Intern of the Week: Ayla Brown

Boston College basketball player Ayla Brown is starring in 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat' this summer. Herb Philpott

By Reeves Wiedeman

Every Friday this summer, SIOC will feature a college-aged kid who's spending his or her time away from school at a cool, coveted internship. While Ayla Brown's stint in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat isn't technically an internship, it's cool enough that we're bending the rules and making her our Intern of the Week.

In fifth grade, Ayla Brown wrote a story about her dream job. She wanted to fly her own plane to a WNBA game, sing the national anthem, then slip into her No. 1 jersey and score 40 points.

"I used to laugh at her," says Gail Brown, Ayla's mother. "Now I'm waiting for her to come home with a pilot's license."

Brown isn't flying yet, but the Boston College women's basketball starter and former American Idol finalist has added another talent to her repertoire this summer: starring in a professional production of the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. With workouts in the morning and rehearsals at night, this summer is yet another battle in Brown's struggle to balance her playing and performing lives -- a struggle that wouldn't exist if Simon Cowell had had his way.

"I would absolutely say no," Cowell, Idol's prickly judge, told a national television audience after hearing Brown's rendition of Ain't No Mountain High Enough at the Idol auditions.

But after telling the judges about her basketball career -- and her ability to take constructive criticism from coaches -- they sent her through.

"We didn't realize what she had until American Idol," said Gail, who waited in line for 18 hours at the Gillette Stadium audition. "She kept making it through the rounds and we were like, 'Geez, you think she can really sing?' Because she was such a good athlete, we never looked for other talents."

The Browns could be forgiven for seeing Ayla and thinking athlete. Six-feet tall in sixth grade, the two-time Massachusetts Gatorade Player of the Year racked up 2,358 career points and 1,152 rebounds and at age 15 became the youngest women's basketball player to commit to BC. A three-sport athlete like her father Scott, a former college basketball player at Tufts, Brown even captained the boy's football team in middle school.

"She would kick their butts all over the field," says Scott, a Massachusetts state congressman. "After the games she'd take off her helmet and her long, brown hair would come flying out. The other boys would literally start crying."

Ayla's singing talent wasn't quite as obvious. Her parents noticed a three-year old Ayla's ability to memorize songs from the Disney movies they showed, but thought nothing of it. The Browns received notes from teachers saying "We love Ayla, but she won't stop singing." It was only at the urging of Ayla's aunt that Gail even agreed to take her daughter to the Idol tryout at Gillette Stadium at all.

After finishing 13th on American Idol at just 17-years-old, Brown had earned enough national air time go from earning $25 dollars to sing the national anthem at high school basketball games to singing for Tom Brady and 68,756 of her fellow New Englanders. She sang at Fenway Park and with the Boston Pops on the July 4, and was the Boston Celtics lucky charm for two Game Seven wins (she was on call should the Finals go the distance). Maryland women's basketball coach Brenda Frese even asked Brown to sing before a game at Maryland after being "blown away" when Brown sang the anthem at a BC v. Maryland game in Boston.