The 'Celtic Tigress' transfers to a Pennsylvania prep school instead of enrolling as a Port Chester Lady Rams freshman
August 21, 2024 at 10:47 p.m.
Instead of getting ready to start her freshman year at Port Chester High School in September after graduating from the Middle School as one of the greatest student-athletes in school history, McKayla McLoughlin, the Celtic Tigress of tween local sports renown, has packed her bags and will leave town Sunday (8/25) for the prestigious Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania on a basketball scholarship worth $75.5Gs per year, the annual cost of room, board and tuition there.
Leaving her family and her hometown for a school she'd never heard of until recently wasn't an easy decision for her to make. And not just because the independent prep boarding school is nearly five hours away, its rural, historic 300-acre campus about 90 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.
It was a decision McKayla felt she had to make if she wanted to play ultra-competitive Division One collegiate ball someday because Mercersburg would give her the kind of showcase to make that happen. It would also be the kind of place where she could excel both academically and athletically while also being herself.
Change of pace, place
She didn't feel Port Chester was any longer that kind of place. At least not for her.
In so doing, whether she realized it or not, she was testing the line from T.S. Eliot that goes: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
McKayla McLoughlin, playing varsity basketball as an eighth-grader, dribbles the ball down the court during the Lady Rams’ home game vs. Roosevelt High School in January 2024.By File Photo
And in making the move, she is following in the footsteps of another Port Chester Middle School athletic great, Kayleigh Heckel, one of the greatest basketball players in local history who transferred out of the high school at the end of her sophomore year, a year in which she led Section 1 in scoring, averaged close to 33 points per game, broke the school record for scoring and assists, and left to attend prep school powerhouse Long Island Lutheran (LuHi) where she became the point guard on a team ranked as high as number one in the nation. Heckel made the All-America team while playing in what amounted to a collegiate showcase national schedule. It was a move that paid off because Kayleigh won a basketball scholarship to the University of Southern California where she will be enrolled as a freshman in September.
There is no guarantee that anything like that will happen for McKayla.
But she thinks Mercersburg Academy will give her the best shot because D1 is what she wants down the road, and a place like Mercersburg with its coaches, schedule, academics and athletic environment is the ticket.
Inspiring Young Minds role
If she had any doubts, IYM convinced her, the initials standing for a non-profit organization called Inspiring Young Minds that provides guidance and awareness to underserved youths of the opportunities at independent high schools across the U.S. for deserving students in grades 7 through 12. Its goal is to inspire excellence and achievement through education. It does that by bringing interested indie schools and talented students together under one roof in an atmosphere almost like educational speed dating. It is a chance for schools to pitch themselves to students who may not be aware of them and vice versa over the course of an info-packed day with attractive financial packages available for qualified students. For outstanding student-athletes, there was a second day showcase where they could demonstrate their talents.
"We got lucky," McKayla's dad Brian said. "We heard about IYM and attended the showcase."
It was at the Riverside Church in New York City July 16-17. IYM brought together multiple schools under one roof. And McKayla had been thinking about prep schools near and far, from Greenwich Country Day to well beyond, for a long time. "It wasn't any overnight decision," Brian said.
Because, for whatever reason, the light had gone out of McKayla's eyes about playing for Port Chester and she was looking elsewhere.
The local wunderkind
McKayla was already a local sports wunderkind: quarterback and the best player on offense and defense on the boys’ Middle School football team, starting point guard on the Lady Rams varsity basketball team as an eighth-grader, one of the school's best lacrosse players and an outstanding swimmer on the elite Badgers swim team as well as a hotshot on the New York Extreme AAU age-group hoops travel team that played a fast-paced schedule across the metropolitan area and beyond. One of her travel team coaches felt she was a sure shot D1 athlete, even tried to get the McLoughlin family to move to her area so McKayla could play for a different local high school with a collegiate showcase schedule and a coach with a track record for helping talented players get D1 scholarships. The McLoughlins weren't interested in moving. But McKayla was attracted by the idea of moving on. So IYM was intriguing.
She listened to the pitch from a lot of schools during that initial IYM showcase day. And McKayla was among the first players to show up for the basketball showcase on that second day. "My kind of player, the first to show up for practice indicates they really want it," one of the coaches told Brian after watching McKayla hustle from the get-go. At the end of a grueling session of shooting, passing, rebounding, give-and-go and layup drills, that same coach noticed McKayla was among the last to leave.
McKayla McLoughlin with her little sister Piper at the Run 4 Roses Tournament in Louisville, Ky. this summer where she played for different New York Extreme travel basketball teams.Courtesy of Brian McLoughlin
"My kind of player, among the first to show up and the last to leave. That tells me they really want it," he said, introducing himself as the coach at Mercersburg. He was upfront, saying his school was a long way from home, but the team was a good one, played a good schedule, 20-25% of the recruited athletes wound up with college scholarships, and if they were interested enough to go to Mercersburg to take a look at the campus, he was interested in having McKayla play there.
Seeing is believing
So the McLoughlins drove to Mercersburg with McKayla and looked and liked what they saw from the moment they hit 100 Academy Dr. for their first view of the 300-acre former Marshall College campus—seven student residences and three main academic buildings housing 47 classrooms and labs; 10 playing fields (including a synthetic turf field); a gymnasium complex; a tennis center; a squash center; an outdoor track; and a 65,500-square-foot arts center. They quickly learned the independent college preparatory boarding and day high school enrolls approximately 444 students in grades 9–12, and they come from around the world, representing 36 nations and 27 American states and the District of Columbia. It offers 170 courses and 40 honors programs including Advanced Placement courses and post AP courses, with an average of 12 students in a class.
Its athletic teams play in the Ivy League-style Mid-Atlantic Prep League (MAPL), which includes Blair Academy, The Hill School, Lawrenceville School, Peddle School and The Hun School of Princeton. It offers 27 different sports, fields 45 teams, and 20 to 25% of its varsity athletes are recruited to play college ball. Its alumni have competed for professional teams including the Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles in Major League Baseball (MLB), the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers in the National Football League (NFL) and the Harlem Globetrotters while one of its grads holds the National Collegiate Athletic Association single game scoring record (138 points) in basketball.
The prep school’s distinguished alums include a Nobel Prize winner, nine Olympic gold medal winners, two Academy Award winners, two state governors, two Rhodes Scholars, a U.S. Congressman, the president of Ecuador, the general managers of the MLB Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Brewers, the owner of the NFL Indianapolis Colts and the presidents of the Baltimore Ravens and the Milan Football Club.
It also has an endowment of $397 million, making it one of the highest endowment-per-student independent schools in the country, with a history going back to its founding in 1893.
Heady stuff for smart kid
That's heady stuff for McKayla, a kid who excels in the classroom as well as on the playing fields and has dreamed of playing college ball for as long as she can remember because playing sports seems just like a family thing she was born to do. Her father, an electrician, was a five-sport athlete at Iona Prep and her mom, the former Kelly Somerville, was a cheerleader at Rye High School who became a nurse in White Plains.
"I'm just doing what comes naturally in my family," McKayla says. "I started out playing a lot of catch with my father in the backyard and everything developed from there."
McKayla McLoughlin with her older brother Aidan at a Liberty WNBA game at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.Courtesy of Brian McLoughlin
She grew up competing against her big brothers Aidan, 21, now a fireman in Rye, and Tiernan, 15, one of the captains of the Rams swim team as a junior as well as a talented lacrosse player. She also followed her bros around at their team practices, mimicking their moves from the sidelines. And she went to Rye Town Youth Football practices conducted by her father, who has been one of the prime movers behind Rye Town Youth Football for the past decade, exuding the kind of passion for the game that made him a standout as an Iona Prep LAX great who started for the varsity as a freshman and excelled from the get-go in the state championship game against St. Anthony's in the late 1990s.
McKayla even was a cheerleader at Rye Town flag football games, whirling through moves taught by her mom, the ex-Rye cheerleader-turned- nurse who is now also teaching the cheerleading basics to Piper, the family's youngest, who just graduated from King Street Elementary School and is entering the Middle School. But McKayla soon graduated from cheerleading on the sidelines to playing flag football herself. And then one day she was watching the Middle School football team practice with her grandfather Rob and he said: "McKayla, you could start at quarterback for that team next year, and I thought, ‘why not?’" McKayla said, recalling that conversation.
So she tried out, and she made the team as the quarterback as well as a defensive linebacker.
Run 4 Roses
She has kept right on competing throughout the summer, playing on three different New York Extreme AAU age group travel teams in the prestigious national Run 4 Roses Tournament in Louisville, Ky., playing up as point guard on two older teams as well as for her own regular age group team. That led to something of a logistics problem because the finals for the oldest team took place in late July, and the rains hit cancelling flights home, so the McLoughlins had to drive back to Port Chester to make big brother Kevin's graduation from the Fire Department Academy in Rye. That return gave McKayla time to compete in the American Yacht Club (AYC) championships in freestyle swimming. She made the AYC All-Conference Team after excelling in relay and individual events before boarding a plane back to Kentucky to play in the Run 4 Roses hoop finals for the Extreme's oldest age group team. That's how competitive McKayla is.
There is another side to McKayla as well. It is hinted at in part of Brian's email address: the part that reads "Ireland always." "There is a proud side to the first generation Irish, and we don't like to be told what we can or can't do," said Brian, who spent his boyhood summers working on relatives’ farms in Ireland's County Cork. That side has emerged in McKayla's determination to take her game to the next level in and out of the classroom so she can have her best chance at playing D1 ball someday.
The Ostrowski sisters, Brooklyn and Madison, did it by staying at home in Port Chester, becoming Lady Ram all-time great softball and basketball players and winning D1 athletic scholarships to Villanova. Heckel, one of the best basketball players in Lady Ram history, took the prep school transfer route to LuHi en route to USC. McKayla is following in Heckel's prep school transfer footsteps. She thinks Mercersburg can help her take the next step. And she is bent on proving that she can take it from there all the way to D1. When the Celtic Tigress makes up her mind to do something, she won't be denied.
McKayla is willing to take the risk and intends to find out how far she can go.
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