A TIME TO HEAL
After an accident took the life of his 2-year-old daughter, Spring football coach Trent Miller found a wealth of support from his players and community
Football players, dressed in their usual game day attire of white shirts and dark slacks, assembled shoulder-to-shoulder in two straight lines.
They stood about 150 strong, a tunnel of boys wearing ties bearing Spring High School’s trademark “S.” Pinned on their lapels were small pink ribbons.
Head football coach Trent Miller — promoted in the offseason after serving as Spring’s offensive coordinator for four seasons — wrapped his arm around his wife, Lindsay. He walked his family slowly past the players, past nearly 1,000 people who had gathered that day, and past a community that had become part of his family.
They moved to the end of the tunnel, toward a bath of pink light.
They looked up at a screen with the image of a smiling face. They looked down at a tiny pink casket holding the body of their 2-year-old
Unimaginable tragedy
Even at 2, Sadie was larger than life. She was talkative and unabashedly enjoyed making her presence felt around company.
She was resilient — and tough. Lindsay believes Sadie figured she had to learn how to stand up to older brothers Michael, 6, and Cole, 4. At some point, it might come in handy.
Lindsay recalls a time or two when Sadie would trip and fall, only to immediately pick herself up, dust herself off, say “ow” and walk away like it never happened. Not a tear involved.
She was bright and full of love. Her favorite color was pink. Her room was dressed in it, from the Disney princess bedsheets to the curtains. It has sat empty since June 26. That evening, Trent planned to dump a borrowed trailer full of trash, tree branches and leaves that had been collected after some work was done at the family’s house. He got home from his office around 6 p.m., loaded more trash into the trailer and prepared to leave. Lindsay and his three children pulled into the driveway in a van.
Lindsay left dinner from Sonic in the car to lead the family into the house. The boys were eager to tell Dad about the Nintendo Switch they just got. Sadie was quiet. Trent told them it would take him only a few minutes to drop off the trailer and return home.
Trent was pulling out of the driveway, the trailer hitched to his truck. He felt a bump and initially thought he’d hit one of the family’s two dogs. He stopped and looked to the side. He saw Lindsay picking Sadie up.
The toddler had slipped outside, unseen, and silently clambered between the truck and trailer.
Montgomery County officers cleared I-45 in an effort to rush the family to Memorial Hermann Hospital in The Woodlands. A five-minute drive was cut to two.
“I was sitting in the front seat with the ambulance driver,” Trent said, “and I was just praying to God that entire trip, ‘Take me. My sweet, innocent little girl doesn’t deserve this. Take me.’ “And He didn’t.” The medical examiner’s report listed the official cause of Sadie’s death as blunt force to the abdomen.
Caring outreach
Trent and Lindsay couldn’t begin to comprehend the tragedy. But they’d have more help getting through it than they ever imagined.
Word spread quickly. They remember walking into the hospital waiting room to what looked like 100 people from Spring and College Park High School, where Lindsay is an English teacher. Old friends Trent hadn’t seen in years, coaches, and even people the couple hadn’t met waited for three hours.
Around 10 p.m., the couple returned to a spotless home. Teachers and volunteers from both communities had cleaned it.
The next morning, Spring ISD athletics director Willie Amendola and his wife were on the Millers’ doorstep, offering support. The couple had to start making funeral arrangements.
When Trent and Lindsay returned from the funeral home on Wednesday, cars lined their street. Approximately 50 people from Spring and College Park were landscaping their yard.
The Millers are a couple deeprooted in faith, but the accident had Trent in a dark place. Lindsay didn’t want her husband carrying that weight. She remembers forcing him to say the words “it was an accident” at the hospital.
Jeff and MacKenzie Rollins didn’t know Trent and Lindsay, but both couples attended WoodsEdge Community Church. The Rollinses had lost a 3-month old daughter, Zoe, to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and reached out to offer support.
It was through prayer with Jeff that Trent found some sort of peace. One day, as Trent prayed, he heard a child’s voice. He believes it was Sadie.
“Daddy,” the voice said to him, “I’m OK.”
It was what he needed at a point when he was questioning everything. And the Millers soon realized the support they were receiving was carrying them when they couldn’t stand.
The couple struggled to convey the meaning of death to their young sons. A book on how to explain heaven to children was sent to them from a woman in Missouri.
Some seniors Lindsay had taught in an AP English class in the summer of 2016 set up a YouCaring.com page to raise $1,000 for the family. They ended up with $16,000.
Lindsay’s brother Tyler and his wife, Kasey, planted a small garden outside the Millers’ front door. They named it “Sadie’s Garden” as a reminder every day the family comes home.
Team steps up
During the funeral service at WoodsEdge, the pastor announced one more speaker. Spring senior cornerback Paul Smith was backed by his teammates as he walked toward the stage. The Millers didn’t know any player was going to speak.
Smith spoke from his heart. He noted that the very discipline he learned from Trent helped the players realize they needed to lift up their coach.
It was a moment Trent and Lindsay wish all of Houston could have seen. As Spring’s new head coach, Trent, 30, wants to help change his players’ and the school’s reputation just as much as he wants to win games. The Spring High School stabbing of 2013 has its own Wikipedia page. An on-field brawl with Westfield commanded headlines two seasons ago.
Moments like Smith’s speech can make a difference.
“As a coach, he’s barely at home with his kids,” Smith would say later when recalling the night of the tragedy. “I was just thinking — all those hours he’s away from his kid, and we take life for granted. We take them for granted. It hurts to say it, but we do sometimes.
“It gave me a better outlook. Because I don’t even (play football) for myself anymore. I do it for all of us.”
Trent’s players believed they had to do more than attend the funeral service. One started the Twitter hashtag #4Sadie to honor the coach’s daughter.
The players were adamant about wearing pink in some form or fashion this season. They’ll have pink “S” decals on their helmets. They wanted pink socks to match, but that was a no-go. At least the decals will match the pink belt Trent will wear while roaming the sidelines.
A different tunnel
Lindsay has seen Trent in a dark space, face down on a hospital floor, unable to get up. And she has seen him get stronger every day. She is proud of her husband’s strength to carry on and lead the young men in his charge.
“It’s not over,” Lindsay said. “We deal with this every day. And the fact that he deals with this every day and relies on his faith to get up, to go help other coaches and kids while he’s still trying to figure out what life looks like — that’s strength that you can’t … nobody can teach that. He just has it.”
Lindsay wants this season to be a success for the team, a repayment to all the players for what they’ve done for her family.
On Sept. 1, Trent will walk from the locker room to the field to make his head coaching debut against Clear Falls at Veterans Memorial Stadium. He’ll lead the Lions out of a different tunnel — an inflatable one.
There might be a machine pumping out smoke. The band certainly will be blaring. Michael and Cole might even be running alongside Spring’s players, who, along with Trent, will be wearing splashes of Sadie’s favorite color.
Those who will be watching from the stands and who understand what the Millers have been through will know this is part of the healing.
adam.coleman@chron.com twitter.com/chroncoleman