St. Mary’s Kevin McCarthy heading to Harvard

Kevin McCarthy isn’t a clock-watcher when it comes to high school tennis practice, but he was last Thursday.When 5:30 p.m. rolled around, the only place he wanted to be was home in front of his computer. Who could blame him? He had set his sights on getting into Harvard University when he was a junior and he knew there would be an email waiting for him when he got home letting him know whether he would be exchanging the St. Mary’s blue and gold for Crimson.”I wasn’t kind of at practice thinking I have a Harvard decision waiting for me on my computer,” he said.When he clicked on the email and read the first line saying Harvard was “delighted” to offer him a spot in the Class of 2014, he was ecstatic.”I went crazy. I was so excited. It’s been a dream of mine to go there for the longest time. I’ve been working hard my whole life to get there,” McCarthy said.The soon-to-be St. Mary’s graduate said he knew it was a great school, but once he visited there a couple of times, he knew it was also the right place for him.”I knew it was somewhere I could thrive as a person,” McCarthy said.McCarthy had decided early on in the college search process that he wanted to remain in the area and that he preferred a city environment. He applied to Tufts, BU, Northeastern, MIT and UMass-Lowell in addition to Harvard.”I can be at home in Boston, but also be away from home,” he said.Had he not been accepted to Harvard, McCarthy said he was prepared to go to BU.”I couldn’t pass up Harvard. That’s something I would regret the rest of my life,” McCarthy said.McCarthy said he’s interested in biomedical engineering, an interest that came about after an uncle he was very close to died of cancer last December.”His death, his loss kind of motivated me to get involved with it (biomedical engineering),” he said.McCarthy is also excited about the prospect of playing golf at Harvard.”They practice at Brookline Country Club, which is one of the most prestigious clubs in the world,” he said.McCarthy was an excellent baseball player when he was younger. He won the citywide Home Run Derby as a 12-year-old and was a Babe Ruth All-Star as a 13 and 14-year-old. As a 14, he was on a state championship team. As he got older, he dropped baseball and decided to focus on golf. The decision paid off. He won the Catholic Central League tournament as a junior and was the league Most Valuable Golfer. He was The Item Player of the Year as a junior and an all-star as a senior. He was captain of the golf team in the fall and he’s the captain of the tennis team now.McCarthy, who is the son of Bill and Kathy McCarthy, said he plans to play a lot of golf this summer so he’ll be ready when it starts up this fall at Harvard. In the past, he’s done a lot of tournaments on the Massachusetts Golf Association circuit, including the Mass. Amateur and the Mass. Open.