Chapter closed
After a long, stressful recruiting season, Cibola High’s Amaya Brown chooses FSU
The worst part of this carnival is over for Amaya Brown. A majority of great athletes would tell you that they are most comfortable in their own skin, most at ease, most purely fulfilled, when they are in uniform. When every-day distractions are set aside, their heads are cleared of debris, and they are free to do what comes so naturally.
As of Wednesday afternoon of this week, Brown is free to return to that realm.
Cibola High’s Brown, hailed as one of the top guards in the country in the Class of 2018, on Wednesday ended a fouryear-long recruiting process when she committed to play basketball for Florida State.
“This,” she said, “has been a long, hard journey.”
You could almost sense the relief Brown was feeling Wednesday after she’d finished an unusually large, live-TV announcement at the ProView Networks downtown studio. Surrounded by several dozen friends and family, and with multiple cameras pointed in her direction, Brown looked uneasy and admitted to nerves as she chose the Seminoles over UCLA. Media attention makes for some unwieldy baggage.
The spotlight is not where Brown thrives. Gym lights, yes. TV lights, not so much. To be fair, few teenagers navigate them well.
Still, the 17-year-old, 5-foot-11 Brown clearly relished having her loved ones and support group at her hip to celebrate this moment. She clearly hated having to endure this last media blitz in what has been an ongoing chase by media types who have documented her every move.
“I would describe it as stressful,” Brown said of the never-ending attention.
But this part is over, even if she remains technically on the market until she signs her national letter of intent in a few months.
So now, Brown can transition back to what created all this ruckus in the first place, which is her very attractive skill set. Talents that led her to start having conversations with the likes of Florida State and Louisville even before she enrolled for her first class at Cibola.
She led the Cougars to a state championship as a freshman, and into the state final as a sophomore. She missed her entire junior season after suffering a knee injury last July with her club team in Texas.
Which introduces another piece to this puzzle, something that actually enhances Brown’s aura.
On top of the nonstop recruitment grind, Brown was simultaneously presented with an additional major obstacle: rehabilitating her damaged knee.
“It was really tough,” she said. “Especially the physical therapy. I didn’t take a day off.”
She wanted to return at the end of last season, but that timetable proved optimistic. She only returned to the court in late April with Texas Elite, her adidas club team.
“Mentally, you have to be tough,” said Brown’s mother, Catina Dunn, “and she is mentally tough. She knew what she had to do.”
Brown admitted to some anxiety about her future when the injury first occurred, but any fear she had quickly was squashed by the schools who’ve been wearing out that recruiting trail.
“When I got hurt, I thought coaches would stop contacting me,” she said. “But they said it happens all the time, and they said I would come back stronger than ever. And that’s what happened.”
Her former club coach, Robert Sanchez, told me on Wednesday that Brown could easily become a star in the WNBA. “If she continues her development, absolutely,” he said.
Brown, too, expressed ambitions beyond college. That will play out in due course, although not for a while. She still has a senior season at Cibola coming up, and she won’t arrive in Tallahassee to join an NCAA Tournament-caliber women’s program until late summer of 2018.
A week from today, she leaves for Italy for a 10-day event with a USA Select team, also chosen through adidas. And when she returns from Europe, she is off, almost immediately, to Washington state, where adidas has invited the top players on its circuit to an All-American camp.
Her national profile, already prominent, should surely grow during these next few weeks as she travels the globe.
This part of the carnival, Amaya Brown is only too happy to partake.