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APRIL 10 - 16, 2025
Myles Brown makes history Swimmer earns Academy Charter its first Division-I scholarship By JEFFREY BESSEN jbessen@liherald.com
Courtesy Karen Johnson
PTSA Student Representative Jayleen Pacheco and Isley Brapham sang at the 2025 Multicultural Night at Lawrence Road Middle School.
Multicultural Night returns to LRMS By JOSEPH D’ALESSANDRO jdalessandro@liherald.com
Students, teachers and parents celebrated the retur n of Lawrence Road Middle School’s Multicultural Night with live music, dances and culturally influenced dishes on March 28. Multicultural Night’s role as an annual
tradition was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. This year marks its return to LRMS, allowing staff and students to show off their talents in poetry, performance and cooking for their peers. LRMS’ Parent Teacher Student Association brought together community members from all backgrounds to contribute to MulCoNTINued oN PAge 2
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 spor t 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 star ted 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 star ted 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 CoNTINued oN PAge 4