This is going to sound strange and maybe a little bit crazy. Football may have been the least of the ways Jeff Miller helped the Rockdale community.
What? Isn’t he leaving as the winner of more football games than any RHS head coach in history (106)? He also coached the most seasons (14), the most games (167) and took RHS to the post season the most times (12).
Then there’s the little matter of the 2017 state football championship.
But if you want to know why it hurts so much for Rockdale to lose Miller as a person, look back to the remarks he made in AT&T Stadium on a historic evening in 2017 when he addressed that state championship Tiger team, as their coach, for the final time.
His parting words: “Thank you for what you did for so many people.”
That’s not to say Miller wasn’t ecstatic about winning a state title. Any coach would be. But he fully recognized the impact of such a title for the community and how badly Rockdale needed something so positive at that time.
Luminant had just announced its closing and the father of a Tiger player had unexpectedly died. Miller knew that title had implications far beyond wins and losses.
He has always embraced the role athletics plays in the life of a community. The first important service Miller performed for Rockdale? He stayed.
Even with the 10-year tenure of Casey Creghan figured in, when Miller arrived in 2006 Rockdale had said “hello” and “good-bye” to 10 head coaches in 36 years. Seven of them stayed two years or less, two never coached a game.
Miller did more than not leave for a decade and a half. He established a culture of stability and it was winning stability. You can only imagine the effect on a seventh grader just entering the RISD sports program to believe the same leader will be there when he or she is a senior.
Then, of course, there’s the Rockdale Athletic Hall of Honor. Let’s unequivocally state it would never have happened without Jeff Miller. It was his idea, he nourished it and cared about its impact far beyond sports.
He always brought his teams—on football Fridays—to meet the inductees before the banquet. “I want them to be around true greatness, to meet those people and see what can be accomplished,” he said.
He truly recognized what it meant for the inductees, too. The Hall of Honor inducted a number of Rockdale and Aycock athletes not many months prior to their deaths. In one sad case an inductee passed away just a few days before the awards banquet.
And this tells you a lot about Miller. When the Hall of Honor Committee sprung a surprise two years ago and inducted him, he was shocked. Genuinely. It simply hadn’t occurred to him.
But a lot about Jeff Miller has been occurring to folks around Rockdale since word of his returning to his alma mater, Cypress-Fairbanks, was made public last Wednesday.
Good luck, coach. You will be missed. And thanks.—M.B.
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