Senior Lee Dort is looking forward to becoming a Commodore this fall for Vanderbilt University, where he will play basketball for Coach Jerry Stackhouse.

Dort was born in Haiti, a country in the Caribbean, with a population of 11 million people. His journey from being born in another country to coming to a private school in Texas is a very unique experience.

Dort looked on the positive side of things when talking about the opportunity of coming to school at Greenhill.

“I was born in Haiti, a rough country, and coming to America, I think was a great opportunity for me to get a better education,” Dort said.

Dort has not been able to get the whole four-year experience that the typical Greenhill Upper School student gets, but he has been loved by teachers and classmates.

“Lee is very chill, very calm, he usually keeps his thoughts to himself, and he is very well-liked by everyone,” Dort’s advisor Jacobo Luna-Cruz said.

Dort was first introduced to his advisory in his junior year. The advisory had already gotten to know each other the past two years, so Dort didn’t know his advisory, as well as some of his other friends, did, but this didn’t bother Dort.

“At the beginning, he was new to the community, new to the class and new to us [Luna advisory],” Luna said.

He committed to Vanderbilt back in November of 2021 by signing his letter of intent alongside one of his fellow teammates, senior Noah Shelby, who is also committed to Vanderbilt.

“I knew Vanderbilt was the right college for me. They have a great education system and the coaches when they recruited me were really nice and made me feel like Vanderbilt was the right place for me,” he said when asked why he chose Vanderbilt over those other colleges.

Vanderbilt was not the only option on his list of potential colleges he would go to. He had offers from universities such as Arizona State University, University of Arkansas, University of Auburn and Baylor University.

Freshman Francis Chukudebelu is also one of Lee’s teammates that played with him this past year on their impressive season in the Southwest Preparatory Conference (SPC).

Dort first arrived at Greenhill in his junior year but was ruled ineligible for his first season at Greenhill restricting him from playing due to the SPC rules of eligibility. Though he was missing a season, the Greenhill Boys Varsity Basketball team only played a few games due to COVID-19.

The senior year for a high school student is arguably the most important and favorite year because of the much-anticipated events and college. Dort along with other seniors around the country was fortunate to be able to experience his final year of playing high school sports when much of the past two seasons had been canceled due to COVID-19.

“I’m excited for Lee to go off to college and to play D1 basketball, but at the same time, I’m going to miss him because he’s like a big brother to me,” Chukwudebelu said.