Monday, April 21, 2025
Myles Brown is a competitive swimmer who aims to finish first. He also had a dream to land a Division I scholarship in his sport, and he not only achieved that lofty goal, but he is also the first athlete in Hempstead Academy Charter School history to do so.
In an online statement, Brown bills himself as the “hardest worker in the room,” and it’s not a boast.
“Myles is the most hardworking student I know,” said Taenika Sands-Hendricks, his coach at Charter since the swimming program was established four years ago. “He is the hardest worker because he is in a sport where people didn’t see people that looked like him. He says, ‘I’m a swimmer, I’m an athlete with something to prove.’”
Not only inspired by his Jamaican heritage, Brown is moved by the memory of a younger cousin — Khloe Lindsay —who was 2 when she drowned in a hotel swimming pool in 2012.
“I had already started swimming, I went to Florida for the funeral — it motivated me,” Brown said. “I had a purpose. Not just my ethnicity. I owe it to her.”
Beginning in the school as a kindergartner, he learned how to swim, and became a competitive swimmer. From 2015-16 to 2022-23, Brown swam for the Nu-Finmen Swim Club, based in Massapequa, and since then the Garden city-based Long Island Aquatics Club as well as the Academy Charter Panthers.
Practice is routine in sports, but typically for high school athletes not at 5 a.m. Waking up at 4 a.m., Brown usually eats three pancakes, drinks some juice and heads out roughly 30 minutes later for the half-hour drive to the Nassau County Aquatic Center in East Meadow’s Eisenhower Park.
“I try to be the hardest worker — I wanted to become a Division I athlete,” he said. “I wasn’t always the fastest. I tried my best and started doing well and moved up to consistently more practices.”
Brown began taking part in doubles — two practices a day — at 5 a.m. and 6 p.m.
“It’s a commitment, “ he said. “Whether I’m really sore or coming from a meet, I always have to work.”
That work is also coupled with the longer school day of a charter school compared with the typical public school day. Since kindergarten, Brown’s dismissal time has been 3:45 p.m.
“Myles is a resilient kid,” said Academy Charter athletic director Ty Scarlett, who noted the indelible impact that losing his cousin had on Brown.
“He took it to be a great swimmer and a better student,” Scarlett added of Brown, who was one of his kindergarten students. “He is a humble, nice, genuine young man who works hard. He gets after it.”
The hard work blends with Brown’s ability to lead. He recruited friends for the charter school’s first swim team four years ago. Ryan Halls, Jeremy McKenzie, Nigel Basknight, Brent Ali Jr., Alex Byfield and Shequane Henry are among the swimmers Brown enlisted to be Panthers.
“Either you have it or you don’t — he was one of those (leaders),” Sands-Hendricks said. “Since ninth grade, Myles was my first captain, and he first started to get his peers hyped about the sport. To show his leadership, he recruited kids he knew from the neighborhood that he knew could swim. By his junior year we had 15 kids. That’s a lot of kids for a charter school. We started with four kids.”
The 50- and 100-yard freestyle and butterfly are Brown’s specialties, along with team relays. Except for relays, swimming is an individual sport, but there is a support group that includes Brown’s mother, Jacqueline Lindsay, his LIAC coaches, Mike Lennon and Dave Ferris, and Sands-Hendricks.
“I wouldn’t be here without her at all,” Brown said of Sands-Hendricks. “She opened my eyes. She pushed me and motivated me to do my best.”
For Sands-Hendricks, learning how much Brown wanted to attain a Division I scholarship was a coach’s dream.
“He’s super competitive,” she said. “When I first met
Myles he said, ‘I’m going Division I.’ I watched his growth. He was putting in the work. ‘Coach Sands, can I meet with you. Can you give me a new workout?’ He’s that kid. It’s rare.”
Brown said he was “honored” when was offered a scholarship by Manhattan College, and Sands-Hendricks said she cried.
Getting acquainted with Brown through the recruiting process, Brian Hansbury, the Jaspers’ men’s and women’s swim coach, noted that Myles was “focused” and asked the “right questions.”
“He is a great young man with a good head on his shoulders,” Hansbury said. “I really look forward to having him start, and I’m looking for him to be the next great Jasper, and a new face of swimming and diving.”
