Clear Brook honors former player Scott
Wolverine alumna lauded for contributions to program, successful cancer fight
When Chameka Scott received a phone call Friday morning she was invited to a Clear Brook girls basketball game and was asked not to wear sweatpants. Confused, Scott gladly obliged anyway and showed up at her alma mater expecting simply to watch her former team play.
Little did she know she was the one everybody was there to see. Later she admitted it might have been awkward if she was wearing sweatpants while everybody was celebrating her accomplishments.
Clear Brook’s athletics department, led by head athletic trainer Cathy Supak, surprised one of its greatest athletes last week by raising a banner with her jersey and giving her a No. 21 jersey in a glass case.
“This is incredible. This is different,” said Scott, who graduated from Clear Brook in 2002. “Alot of the things I have experienced I’ll never forget, but something like this lasts forever. That’s going far beyond my time. It hit me pretty hard.”
Scott starred at Clear Brook and eventually at Baylor, which she helped win an NCAA championship in 2005. She was a starter and scored seven points with four rebounds in the championship game against Michigan State.
Later Scott played one year in the WNBA, becoming the only Clear Creek ISD athlete ever to accomplish that. After three years playing professionally in Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, she retired. Now she works as a business coach with Chevron on its oil rigs offshore.
Scott has overcome plenty of obstacles in her life, but none bigger than last year when she beat cancer.
She was diagnosed in July and has surgery two weeks later. Complications delayed the chemotherapy treatment. Eventually doctors had to retest andmake sure everything was still baseline so they could continue the treatment plan.
Six months later when doctors reexamined Scott they discovered nothing was there. They were surprised nothing had spread so doctors decided to monitor it.
Today Scott is in full remission.
“I was pretty pumped,” she said. “I was not too thrilled about the chemo idea. My body was not prepared for it.”
During her senior year at Clear Brook, Scott tore a knee ligament midway through the season. Eventually, the University of Texas pulled her scholarship offer. Her first two years at Baylor were poor. Several players, including Scott, talked about transferring.
So when it came time to fight cancer, she was already prepared for how to deal with adversity.
“Something my mom always tells me ,‘ You gotta do what you gotta do,’” Scott said.
“That’s the mentality I had the entire time. You can either be bitter or get better. If I could find some way to make it better than where I was, which was a pretty dark place, then I win. That’s what I chose to do from the beginning.”
That was not the first time Scott overcame long odds. The WNBA’s Sacramento Monarchs invited her to training camp despite not drafting her. Scott made the team over players who had been drafted.
Though she never played in a regular sea- son game due to playing behind Kara Lawson and Nicole Powell, Scott took practice seriously. She considered it a big accomplishment to make the team.
After those three seasons in Europe she left the game behind and moved onto the businessworld, as happy as she’d ever been.
“I didn’t want to end basketball on any other terms than my own,” Scott said.
“When it was time I wanted to walk away. I didn’t want to limp off the court.”