UK has suspended assistant track coach Hakon DeVries, pending investigation
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UK suspended assistant coach Hakon DeVries pending conduct investigation.
- 2023 probe substantiated harassment claims from two UK student-athletes.
- DeVries remains on paid leave as Equal Opportunity Office reviews case.
The University of Kentucky athletics department has suspended Hakon DeVries, an assistant cross country and track coach, pending an investigation into his conduct by the school’s Office of Equal Opportunity, which is responsible for reviewing discrimination and harassment complaints on campus.
DeVries, 39, has been suspended from his $112,000-a-year job until the investigation’s conclusion, which is not expected until “sometime in August,” UK officials said.
“The university takes very seriously reports of inappropriate behavior,” UK spokesman Jay Blanton told the Lexington Herald-Leader this week.
“Our Office of Equal Opportunity investigates thoroughly and recommends disciplinary measures depending on the findings and specifics of each case,” Blanton said. “This employee is currently suspended with pay as the Office of Equal Opportunity completes its investigation.”
UK declined to provide additional information about the allegations involved.
“We are unable to share further details of an ongoing investigation,” Blanton said.
DeVries did not respond to phone calls seeking comment this week.
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, 33, 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.
