Boyertown HC Miller making early impact for Bears
Football players sometimes say they’d run through a brick wall for their coaches. About five months before the Boyertown Bears dash under the Friday night lights for new head coach T.J. Miller, it sounds like he and his newly-assembled staff are ready to run through a brick wall for them.
You often hear coaches saying their kids have to “buy in” to their program. Miller notes it works both ways, starting with the coaches’ time and emotional investment selling the players on the coaches’ commitment.
“The main thing you do is you buy into the kids,” Miller said. “Me and my staff are doing that. We’re with them in the weight room. We’ve been there two months now and we’ve got a lot of really good kids that want to be successful, want to win. We’re just facilitators to help them get to that goal.
“We’re asking our coaches to come to the weight room sessions. They come after work. Three of them are from Reading and drive 40 miles for these kids. And that’s what these kids are seeing, that we’re buying into them.”
Miller, 32, was hired in late January. He sounds like it’s late July. If enthusiasm was a stat, he’d lead the Pioneer Athletic Conference right now. The program was ready for an energy infusion. Coming off a 3-7 season under three-year coach George Parkinson, the Bears have had only one winning season since 2010.
Miller played football and basketball at Governor Mifflin. He was an AllLancaster-Lebanon League Section I outside linebacker. He graduated from Albright College with a degree in history and was a Shirk Scholar. He got a master’s in education at Wilkes. His coaching travels have taken him back to Governor Mifflin, where he coached the JV and special teams, to Penn Manor, and the past two years he was offensive coordinator at Muhlenberg, where he utilized the triple-option, which he’ll employ at Boyertown.
Why the run-oriented scheme in an often passhappy age?
“It’s a great equalizer,” he said of the triple-option. “When you go against teams that might be a little bit bigger, stronger or faster, it’s hard to replicate that in practice. We’re two months in now at Boyertown, and I think we have the athletes where we should be able to run.”
Miller knew this was the job for him from the first interview, attended by Boyertown athletic director Dominic Palladino, high school principal Dr. Brett Cooper, and junior high East principal Andy Ruppert. “I came home and said to my wife, ‘This is where I want to be. These people have their act together; they know what it takes to help young men win in all facets of their life. This is a golden opportunity.’ “
In his introduction meeting with the community, Miller stressed the big picture — the players being ambassadors of the community.
“The whole community gets it,” Miller said. “Everyone I talked to, they understand, you’re in high school one time. You can be a successful student, a successful football player, somebody that sets the tone for younger generations to come through. The Boyertown community is a perfect fit for me and my philosophy. We want to win football games, but we also want to shape young men as well.”
And they’re certainly getting in shape.
“We tell the kids when we’re in the weight room, ‘One more rep … It’s fourthand-two, what can you do with one more rep? Are you gonna finish it, get the job done?’ That’s what we’re trying to preach to the kids right now.”
Miller’s staff includes Chris Klusewitz (defensive coordinator), Joe Terra (offensive line), Brian Ramsey (linebackers), Matt Koshinski (outside linebackers) and Greg Saylor (running backs).