Assistant track coach Hakon DeVries leaves UK, still under conduct investigation
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- University of Kentucky parts ways with assistant coach Hakon DeVries amid probe.
- Investigation into DeVries follows substantiated harassment complaints in 2023.
- DeVries’ departure comes as UK faces ongoing scrutiny in athletics department.
The University of Kentucky has parted ways with Hakon DeVries, an assistant cross country and track coach, while an investigation continues into his conduct by the school’s Office of Equal Opportunity, which is responsible for reviewing discrimination and harassment complaints on campus.
DeVries’ most recent $112,000-a-year employment contract at UK ended June 30, according to his personnel file, obtained by the Lexington Herald-Leader through the Kentucky Open Records Act.
But on June 20, UK provided DeVries with a two-month amended agreement that extended his contract through Aug. 30 or until he could find a new job, whichever came first.
As of this week, the coach is no longer with the university, UK spokesman Jay Blanton said. He provided no further details.
DeVries could not be reached for comment. A woman who answered a phone number associated with him hung up on Tuesday evening.
DeVries, 39, was suspended from his athletics job earlier this year pending an investigation into his conduct by the university. UK said this week that the investigation is ongoing, so no information about it can be released.
A former cross country athlete at Stanford University in California, DeVries joined UK in 2012 as assistant track and field coach under head coach Edrick Floreal, whom he ran for and later worked for at Stanford.
Among the student-athletes whom UK credits DeVries as helping to develop into championship runners are Katy Kunc, Ariah Graham, Cally Macumber and Allison Peare, the last of whom he married after she graduated from UK in 2014. Now Allison DeVries, she is a school administrator in Lexington.
In 2023, the UK Office of Institutional Equity and Equal Opportunity said it investigated and substantiated sexual discrimination and harassment complaints made against DeVries by two student-athletes who ran on UK’s cross country team, according to documents the Herald-Leader obtained through the Kentucky Open Records Act.
One athlete said the coach made unwelcome body shaming comments, according to the documents. The other athlete said DeVries made unwelcome and inappropriate comments about the attractiveness of athletes’ bodies in relation to his posting photographs of them on social media, according to the documents.
In a May 30, 2023, letter to the UK’s Title IX compliance officer, Sandy Bell, the Equity and Equal Opportunity office recommended that DeVries receive a two-day unpaid suspension and mandatory training on how to prevent sexual discrimination, harassment and misconduct.
The UK athletics department is already dealing with one high-profile controversy involving a coach and athletes.
Longtime swim coach Lars Jorgensen is accused in a federal lawsuit of sexual abuse by former UK swimmers who later worked under him as assistant swim coaches. Jorgensen has denied wrongdoing and said his relationships with the swimmers were consensual. That suit is pending.
UK paid Jorgensen $75,000 to resign in June 2023 in a deal requiring public confidentiality by all parties, while he was under investigation inside the university on allegations of sexual abuse and NCAA training violations. Some of the sexual abuse allegations included those later mentioned in the current lawsuit.
