NORFOLK, VA (WTKR)- Last month, the Old Dominion women's basketball team gave back to the community, wrapping gifts for foster children at Tidewater Friends of Foster Care. That experience hit a little bit closer to home for Monarch freshman center Mikayla Brown.
"My mom kind of just packed up the stuff and left," Brown recalled.
The sophomore, who hails from Dallas, Texas, spent about a year in the foster system as a sophomore in high school. She was fortunate, as her foster family was a relative of a high school teammate.
"Her name was Miss Bridget," the ODU freshman said. "She came in and she decided to help me and take me in."
This kept Brown from having to change schools. She could remain on her high school team and would not have to move away from her friends. But even with a caring environment and a strong support system, plenty of challenges were still present.
"To see everybody else have mom and dad at home or mom and dad bring them to a tournament or mom and dad do this, it was just challenging in that way," she remembered.
"It just hits you in the heart when you see where she's been to where she is," added Old Dominion head coach Delisha Milton-Jones. "She's a success story."
A success story, one that's helped to shape the freshman center. Brown said that her home life "wasn't ideal" at times during high school, but she's used her experiences to build herself up.
"It's made me stronger," the Monarch freshman noted. "It's made me sit back and watch more, it's made me observe people a little differently. I feel like it's made me smarter in a way, also, so it's made me the person who I am today."
"She didn't allow her moments of defeat to define her," Milton-Jones pointed out. "She didn't succumb to the environment that she was within and allow it to beat her down. She allowed herself to see and understand that that's not her and that's not good, but how can I make good on this."
A big part of getting through the tough times was basketball, a place to escape any drama or difficulties from the outside world and focus on her craft.
"Just coming in with a different group of girls every day, seeing new faces, seeing old faces, it was just basketball that pushed me to get through those tough situations," Brown noted.
Now Mikayla is getting ready for her first season at the college level with the Monarchs. While trusting people may not be the easiest thing for her to do, it's her trust in Milton-Jones that lured her from deep in the heart of Texas to Coastal Virginia.
"She was honest, straightforward," Brown recalled of her coach during the recruiting process. "She didn't really sugarcoat anything and I like people like that."
"That's a huge part of the relationship that we try to build with every player- having that trust factor, them being able to come to me at their hardest moments, at their best moments, knowing that it's a safe place," said Milton-Jones.
It's a place Mikayla can call home for the next four years, grow as a basketball player and as a person, and maybe inspire someone else who has his/her own rough waters to navigate to keep going.
"Stay strong," she said of any advice she'd give others. "See it through because it's just a small time in your life that is not going to last forever, so just stay strong and see it through."
Mikayla and Old Dominion tip off their 2022-2023 campaign on November 7 at Florida-Gulf Coast.
