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Featuring a cover photo of Marissa Mills, the April 2011 issue of USA Lacrosse Magazine posed the question, “Is Adelphi college lacrosse’s most dominant team?”

It was certainly a fair question, given that the Panthers were chasing their third straight NCAA Division II national championship that season and waltzed into April with a 6-0 record that included five blow-out victories.

Mills, a junior midfielder at the time, was one of the stars fueling the juggernaut, having already contributed as a starter on championship squads in her first two campaigns.

“There’s no doubt, we were the most dominant team,” Mills Brown said recently. “That went back to the way we practiced every day. We went full out all the time. It was a great group. We actually felt like we got a break on game day.”

The 2011 Adelphi team did indeed capture a third straight NCAA title and finished the year undefeated with a 20-0 record. The Panthers averaged over 21 goals per game that season and boasted a winning margin of over 16 goals per game.

Adelphi’s 17-4 victory over Limestone in the final game established a new record for largest margin of victory in the Division II women’s championship game. Mills contributed to that record with four goals and was one of five Panther players named to the NCAA’s All-Tournament Team.

“Hosting the final four in 2011 made that championship even more special for us,” Mills Brown said. “It was just a blast.”

The following season, with Mills serving as one of the senior team captains, Adelphi won its first five games before having its 30-game winning streak halted with a one-goal loss against conference rival Le Moyne. Another archrival, C.W. Post, then ended the chase for a fourth straight title by upsetting the Panthers 14-11 in the NCAA tournament’s first round.

“I was pretty bitter after that loss,” Mills Brown said. “When you’ve had the level of success that we’d had, anything short of a championship is not a successful year.”

As a four-year starter, Mills helped Adelphi to a cumulative 73-4 record over her career, with two undefeated seasons, three NCAA championships and four conference championships.

Even before graduating, Mills had also started down a coaching path, serving with the highly regarded Yellow Jackets club program while she was still at Adelphi. It seemed like a logical step for Mills, who was the product of a true lacrosse family.

Brown’s father, Ray Mills, was an All-America defender at Hofstra in the 1970s, and in 2008, he became the fourth African-American inducted into the Long Island Metropolitan Lacrosse Foundation Hall of Fame. Her younger sister, Felicia, joined Marissa at Adelphi in 2012 and eventually became a two-time national champion and two-time All-American. Ray Mills coached both of his daughters during some of their youth and high school seasons on Long Island.

“He was demanding, but we always had the Slurpee rule,” said Mills Brown, an Islip, N.Y. native. “After a game or tournament, we would always get a Slurpee or cold beverage before we ever talked about the game or reviewed our performance. That was so positive.”

Mills is now married to an active-duty West Point graduate, Malcolm, and is the mother of an energetic 3-year-old, Nathaniel. The military life has taken the Browns all around the country in recent years. At each stop along the way, from Oklahoma to Texas to Colorado, Mills Brown has retained her connection with the game.

“Lacrosse has always been the constant,” Mills Brown said. “I’ve tried to stay involved with the game because it’s something that I really love.”

The same military life that steered her family around the country came full circle in 2020, bringing them back to Long Island. Mills Brown is now in her second season as an assistant coach at Molloy College, with full responsibility for the Lions’ defense.

“It’s been different to see and be a part of another Division II program on Long Island,” she said. “But I still use some of the same lessons, like practicing with pace and purpose, that I learned at Adelphi.”

As for that 2011 magazine cover, which was one of the first ones to feature a Black female player, Mills Brown says that it’s still making an impact.

“I can’t tell you how many times young girls have reached out to me because of that and shared their pride in seeing somebody like themselves playing the sport,” she said. “Representation is important and definitely leaves an impact. It’s exciting to see more diversity in the game, but there’s still more work to do.”