'He doesn’t put himself above anyone on the team': Kayvaun Mulready has grown at Worcester Academy — as basketball player and young man

WORCESTER — Kayvaun Mulready grew up on Vernon Hill five minutes away from Worcester Academy.It might as well have been five light-years as far as he was concerned.

“I never knew Worcester Academy was a school,” said Mulready, 18 and now a senior at the prestigious prep school. “I just always looked at it as that big brick building. … Coming here my freshman year, even though it was still in the neighborhood, it’s just a gate that blocks off the neighborhood.

“It’s a whole different world. I was never used to that, seeing kids with expensive cars at my age and all that stuff. So it was really hard to adjust and adapt to it.”

Indeed, while Mulready — who does not own a car, pricey or otherwise — has settled in nicely at WA and thrived as a student and an athlete, an ambassador and a role model, getting from there to here was not without its ups and downs on the hill.

All began at camp

Mulready, a Friendly House hoop alum and Nativity School of Worcester graduate, was invited to the Worcester Academy summer basketball camp when he was nearing his 12th birthday.

It didn’t take long, 10 minutes tops, for the tween to distinguish himself from his fellow campers, some of whom were four years older.

“I knew that Friday, that early Friday August afternoon, that we had to have Kayvaun, a Worcester kid, to come and be part of our program here,” Hilltoppers coach Jamie Sullivan said Wednesday at Senior Night at Daniels Gymnasium.

Trafficia Warburton already was considering her son’s future educational options, and once the opportunity to enroll Kayvaun at Worcester Academy was presented to her, she eagerly accepted it.

The transition to WA, with its rigorous academics and perennial powerful basketball program, was not seamless. During his freshman year, Mulready told Sullivan he wanted to leave.

“I was like ‘I don’t fit in. It doesn’t feel right. I’m not feeling like myself,’ ” Mulready recalled.

Overcoming early adversity

Mulready struggled in the classroom throughout and initially to get playing time on the court.

He had dealt with the former at the Nativity School, but went on to become an honor-roll student and receive numerous certificates of achievement. The latter was new to him.

“I had always played every minute of every game and my freshman year, yeah, I was 14 years old, but I felt like I deserved to play, and there were many games where I didn’t,” Mulready said.

Mulready ended up, associate head coach Dan Sullivan noted, “playing a ton for us” that year. The 3-and-D frosh consistently drained clutch 3-pointers and made big stops as the Hilltoppers finished 20-12 after losing a close contest in the NEPSAC Class AA final March 8.

Two days later, a state of emergency was declared due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Mulready was just starting to feel at home when the daily routine of students and educators throughout the commonwealth was disrupted.

When Mulready began his sophomore year in September, it was under a hybrid model with one week on campus followed by a week of learning from home.

The following month, Mulready’s dad passed away from a thalamic stroke. Kevin Mulready was 34.

“Probably the hardest year of my life,” Mulready said. “Academic-wise, it’s hard to focus on a laptop all day and not go to sleep or something. There’s nobody there really motivating you. It’s up to you, and I’m a young kid.

“Then my father passed away, so now it’s like I have no motivation for anything. Basketball is usually kind of like my own therapy, and there was no basketball (as the season was essentially canceled). So I just had to find a way to deal with it.”

'I knew this was the best spot to be'

Mulready’s highest grades as a slumping sophomore were low C’s, leading the school to issue an ultimatum.

No more arriving late for class. No more skipping assignments. Or no more Worcester Academy.The message, in no uncertain terms, was motivational.

“I saw the support I had around me, and even though I was in this dark place, I knew I was meant to be here,” Mulready said. “I knew this was the best spot to be, and I didn’t take it for granted (anymore).”

To that end, Warburton and Jamie Sullivan agreed the best spot for Mulready was to be on campus as a boarding student.

“That started his structure of accountability and support,” said Warburton, who works as a long-term substitute teacher at Vernon Hill Elementary and starred in basketball for Burncoat High, Quinsigamond and Anna Maria College, from which she graduated in 2016.

“He’s absolutely taken off since we got him to move to campus as a junior,” Sullivan said.

Mulready found out last March he made the headmaster’s list for the first time, on the same day he was named game MVP after the Hilltoppers defeated Cushing, 69-67, to repeat as NEPSAC Class AA champions before a capacity crowd at the Kneller Athletic Center.

Mulready, who reclassified following his junior year, started off his senior year by finishing the first semester with straight A’s.

He’s currently taking advanced algebra and financial applications, economics, history of sports, mythic America and physics, and believes graduating with a 3.4 grade point average is within his reach.

“I do miss him, I do wish — I still wish he was at home — but it was definitely a necessary evil for him to be on campus,” Warburton said.

“And he’s such a great person and an individual, and he hasn’t changed at all besides develop into a better and better young man. And there is still room to grow.”

'Becoming more of a student of the game'

Mulready committed to Georgetown University in March after verbally accepting an offer from Providence College two months earlier, the switch due to the Hoyas luring coach Ed Cooley away from the Friars.

The Big East school is getting a 6-foot-4, 215-pound guard who can do it all.

Mulready, who has been rehabbing a balky hamstring since early February that caused him to miss all or parts of 18 games this season, is long, strong, physical, quick, and naturally instinctive.

He can finish at the rim and from behind the arc, rebound with the best of them, facilitate, and defend — really, really defend — multiple positions.

“And he's becoming more of a student of the game in terms of watching film,” Dan Sullivan said. “Knowing when to attack, knowing when to get downhill, knowing when not to settle for long 3-pointers that he can get at any time on the shot clock.

“So I think all of that are ways he has taken a big step forward this year. And he’s a great teammate. He doesn’t put himself above anyone on the team.”

Among Mulready’s many fans, no one is bigger than Raeya O’Keefe.

The 11-year-old Roosevelt Elementary student, the daughter of Jamie Sullivan’s girlfriend, was on Dee Rowe Court prior to Senior Night celebrations waving a Fathead sign with Mulready’s face on it. She stood by his side during much of the ceremony, Mulready’s long right arm wrapped around her slender shoulder.

“Kayvaun is really good at everything,” Raeya exclaimed. “He teases me, but in a good way. He’s more of an older brother than a basketball player.”

'Made his mark on this school like no other'

Georgetown is getting a player who can do it all and one grateful for all it has to offer him.

“It’s great academically,” Mulready said of the Washington university of 7,900 with an acceptance rate of 12%.

“I’m lucky because without the athletic aspect, I probably wouldn’t be able to get into that school. So I’m just going to try to take advantage of that.”

And when he graduates in May, Worcester Academy will be losing a student who experienced exponential growth academically, emotionally and socially during his five years on Providence Street.

“I think the thing that sticks out to me is that this place has been around for 190 years, and he is going to leave this place better than it was when he got here,” Jamie Sullivan said. “And that is saying a lot.

“Kayvaun Mulready has made his mark on this school like no other, and I really believe that.”

—Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @RichGarvenTG.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Kayvaun Mulready has grown at Worcester Academy — as basketball player and young man