Oct. 7, 2004

by Melvin Scott

At the time, the neighborhood where I grew up in Baltimore was one of the worst in the city. We moved there when I was two years old, and there was a lot of negative stuff around. I could look across on the corner and see people dealing drugs. All my peers were running the streets, and that's all we knew.

My mother was very important in raising me. My dad and I didn't have a very close relationship, and he died when I was ten. That meant my mom had to be a single parent to three boys and three girls. She used to be a drug addict, but to raise her kids she gave up her habit and cleaned her life up. I give her all the credit in the world. She never neglected us for drugs.

When I was in sixth grade, I'd been kicked out of three elementary schools and two middle schools. I kept getting expelled and my mom got fed up with it. She told me that if I didn't straighten up, she was going to give me up to a foster home. When you hear someone you love saying that to you, you get pretty scared.

I had started playing basketball when I was about ten years old, but I didn't really take it seriously until middle school. I was too busy getting into trouble. But I looked at my mom and the way she had turned her life around and I thought, `If she can change, I can change.' When I picked up basketball and found out that there were some people outside of my family who cared about me, I began to see that it might be a way to do something for my family.

The game gave me an excuse to escape my friends but still hang out with them. When you're from the city, the last thing you want to do is have your friends think you're changing on them. But they understood when I would say, `I can't hang out late tonight, I've got a game tomorrow.' They were cool about it, and a lot of times they'd come to my games. I started going to church more regularly at that same time, and church and basketball were outlets for me.

When I got to Chapel Hill, though, it was way different than what I was used to. People didn't understand me and I didn't understand people. Everyone was so nice. Where I come from, if someone nods their head and says, `What's up?' you think they're trying to start something. It took me that entire summer session when I first got here to get comfortable. Chapel Hill and Baltimore are like night and day.