trying to be the best guy on the field or one individual trying to earn his own start on the team. If one guy made a play, everybody made a play.”
Aside from running the Rams offense, Ivory is also the head baseball coach, and he coaches middle school boys and girls basketball.
Through his work with junior high kids, Ivory said he is helping to lay the foundation for future success at the high school level.
He also supports the Junior Rams little league football team.
He said that he hopes all of this will lay the groundwork for a top 10 ranked football team and more four-and-five-star athletes on the fields and on the court in the next five years.
“We will be on top in every sport,” Ivory said. “We will. I’ve seen basketball get back to the level of play they’re supposed to be at. Football will continue its route. In five years, we will be third round and north half championship bound, instead of just playing in the first round of the playoffs.”
He also said he looks for Gentry’s athletes to get the recognition they deserve on the state level.
“We’re going to have a four-star athlete,” he said. “We’re going to have a Dandy Dozen in football. We’re going to have a Dandy Dozen in basketball and baseball. We have a very promising generation coming up.”
