By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
For much of four decades, keeping track of Chris Miller’s coaching ventures could be a chore, first at Eastern Alamance and then at Southern Alamance.
He’s retiring at the end of the week from Southern, but he’s expected to resurface with the Patriots’ football program in the summer.
“I can say I got to do what I wanted to do and that’s coach,” Miller said.
His coaching duties recently have been as a football assistant coach.
Miller has spent more than 20 years at Southern, where during that span at one time or another he has been a head coach for softball, girls’ basketball, boys’ basketball and, on an interim basis, football.
Southern athletics director Stephanie Smith said Miller had been ready to fill in when needs arose.
“He coached everything,” Smith said. “If the kids needed a coach, he’s going to step in.”
Miller, 64, is a 1980 Eastern graduate, playing football and baseball.
His coaching got rolling in 1986 with the baseball team at Broadview Middle School in Burlington before shifting to Mebane, where he coached several sports at Woodlawn Middle School as a colleague of future longtime Eastern football coach and athletics director John Kirby.
That eventually led to Miller’s role as softball coach at Eastern for 12 years. Included in that was a tricky 2002-03 school year when he was on the football staff at Southern and then in the spring coached the Eastern softball team.
“I’ve been at Southern ever since,” he said. “. . . It has been fantastic between both schools.”
In the fall of 2012, the Patriots had an opening for a girls’ basketball coach, so Miller was there to take the reins. Later, Smith said she was happy that her son, Maddux Smith, was able to play on Miller’s boys’ basketball team.
“He makes everything better,” Smith said. “The kids love him. He instills discipline and they understand that.”
Miller’s connections are wide in the coaching ranks. When Southeast Alamance faced Eastern last week in girls’ basketball, he held ties to both coaching staffs. He was a colleague and assistant to Southeast coach Amy Sarratt when she was at Southern, while he was Eastern coach LeConnda Curry’s softball coach when she was an Eastern student.
Miller has coached in the North Carolina East-West All-Star Game for football.
After sitting out the required six months following retirement as a full-time physical education teacher, Miller intends to be on the Southern football practice field by August.
“That’s the plan,” he said.
