Jordan Ivey is ready to usher Vista PEAK Prep into its next stages of growth.
The burgeoning Aurora Public Schools high school has spent the last decade-plus growing incrementally — keeping pace with the surrounding neighborhood — and is primed to take another step forward, especially in athletics.
Ivey is looking forward to nurturing that growth as the school’s new athletic director and assistant principal.
“There is incredible opportunity and potential right now for Vista PEAK,” Ivey told the Sentinel. “There have been some phenomenal athletic directors over the years and they have set it up incredibly well. So to come in and build off of that and have the opportunity to usher Vista PEAK into this big school realm is really exciting to me.”
Ivey knows there are big shoes to fill in the athletic director position at Vista PEAK Prep, as he follows a quality lineage made up of Mike Hughes (who is now at Lakewood), John Sullivan (who moved into a role as an assistant commissioner with the Colorado High School Activities Association) and David Benedict (who recently departed for Smoky Hill after holding the job for the past three years).
Ivey has previous experience himself as the athletic director at Ponderosa High School, a role he left to become exclusively an assistant principal for the past two years at Fox Ridge Middle School in Cherry Creek Schools. He found himself in need of a way to reconnect with athletics at the high school level and found that chance when he discovered the intriguing opening at Vista PEAK Prep.
“I’ve been involved with athletics my entire life, so I felt the urge to get back into it,” Ivey said. “There are a lot of connections from Legend when I taught and was a head coach, so when I saw the Vista PEAK job was open, I reached out to some of those people.
“After hearing everything they started to list about the school and the different options and pathways and talking with Principal (Mehran) Ahmed several times, it became clear to me that this is a place I wanted to be, right at the precipice of developing from a small school to a big school.”
The Vista PEAK Prep job (which Ivey said he accepted “without hesitation” when it was offered) included a bonus. Ivey spent a decade as a social studies teacher at Legend and the assistant principal role will allow him to get in the classroom as well.
“It was special position because it is the first time Aurora has done that,” he said. “Being able to be in the classroom and still do instruction on occasion as well is an opportunity that doesn’t come around often.”
Athletically, Vista PEAK Prep has good continuity in its coaching staff save in football (where Kyle Reese takes over) as well as boys wrestling, where Robb Steven moves up from an assistant role to the head job after Benedict left the school.
“To be able to walk in and have such well-established programs already is big,” Ivey said. “Right now, for me it is about listening and learning. It’s just been meet and greet with the coaches and having them tell me about the programs and how I can help, so we can really start to forecast a vision of what Vista PEAK can become.”
Half of the small contingent of new coaches is Reese, a former head coach at Overland who has taken over the football program that went through some turmoil in 2024 when Mike Campbell stepped down midway through his first season.
The Bison finished 3-7 with Jalin McKinnon serving as interim coach the rest of the season and Reese hopes to restore some stability to the situation. Vista PEAK Prep will be in search of its first postseason appearance since 2021.
The biggest highlight for Vista PEAK Prep last season came on the wrestling mat as twins Ian and Amelia Bacon on the first state championships for the boys and girls programs, respectively. The Bison finished seventh in the 5A girls standings, while the boys were 22nd.
Among the other highlights for Vista PEAK Prep in 2024-25 included a City League championship and 16-win campaign for the softball team, a 9-3-4 season for the boys soccer team that yielded a Class 5A first round state playoff home game,, first round wins for the boys and girls basketball programs in their first seasons moving up to the 6A classification, a fourth-place finish in the 4A girls golf state tournament for Sophia Capua and Amaya Rogers’ fourth-place finish in the 100 meter dash at the 5A girls state track meet.
Ivey’s athletic director experience came as part of a school in the Continental League, which is vastly different than the City League — formerly the Denver Prep League — that Vista PEAK Prep joined a few years ago (along with Hinkley and Rangeview) after the dissolution of the East Metro Athletic Conference.
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter/X: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
