MYERSTOWN, Pa. — After leading the ELCO football team to the District Three playoffs, Coach Bob Miller didn't take long to put one whistle down and pick up another as an assistant for the girls' basketball team.
"I think they started on a Friday and then I took over, maybe like the next week at the end of the week, so got a couple extra days there," recalled Miller.
But, he wasn't the only Miller going from the gridiron to the girl's hardwood. Between friends and family, his daughter, Sarah, grew up around the game, which led to a surprise a few years ago.
"I remember talking to our junior high coach about sign-ups one day and saying, 'How are the numbers?' and he said, 'They're really good. I saw Sarah there.' It kind of caught me off guard," recalled Miller. "I asked my wife, 'Did you know Sarah signed up for football?' She never said a word just kind of made that decision on her own."
"I felt pretty comfortable with it and I just grew to love being around it so much and I figured I can do it. I know the offense," Sarah explained. "I think I did pretty well and it just seemed like something super fun to do."
Growing up, dad coached a lot of teams for Sarah's older sister, but that wasn't the case for Sarah.
"Oh no, no, no," laughed Bob Miller. "She wanted nothing to do with me coaching her as a youth, which is kind of funny because now, you look at our situation."
It's a situation that took another step during Sarah's time at ELCO when the girl's basketball team needed a new coaching staff.
"I figured some kids like him as a coach, so he might get nominated for this. And then when he asked me, I was like 'Oh, like that's a long year,'" recalled Sarah.
"I talked to Karl Keath about trying to take the head coaching job and then his comment was, 'Well, if I'm taking the head coaching job, then I want you to be the JV coach.' So, I approached her with that one day and I said 'Well, here's the deadline, I have to know by this time,' and she waited till about 11 o'clock that night and said, 'Alright, but we have to have boundaries," said Coach Miller.
This time, it was Sarah who drew up the game plan to make it work.
"Some of the boundaries are on the ride home, be my dad and not my coach. Let me rant about things. Let me tell you about how the practice went from my perspective, things like that. And just if he's gonna coach me, no when to stop," said Sarah.
The result has the Raider girls' basketball team with the same goal as the football team, making it to the postseason.
Sarah will continue her senior year with track and field in the spring, a team that's coached by, you guessed it, Coach Miller. But in this case, for both Millers, there are no surprises.
"I've been the track coach I think for 15 years," Coach Miller said. "She's grown up and done our youth track program even before we moved into the district, so she kind of knew that"
"It's definitely worked out for the better. I think it's going really well, especially with football making playoffs," added Sarah. "I think for basketball, we can make playoffs. It'll be a pretty good senior season."