A Friend of Women's Sports Goes Silent

I won't pretend to have known Daniel Miller very well.

Our lone interactions would come when I covered Wewahitchka High School softball games and most of the talk then was while Mr. Miller was in the first-base coach's box.

But Miller, who passed away Monday after suffering a debilitating stroke over a year ago, was one of the friendliest, most welcoming individuals I have had the pleasure to meet since moving to the county seven years ago.

There was always a firm handshake, a "How you doing?" and some talk about how the Lady Gators were shaping up this year, whether another title was in the offing.

Actually, that would be me. Mr. Miller would talk about more substantive things, how this girl was improving in this area, how the season had tested the mettle of the team and how they responded.

He was, in short, a good guy who cared deeply about the team and what the future held for the girls coming through the program.

And he was doing this largely as a volunteer. No money in it for him, just the love of being at the ballpark and being with the Lady Gators.

That was clear last season when the Wewahitchka girls dedicated their second-straight state championship season to Miller, confined to a wheelchair and unable to talk or show much emotion due to the stroke.

The emotion, though, was provided by those girls and their evident love and abiding respect for Mr. Miller.

Mr. Miller's influence in softball circles, though, went beyond the high school and beyond Wewahitchka.

The guess here is that Mr. Miller will be looking down this week as Kayla Minger, another young lady he coached along her path to all-state honors and a shot this year for a state championship, and the Lady Sharks of Port St. Joe go for a state title.

In a certain sense, this Lady Shark team embodied everything Daniel Miller stood for when it came to girls' scholastic sports.

The seven seniors dotting the Port St. Joe roster are a testament to what hard work, dedication, ability to handle to the losses and victories with equal grace is all about.

Coach Jim Belin, humble, determined to train the spotlight anywhere but on himself, has instilled in this magnificent seven the value of teamwork, of putting in the long hours, sometimes without quick reward, of conducting oneself with class inside and outside the diamond's white lines.

There is no question those seven seniors will be missed - heck, it eliminates at least another year of column material - for what they stood for as much for what they could become.

They waited, they toiled, they came up just short the past couple of years because the best team in the state happened to reside 24 miles to the north.

A happenstance of geography likely prevented these seniors from already having championship rings on their fingers, but that they have their chance this year, their final year, seems most fitting.

To observe the sheer joy of the celebration last week when the Lady Sharks had finally ascended that crest to the state final four was to see hours of work and sweat and drive spill out like candy from a piñata that has been cracked open.

Kayla Minger had to apologize during an interview because, well, celebration took precedence, though she added, she did not want to be rude.

That was what coaches like Jim Belin and Daniel Miller instilled, a competitive spirit tempered by a sense of fair play and sportsmanship.

We could use more coaches, more men and women, like that in our high schools, coaches who are mindful that the cliché indeed holds true: it is how you compete that matters not the results of the scoreboard.

How you handle losses is as important, if not more important, than how you handle putting the state championship ring on your finger.

A Billy Naylor of Wewahitchka lunging across the finish line, giving everything he has left, to finish second in the state 800 meter run is as impressive a performance as Port St. Joe's Parker Harris earning a state championship in the pole vault.

By the time this is read the fate of the Lady Sharks will be clear, with their semifinal game scheduled for after this paper goes to press. The results can be found on our website, www.starfl.com.

But regardless of whether they come home as state champions, those seven seniors who have grown so much over the past four years, will have earned something far more valuable.

Respect in themselves, empowerment of what and who they can become and belief in what they can achieve through hard work.

And that, in my mind, is what Daniel Miller always seemed to be about, not strikes or walks, wins or losses.