Swirling Worlds: EP.12 - Delroy Mattis

On the final episode of Swirling Worlds: Inside the Mind of a Student-Athlete, I got to sit down with Sophomore athletic training major and men's soccer player Delroy Mattis. As you may have heard during the episode, Mattis is a transfer student at Piedmont University. He transferred in during the spring semester of the 2022-2023 school year, as 2023-2024 was his first full academic year attending the university. Mattis first attended Tougaloo College, a private HBCU (Historically Black College and University) in Jackson, Mississippi. "Just being in Mississippi wasn't the ideal situation, being from Georgia, that was a far drive, about eight hours," said Mattis. "I had no family in that area, which made things a little hard. I was 17 when I graduated high school and was still young. Being that far from home and unable to do much was hard." Mattis also tells listeners about the struggle he was going through while in Mississippi, where they went through a water crisis for his first three months.

As mentioned, Like Dean and Spradlin, Mattis is a transfer student, so I asked him about what it was like going through the transferring process with the portal. "It was one of those things where I just didn't wanna be here anymore, and I knew someone on the piedmont team, so I texted him one day and asked if he thought the coach would let me play," said Mattis. "Although I did have to go through the process of signing the release form to speak to other coaches, I was dead-set on Piedmont after the coach told me I could play."

Later in the episode, Mattis says that soccer was his way out, and as a kid, he dreamed of playing for schools like Clemson and Stanford, as those were some of the top soccer schools in the nation during Mattis' first year of high school. After the break, I looked up some of the academic requirements for Clemson University since Mattis mentioned that they were his dream school. For the first time on the show, a guest qualified in each category: GPA (3.8 - 4.1), SAT Score (1310), and ACT Score (30), as Mattis had a high enough score and GPA to get into Clemson University. "I graduated in the top 25 of my class with either a 4.23 or 4.24 GPA, and my test scores were higher than the average, as I scored 1400 on the SAT," said Mattis.

What was your GPA and test scores coming out of high school? Did you think you'd be able to get into your dream school?