Grace Kearney, like thousands of amateur basketball players, is chasing a college scholarship. But she wants to do it her way.
Kearney (Monroe, Conn.), a Class of 2026 forward who is transferring to St. Luke’s, makes three sets of 300 shots every week outside of practice as part of her offseason regimen. She practices four times per week, often with active college basketball players, in workouts led by St. Luke’s coach Kwame Burwell.
During the spring season, when Kearney still attended Masuk High, she would wake up for a 5:15 a.m. workout before school, then go to lacrosse practice after school, then travel nearly an hour to St. Luke’s for another basketball practice.
“It was hard for me to stay up and finish homework when I got home,” Kearney said.
Why all the extra workouts? Because Kearney is taking a risk: skipping the AAU season entirely.
Kearney didn’t want her spring lacrosse season to be interrupted by travel basketball. Masuk was chasing its first state championship, which it would ultimately win, and it was Kearney’s last chance to play with her high school friends before transferring to St. Luke’s.
She told Burwell, her trainer and previous AAU coach at now-defunct CT Supreme Elite. Burwell and Kearney met in Greenwich to discuss the challenges — and the opportunity to chart their own path.
“The climate of AAU is ‘let's get seen’ and not ‘let's get better,’” Burwell said. “We just got to the point of like, all right, so if you play lacrosse [or] if you're going to play basketball, whatever you're going to do, we're going to focus on ‘let's get better’ for a season, and see what happens.”
During the spring season, Kearney and Burwell mapped out workouts around her lacrosse commitments and limited most of her basketball exercises to stationary work. Once lacrosse ended and Kearney’s schedule opened up, her workload increased, now including weightlifting and game action with college players from UMass, Presbyterian, Long Island University and Franklin Pierce.
Kearney understood that, as 5-foot-11, she wouldn’t be the interior presence in college that she had been growing up. So she and Burwell have narrowed her role, honing on the skills of a 3-and-D wing who can shoot at a high level and handle the ball effectively.
The collegiate workouts in particular are hard. Burwell believes it’s a necessary struggle for Kearney as she develops the habits of a college athlete. Kearney says she has significantly improved in her ability to make live-dribble reads by adapting to the skill level of her training partners.
“She's playing with those kids, and she's seeing that they never stop playing,” Burwell said. “It's a consistency of just competition [and] dominating, and she sees the efficiency and shot-making. So it's like, if I miss, I'm gonna be behind.”
The real challenge: Almost all of Kearney’s work happens off-camera.
While most athletes are bouncing around AAU tournaments, playing multiple games in a weekend in front of college coaches, and crafting highlight reels to publicize, Kearney’s exposure is limited. She made an important statement with a strong performance at the NEPSAC Scholastic Showcase in June and has signed up for several college elite camps.
Kearney and Burwell research and reach out to coaches themselves. It’s backwards from the recruiting trail, where coaches are the ones competing to contact players, but Burwell believes their approach develops a more meaningful relationship. Kearney also hopes that St. Luke’s open gyms in the fall will draw more programs.
“The proof has been shown that my work has been working. But the first question most college coaches ask is, ‘Where will you be in July, and where can I watch you play?’” Kearney said. “So it's hard to be like, ‘I'm actually not playing. I'm focusing on development.’ And those coaches are happy to hear that, the response has been, ‘Oh, that's great. We love to see that.’ But then again, it's hard for them to come watch me play.”
She often has to watch as her friends and former teammates post highlights and AAU schedules on social media. Kearney’s father, Chris, sometimes sees someone else’s video posted online that he knows could frustrate his daughter.
“You see Select Events post pictures of all the college scouts and everyone sitting on the sidelines at games, and you're like, ‘What am I doing at my park in my town? No one's gonna ever see me,’” Kearney said. “It's kind of nerve-wracking [and] anxiety-inducing because you want to get that exposure. But really, right now, I'm just focusing on development and having to trust that when the time comes, it'll come.”
Chris and his wife, Lauren, are both schoolteachers. They drive Kearney to and from her practices and camps since Kearney doesn’t have her license yet, but are happy to do so while also dodging the high costs of playing AAU basketball.
Chris was admittedly skeptical about Kearney and Burwell’s vision at first. He’s seeing his daughter improve, and as a teacher, Chris especially appreciates watching the older college players mentor his daughter. But he doesn’t know what the end result will be.
“Being the first at something is really sort of difficult, to figure it out,” Chris said.
But Chris, like his daughter and Burwell, is also motivated to show there’s an alternative to AAU culture.
Kearney notices how much travel basketball emphasizes gameplay and not focused practice. Chris appreciates how Kearney was able to play two sports she loves at a high level instead of being forced to pick one. Burwell believes Kearney will be a more college-ready basketball player by playing basketball a bit less.
“I would love for this sort of experience of Grace’s to try and shake things up, so that all kids in the future could sort of choose this path and find a way to do it,” Chris said.
Will their plan work? No one knows. Burwell added that at any point, Kearney could change her mind and he would help her find an AAU team. But for now, Kearney is undeterred.
“The trend is to play AAU. The trend is to play five, six games a weekend, and I have made my decision that that's not what I'm going to do, and I would love for other people to make that decision as well,” she said. “It's been shown in my play that I have gotten a lot better through doing this, so I would love for other people to see that as well.”
