Tia Scott came into her first day at Dwight expecting one thing and getting another. She transferred to the small West Side private school from Cardinal Spellman, a Catholic institution in The Bronx with an enrollment of approximately 1,400 students.
“I was walking into my first class and I thought a lot of people were absent because it was still the first day,” said Scott, who lives in Harlem. “As it progressed I was just amazed that it was like six kids in my first class. Usually it was 20 or 18.”
She joined her New Heights travel team teammate Antonia Smith at Dwight, which has an enrollment of less than 450. The St. Peter’s-bound guard commented on how Scott’s first reaction was, “Is this it? It’s so small.” And even now she still has the same look she had first day at times. The commute is easier – just 15 minutes on the C train and so far Scott has excelled in her new environment on and off the court.
“She was excited about how the learning was,” Smith said. “She wasn’t really intimidated by it. She just embraced it. She is a really good student. She really adjusted to it.”
Leaving Spellman wasn’t easy for Scott, a 5-foot-6 point guard. The Pilots were coming off their best season in her three years. After missing most of her sophomore season with a Achilles tendonitis, Scott combined with star forward Troi Melton to lead Spellman to a 21-6 record and a berth in the CHSAA Class A Archdiocesan final against Moore Catholic before losing in the CHSAA state Class A quarterfinals to Sacred Heart (Buffalo).
“Me and Troi we actually sat down and said we are going to go get us a championship next year,” Scott said. “Moore Catholic isn’t stopping us this year. It just turned out that every time we see each other she goes, ‘Didn’t we way we are going to get a championship this year? What happened?’”
Scott’s family fell on hard times financially at the end of her junior year. Her mother Joset Morgan owned a Caribbean restaurant called Nice & Easy downstairs from their home. The rent tripled, according to Scott, forcing the restaurant to close. It left them unable to pay her tuition at Spellman. She said she felt overwhelmed and stressed out not knowing where she would spend her senior season.
She and her family reached out to Spellman coach and athletic director Jane Morris and school president Trevor Nicholls in June about their situation. Morris said that she was told by Nicholls that it wouldn’t be a problem and that Scott senior year’s tuition would be taken care of in some way, even if they had to find a sponsor. It was a message she relayed to Scott and a practice the school would invoke for any senior in her situation, not just because he was a star athlete, according to Morris.
“She would have gone to either school for zero dollars and she would have finished out her fourth year in the school she was in for zero dollars,” Morris said. “I don’t really understand it.”
What Scott called a miscommunication occurred. She received a form letter over the summer from the school that she still owed tuition from her junior year and her seat for the following year was in jeopardy. It placed a seed of doubt in her family’s mind about her situation for the upcoming year. Scott said she and her mother contacted the school about it and told them she couldn’t pay. New Heights coach Rock Rosa then reached out to Dwight asking if they had room for a senior, whose family had fallen on hard times and who could receive a full financial aid package and they obliged.
According to Morris the next time she or Nicholls heard of the situation since June was when Scott graciously emailed her right before the start of school to thank for everything she done for her over three years and tell her she was enrolling at Dwight.
“In July and August when all this was going down there was no contact from anyone,” Morris said. “The night before school opened I was shocked. I was like, ‘Oh my God, [she] is not coming back,’ which is fine if that’s what she wants to do.”
Spellman then gave Scott the specifics of her financial standing in the school. Her family had a meeting with Nicholls after school opened, but she ultimately stayed loyal to accepting Dwight’s offer.
“I chose Dwight because they were there for me,” Scott said. “I wasn’t just going to [not] leave because Spellman was ready to help me out.”
Her late entry into the private school threw a new wrinkle in the basketball team, which lost four seniors from a team that fell to Staten Island Academy in the ACIS title game last season, Coach Josh Kigel expected to see plenty of box-and-1s on Smith with a roster filled with underclassman. The addition of Scott allows him to play Smith off the ball and more man to man because of their aggressiveness defensively.
“The first time that we had her in practice and I saw what she could do it was like Christmas come early,” Kigel said.
Scott, who has interest from NYU and Baruch, is a pure point guard who can attack the basket. She scored 18 and connected on three 3-pointers in a season opening loss to defending Ivy League champion Poly Prep and dished out eight assists in a win over Martin Luther. She has helped in the development of the teams younger players, especially Cidney Brown, who scored 20 against Martin Luther. She and Smith will run drills they learned at New Heights with the guards at practice. The chemistry on the court in the early season between the duo and their teammates is still a work a process.
“We really want to get the team involved so we can be a team,” Smith said. “We don’t want it to just be me and Tia doing all the work all the time.”
While it may still take some time for Scott to feel truly comfortable at her new school, Smith has made the transition easier. The change of environment was by no means minor, but something Scott believes she could not have avoided.
“Sometimes I sit in Dwight and try to see if it could be just like Spellman, but I know it’s not going to be that way, but I just have to deal with it,” Scott said. “It’s a situation where there was nothing I really could do about it.”
