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Field hockey and lacrosse.
Outside of her family, the two sports define the life of Heather Miller.
The Norwich resident will bring her love for both to Woodstock Academy beginning this spring.
She was recently named the head coach of the girls’ lacrosse team beginning this spring and field hockey in the fall for the Centaurs.
“I’m excited,” Miller said. “I really do like routine and I love consistency. A new environment, a new atmosphere is good, but I do want to put roots down somewhere. Twenty years in the Navy, I had to change where I was coaching every three years and that was not enough to establish roots and put my stamp on something. I really want to take the time to be somewhere and grow a program and that will take season after season. I want to be somewhere that is the same, because everywhere else I coach is never the same.”
Miller’s husband is now out of the Navy and they have chosen to settle in Connecticut allowing her the time to establish those roots.
She has been coaching high school athletic teams for the last eight years.
Interestingly, this will be the first time she coaches the two sports, field hockey and lacrosse, at the same institution.
But her resume goes much beyond the high school realm.
She is also the coach of the HTC field hockey club in Madison and beyond even that, is a coach with both the USA Field Hockey and USA Lacrosse National Development Training programs, the pathway to Team USA and the Olympics in both sports.
She does that throughout the spring and summer, especially on weekends, but will have time to devote to the Woodstock girls’ lacrosse program.
“My USA directors tell me to concentrate on (the high school program) first because we have a group of coaches. It’s a group of five or six of us who share duties,” Miller said.
Miller’s love for field hockey began early.
She started to play the sport in fourth grade in Virginia.
In high school, she joined the lacrosse program as well.
She was offered a scholarship to play field hockey for Virginia Wesleyan but turned that down in favor of a scholarship to play Div. I lacrosse at Longwood University in Farmville, Va.
There, she became a two-sport athlete as Longwood also asked her to play field hockey for the school.
She became an educator and a coach and has coached both sports ever since.
But coaching both at one school is something she is looking forward to.
“It gives me more time for me to do what I need to do, more time to make connections and cultivate relationships which is super important to me,” Miller said. “I’m the same coach in lacrosse that I am in field hockey. It’s just the skill sets and rules are different but my philosophy, my expectations and no-nonsense type of style are the same. I coach with the loving hand of discipline. I discipline because I care. (Athletes) represent the school, represent me, represent the sport, so there will be discipline where needed but never without love and encouragement.”
One thing that she has found to be different is the state of the two sports in Connecticut as opposed to where she grew up in Virginia.
Both girls’ lacrosse and field hockey lack the drawing power of more established sports such as soccer and basketball in Connecticut and that is not only the case for athletes.
“It just blows my mind because lacrosse is everywhere (in Virginia) and Virginia is not even Maryland when it comes to lacrosse. Field hockey is bigger than lacrosse in Virginia although lacrosse is growing. Maybe that was naïve of me when I came to Connecticut, even for coaching opportunities, I was like,’Where are they?’,” Miller said.
That’s one of the reasons why when she first comes on board, the plan is simple: Focus on the fundamentals.
Many young student-athletes have not even been exposed to either sport when they sign up to play.
“My whole basis of coaching is fundamentals, that’s part of my philosophy. You cannot progress if you do not master the fundamentals of each of those sports. Everything that is “fancy”, everything that is advanced or really cool to watch these players do would not have happened if they did not know the fundamentals,” Miller said.
To help solve the problem, Miller has asked if there is interest in offseason activities for the two sports.
“We’re looking at doing camps and clinics. Whether it is a Woodstock Academy camp or clinic for youth development or high-school aged girls or middle school girls. I’m also going to see if we can bring USA-type development to the school and area, too,” Miller said.
Marc Allard
Director of Sports Information
The Woodstock Academy
caption:
Heather Miller will be coaching two programs at the same school for the first time in her lengthy coaching career as she will guide the Woodstock Academy girls lacrosse and field hockey programs. Photo by Marc Allard.
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