Introverted Man, Extroverted Basketball Player: Written by Bailiegh Carlton & Homar Hernandez
Florida Gators men’s basketball center Kevarrius Hayes takes a photo with his family — his biological family and the Ulmers — outside of Madison Square Garden in New York, New York.
Kevarrius Hayes, or Spidey, is the player who speaks up in the locker room and everyone listens, the player whose energy rubs off on everyone on the court and the person who can light up any room with his infectious personality.
Flash back 10 years, and he’s the new kid in school, for what seems like the hundredth time, feeling like he doesn’t fit in anywhere.
As the child of an Army captain, moving around became a part of life. By the time Hayes turned 5, his mom, Verrice Hayes, left for her first of three deployments to the Middle East.
They talked as often as possible from thousands of miles away, but nothing could replace having her there to pick him up from school, take him to practice or give him a hug after a hard day.
“I remember in elementary school, you see all these little kids and their moms coming to pick them up after school,” Hayes said. “I believe I was in the after-school program, because my aunt actually worked at the school, so I would be there until she got off work and I’d go home with her. I would be one of the last kids there because their parents would come and pick them up. It was a little tough. I had to adjust, because it would make me really miss my mom.”
In seventh grade, Hayes moved to the small town of Live Oak, Florida. He was the new kid in an everybody knows everybody kind of place.
For the first six months, he laid low—or as low as a 6-foot-tall 13-year-old could. He couldn’t even bring himself to try out for the basketball team. His nerves got the best of him.
While he didn’t play on the middle school team, he couldn’t stay away from the sport he loved for too long, so he joined a local intramural league.
That’s where he met a tall blonde boy who finally made him feel like he belonged. He quickly attached himself to Blake Ulmer, a seventh grader on his team.
Little did Hayes know when he met Blake that as time went on, they’d not only become best friends, but brothers.
Soon after they became friends, Hayes, known in town as “Too Tall”, asked Blake if he could spend the night at his house. Of course, Blake had to ask his mom first.
“It begins with our oldest son Blake coming home from middle school and saying, ‘Hey Mom, can Too Tall stay the night?’” said Julie Ulmer. “My exact response is, ‘Who is Too Tall?’”
Spending the night turned into spending a few nights and then into Hayes staying with the Ulmers almost every weekend. After a while, Hayes felt like family, so he thought he might as well make it official.
He called his mom and asked if he could move in with them rather than living with his aunt while she was deployed. She explained to him that it didn’t work that way and that he had to ask them first, but she agreed to it if they were comfortable with welcoming another kid in their house.
As a typical kid, Hayes didn’t ask Blake’s parents, but Blake himself. Again, that was a question a 12-year-old couldn’t answer, so he brought it up to Julie.
She was open to the idea of Hayes moving in, as her parents had taken in students before.
“My parents helped students out in the past,” she said. “At 75, they took in a young man who played football at Suwannee High School.”
Julie talked to her husband, Jeremy Ulmer, about the situation and they decided it could work. With Verrice being deployed or in some kind of training at almost all times, it made sense for Hayes to have a steady home with people who could keep up with his school and basketball schedule.
After all, they already had two boys (Blake and his younger brother Brant) around the same age as Hayes who played basketball. And as the high school coach, Jeremy would soon be watching over Hayes regularly anyway.
Kevarrius Hayes takes a picture with his mother, Army Captain Verrice Hayes, in high school.
“I just believe in helping out where you can,” Julie said. “We had already just adored him as Blake’s best friend, and he truly was already part of the family at that point.”
Julie became Hayes’ legal guardian for the next four years and watched him grow up alongside her biological sons.
“We always refer to him as our third son, because he was the third chronologically to become a part of our family,” Julie said. “But he became the first son to learn how to drive and the first girlfriend and the first breakup, that he had Blake do via text … He was the third son, but the first to go to college. A lot of our first experiences with a teenage child was actually him reaching those milestones.”
Living with the Ulmers not only gave Hayes a place to stay, but a place to grow.
The Ulmers and Hayes take their annual Christmas picture in pajamas. A family of athletes, the men rocked “World’s Tallest Elf” shirts.
As a school board member, Julie was very serious about all of her sons getting involved, and going above and beyond in the classroom. She introduced Hayes to dual-enrollment programs, AP classes and volunteering around the community.
She even urged him to run for class president, which he admitted was not his first choice.
“I had kind of started coming out of my shell around 10th grade anyway, and basketball season was just starting and it was time for class presidency,” Hayes said. “I was just thinking, ‘OK, cool.’ But Mrs. Julie was like, ‘You should run. You should try.’ And I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’”
He had to write “Vote for Too Tall” on all of his campaign posters throughout the school so people would know who it was, because few people actually knew his real name.
“It turned out a lot of people actually liked me, so I became class president,” he said. “I think 10th grade was my only competition. Other than that, it was a cake walk.”
Class president Kevarrius Hayes speaks at his graduation from Suwannee High School in 2015.
Around that same time, Hayes started to realize playing college basketball could be an option for him. He drew interest from several schools as he traveled around and played in AAU tournaments with Nike Team Florida.
He didn’t know exactly where he wanted to go at the time. He had lived all over the place as a kid, so the idea of moving out of state didn’t bother him.
But both Julie and Jeremy were UF alumni. Jeremy played basketball for the Gators back in the 1990s and still had connections to the program. He called up his former academic adviser Tom Williams asking if there was any way he could talk to the coaching staff, because he had a kid they really needed to look at.
Williams, also an assistant athletics director at Florida, got Hayes an audience with Billy Donovan. As soon as Donovan extended an offer, Hayes shut down his recruiting process. He knew he wanted to be a Gator.
Then, just before time for Hayes to sign his papers, Donovan took a job with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Enter Mike White.
White called Hayes and the rest of the recruits in his class within hours of accepting the job. Hayes reassured him that he fully intended to stick with his commitment.
A few days later, Jeremy drove him down to Gainesville to meet his future coach.
“He walked into my office, I don’t know, three, four or five days of having the job, and he had a suit on,” White said of the first time he met Hayes. “He looked at me and shook my hand with his big smile and said, ‘Hey, nice to meet you, coach. I’m looking forward to playing for you.’ That was it. A proud Gator, Kevarrius Hayes. He always wanted to be here and he’s been really fun to coach.”
Auburn forward Horace Spencer, right, shoots against Florida center Kevarrius Hayes (13) in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game at the Southeastern Conference tournament Saturday, March 16, 2019, in Nashville, Tenn. Auburn won 65-62. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
Fast forward to March 2019, and Hayes has played on a 20-plus win team all four years at the Swamp. The known shot blocker went to the NCAA tournament in his last three years, and was seen as one of the leaders of the 2018-19 team. He finished his career averaging 5.6 points off 63 percent shooting, 4.6 rebounds and 0.4 assists. His 93.0 defensive rating was the highest in the SEC in his final season, despite being snubbed from the conference’s all-defensive team.
Although Spidey’s collegiate career is over, the Florida faithful will miss his dueling personalities. No matter where life takes him next, he will forever have a tight web of supporters looking after him.