When the new sheriff, a.k.a. Coach Lynn Miller, rolled into town this spring, she rocked the Kearsarge boys’ tennis team onto its heels.
“Initially it was a little rough for all of us,” senior captain Jack Van Etten said. “Kearsarge tennis really hasn’t been an intense sport in past years. But then Coach came in and from day one we realized this wasn’t going to be a season like our past.”
Miller, 64, arrived at Kearsarge with more than 35 years of college coaching experience and a litany of accolades and honors to go along with it. She inherited a Kearsarge team that went 6-8 last year, is 32-27 over the last five years and hasn’t made the playoffs since 2011. But, like Van Etten said, this season isn’t going to be like one of those past seasons. The Cougars have started 4-0 and have their eyes set on a Division III tournament berth.
“Someone with her experience level and knowledge and ability to connect with young people, that’s going to make a big difference in a Division III program that has had a number of different coaches in recent years (four in four years),” said Dave Page, the Concord High boys’ tennis coach who has known Miller for years through her recruiting efforts and as a mixed doubles partner. “I think it’s a terrific fit and I’m not surprised at all that they’re taking the Division III world by storm.”
Miller, 64, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and her family moved to the Long Island suburbs when she was 8. If there was a free athletic class at the local recreation center, she took it. She taught herself to play tennis with library books and long hours against a wall.
Miller’s connection to New Hampshire began when she went to Plymouth State in 1970. She was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1989 after a career that saw her become, like it says in her Hall of Fame biography blurb, Plymouth State’s “first, and only, five-sport athlete.”
Miller played field hockey, basketball, lacrosse, women’s tennis (she won the New England doubles title in 1972 with Lil Peltz) and, in 1973, she played on the men’s tennis team. She also was an alternate on the ski team (which actually makes her a six-sport athlete, but who’s counting) and when she injured herself on the slopes before the spring of her senior season, she helped coach the men’s tennis team with a cast on her leg.
After graduating from Plymouth State in 1974, Miller got a Master’s Degree at Penn State, worked at Hofstra University in New York, at Averett University in Virginia and then landed at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., in 1980 as the women’s tennis coach.
Miller stayed at Wheaton until 2015. During that time she began the men’s tennis team in 1989 and coached it until last year. She also recruited and coached several Concord High products during that time, including John Hayes, Tom Sanderson, Nick Potter and Jeff Selesnick.
In addition to being in the Plymouth State Athletics Hall of Fame, Miller is in the Wheaton Athletic Hall of Fame and the United States Tennis Association New England Hall of Fame. She won nine Coach of the Year awards during her time at Wheaton, posted a 373-236-2 record as the women’s tennis coach and was 259-160 as the men’s tennis coach.
Miller also served as Wheaton’s director of athletics (1986-88), women’s basketball coach (1980-84), the intramurals director (1990-97), the sports information director (1991-93), facilities manager (1993-2000) and as an instructor in the physical education department (1980-2004).
All that work took a toll on Miller’s health. She had a heart attack in 2009. In 2013, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 endometrial cancer, which she beat.
But none of it stopped her from coaching. Miller missed just a couple weeks after her heart attack, which happened just before the spring season, and then came back to finish the men’s tennis season. In 2013, she kept coaching while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments and wound up winning the 2013 Women’s Tennis Coach of the Year award in the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference.
Fittingly, Wheaton named an award after its former coach, the Lynn Miller Inspiration Award, “given to an individual who has inspired Wheaton athletics in some way,” according to the school’s website.
It also seems fitting that Miller was ready to retire after the 2015 spring season. She had bought a piece of land in Sutton, “when I was just a young thing, got it dirt cheap,” she said, and 10 years ago she put a house on that land to use during her ski excursions (she’s an avid racer who managed more than 90 days on the mountain even during this snow-starved winter). And last year she decided she would come to Sutton full time.
The Kearsarge boys’ tennis position happened to open after Miller had already made her New Hampshire retirement plans, and the two fit together nicely.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not, but it’s really working out,” Miller said as she was coming back from an away match on the team bus. “And I can say this in front of them, this is a great bunch of guys. I love coaching them. I know some of them don’t always love me, I’m on them all the time to get better, but they’re a classy group of guys. Probably the most sportsman-like team I’ve ever coached.”
Miller conditions her team at practice (something new for Kearsarge tennis), has changed basic techniques, started working on varied strategies and began voluntary weekend practices.
“I think everyone was kind of intimidated at first,” said junior Tyler Valovic, Kearsarge’s No. 1 player. “But now we all appreciate how much she cares.”
Van Etten, the No. 3 player, said that thanks to Miller’s approach, “our depth has grown tremendously … we have three players that aren’t in the top six but I would be comfortable playing with any of them now.” Valovic, a year-round player, said Miller is as good as any of the other pros he’s worked with and that she, “really gets down to the nitty gritty, the little details.”
The Cougars are currently one of three undefeated teams in D-III along with Gilford (7-0) and Littleton (2-0). Miller knows it will be a lot to ask of these Cougars to compete with the likes of Gilford, which has won five of the last six D-III titles, but she thinks it won’t be too long before Kearsarge can challenge the top teams.
“I’ve seen the playoffs here because every year I’d be up in New Hampshire recruiting, so I’ve seen some of the teams that are in states, and I think we’ll be close to that as a team next year,” Miller said.
But that doesn’t mean the Cougars aren’t aiming for the playoffs this spring.
“That’s the plan,” Van Etten said, “and I think with Coach here now, everyone on the team has bought into that.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or at tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twinner @timosullivan20.)