Former Georgetown boys basketball coach Josh Keilty used to talk quite a bit with top confidant Kevin Fair.
Heck, they still text back and forth every day talking hoops.
So when Keilty made the difficult decision a couple of months ago to leave his alma mater Royals — fresh off winning the Division 4 state championship — to take over at state powerhouse St. Mary’s of Lynn, he just had one simple request.
“Josh comes up to me and says, ‘You’re either coming with me to St. Mary’s, or you’re taking over for me,’” said Fair.
Turns out: Option 2 was the winner.
Of course, Georgetown did its due diligence and went through a complete interview process with numerous candidates. But all along, it was always Fair taking over that made the most sense. Just a truly beloved coach, mentor and figurehead in the Georgetown community, Fair is more than ready to take over a program that, over the past handful of years, has risen to prominence across the state — punctuated by the Royals winning their first ever state title this winter.
“I couldn’t be more excited and honored to get this position,” said Fair. “Josh and I are the best of friends. I’ve been behind the scenes for him for a long time now, been scouting for him for three years and coaching summer leagues and small leagues. It was definitely a really difficult decision for Josh to leave. I mean, he’s a Georgetown kid who put this program on the map. But with the relationships I already have with the kids on the team, we all felt it would be best for them if I stayed.”
And even just saying “having relationships” is putting it lightly.
While never technically on the coaching staff, Fair was the one volunteering his time — for free — to drive hours across the entire state to scout. His count reached 52 this winter of high school basketball games he saw, which included multiple hour-plus-long trips to scout out Georgetown’s eventual playoff opponents in Monument Mountain, Clinton, South Hadley and Bourne.
“We knew everyone’s plays before they even called them,” joked Fair.
But on a more personal level, Fair has worked individually with pretty much everyone on the team during past offseasons. Georgetown has welcomed in nearly a dozen athletes from Lawrence through school choice over the past handful of years, and for 18 months, Fair housed Marcos Yones. It was “an easy decision” for Fair to welcome the recently-graduated Yones into his family, and over his career, Yones would be a multi-year starter and Daily News All-Star who was huge during the team’s title run this season.
“Moving into Kevin’s house was probably the best thing I’ve ever done in my life,” said Yones back in March. “It helped me mature a lot, and Kevin and I would have plenty of deep conversations together, not just about basketball.
“Kevin is like a father figure for me, especially with the fact that I never really grew up with my dad. I had to learn a lot of things on my own, but he taught me so much. I will always be thankful of Kevin for taking me in and treating me like his own family. It brought me a lot of emotions, but made such a huge impact in my life and made me a better man today.”
And the Royals are getting a winner in Fair.
For the past four years, Fair has been the highly-successful head coach of the Georgetown girls soccer team, and has compiled a 48-27-9 record during that time. That includes a run to the state quarterfinals in 2023, as well as a trip to the Final Four this past fall which earned him the honor of being named the MIAA Division 5 Coach of the Year. Then during the spring, he’s basically been putting in the same hours as an assistant coach for the softball team, which his daughter, Ava, has starred for. The Royals made the Division 5 state championship game in 2024 and the semifinals this year, with Fair’s dedication and scouting being a major reason why.
But that all pales in comparison to his own playing days.
In 2018, Fair was inducted into the Milford High School Athletic Hall of Fame. In basketball, he is still the school’s all-time leader in rebounds, steals and blocks, and in soccer he still holds the program record for goals and assists. Fair had plenty of collegiate options coming out of Milford, but chose to attend the University of Vermont as they were the only school that would let him play both sports.
Now, though, Fair is all about coaching.
And he’ll have a roster coming back next winter that should put up a valiant Division 4 title defense. Georgetown will welcome back all three of its Daily News All-Stars between Irvin Zapata (12.7 ppg, 79 3s), Brendan Loewen (9.0 ppg, 20 3s) and Jomar Terrero (7.6 ppg). Then Tony Tavares and Aleks Dimov will give the Royals a solid frontcourt presence, and early summer reports are that Rainer Hernandez and Brayan Perez have taken big strides.
There will certainly be pressure in taking over a defending champion.
But, in truth, Georgetown couldn’t have found anyone more deserving of that challenge than Fair.
“I honestly welcome the pressure,” said Fair. “I played for a very successful high school program, we were a perennial power winning a lot of games every year, so I sort of grew up in that pressure cooker. But with the relationships I have with the kids, I’m just very excited. The culture that Josh built at Georgetown is remarkable, and it was a tone that he set every day. And I’m not about to mess with something that isn’t broken.
“It’s going to be all about the camaraderie and the togetherness.”