As she leaned into her senior year as a Mercy High School basketball star, Milan Brown had several important things on her plate.
Two of the issues she had to face stood above the rest.
While the 5-foot-7 senior guard honed her significant skills on the court, she was also working feverishly to complete another project that very few people her age would consider — getting her first book, “Stepping into History, A VR Adventure,” published in time for Black History Month.
Deadlines for both goals — setting Mercy’s all-time scoring standard and participating in her first book-signing — came to a head in three games played the first week of February.
Early that week, the Wake Forest University basketball commit poured in 41 and 48 points in losses to Archbishop Spalding High School in Severn and Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Essex, respectively, helping her to surpass Rosemary Kosiorek Meyer’s 37-year-old school-record of 1,932 points.
The setbacks, however, sealed the Magic’s fate of being unable to land an Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference playoff berth.
Even so, with one more game remaining in a brilliant high school career, Brown still needed 33 points to reach the vaunted 2,000-point plateau against St. Vincent Pallotti High School in Laurel before making her debut as an author the following day at Avenue Kitchen Restaurant and Bar in Hampden.
Brown’s precision, scoring exactly 33 points, and then signing her book less than 24 hours later, show a rare ability to focus on separate facets of her life.
On the basketball side, Brown, who attended Immaculate Heart of Mary School in Baynesville before Mercy in Baltimore, said that she was aware of how many points she needed going into the final game.
“And I hoped to reach it,” said Brown, a member of Mercy’s Catherine McAuley Honors Program and the Law and Social Action Program. “But only in the confines of helping the team achieve the ultimate goal of winning the game.”
Meeting a deadline for publisher McBride Collection of Stories proved that her desire to succeed on another front is every bit as strong as her quest to excel on the court.
To say the least, the book project kept Brown busy during the winter break.
She said that she was helped by an editor when “roadblocks” appeared in a narrative of a field trip for Baltimore middle school students — at what she calls Unity Academy — centering on their interaction with Black historical figures while using virtual reality goggles.
The nuts and bolts of the writing process while sharing an electronic document allowed a New York-based editor to be “working on the last page while I was writing the next one,” said Brown, noting that the book took about two and a half months to complete..
A love of history, “specifically Black history, learning about people who look like me, who did amazing things,” spurred Brown to pitch the story over the phone to the publisher in New York. “I noticed that a lot of Black kids don’t know much about Black historical figures, and I’m hoping that some of those kids can be intrigued by learning more about them.”
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Barack Obama, choreographer Alvin Ailey Jr. and astronaut Mae C. Jemison are just a few of the 13 Black luminaries included in the book.
Fortunately for the young author, the publisher “jumped on board with the idea,” she said. “He thought there was a need for a pre-teen book like that. It was a challenge to write for a younger audience, but he helped me find the right verbiage.”
While things like deadlines, revisions and corrections had Brown’s rapt attention, those obligations never deterred her from putting up what Mercy athletic director Nick Gill calls “video-game numbers” this winter while averaging an impressive 31 points and 14 rebounds per game.
Mercy coach George Panageotou and the Magic were happy to see Brown finish her career with such a crowning achievement.
“You always want one of your players to break a record like that,” he said. “She’s been our best player since she walked into the building as a freshman.”
In her rookie year with the Magic, Brown was coached by another Mercy legend — Mary Ella Marion, whose 1987 Catholic League champions played in what was then known as the Fuel Fund Game to vie for the Baltimore-area championship.
Marion added that Brown and Kosiorek Meyer, who went on to have a terrific basketball career at West Virginia University, share several positive attributes.
“They’re both very aggressive — slashers, who handle the ball well,” Marion said. “And they’re very similar in the amount of time they put into working on their game in non-high school practices and games.”
Panageotou said his star has improved every year with the Magic.
“Her game is much cleaner now,” he added, noting that Brown also totaled more than 1,000 rebounds at Mercy. “She has developed a very good step-back jumper and can score at all three levels.”
Brown said she never tried to put career accomplishments over helping her team succeed.
“I trust in the hard work I put in when no one is watching,” she said. “And I hope it translates to the game.”
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