Connie Miller had decided to step down as the head coach of Manhattan High softball just before the 2020 season.
In early February that year, her mother, Linda, received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and Miller knew she could not balance caring for her and coaching at the same time. So, with preseason conditioning already underway and tryouts mere weeks from starting, she went to athletics director Mike Marsh — who graduated with Miller from Manhattan High in the class of 1985 — to tender her resignation.
Marsh listened to her with compassion, but he asserted there must be a workaround that would allow Miller to devote all the time she needed to her mother without leaving her position with the team, even if it required some creativity.
There was such a solution, but neither of them could have predicted the form it took.
Shortly after that meeting between Miller and Marsh, with the Indians having held just one practice, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and washed away the entire season.
Miller’s mother died in April 2020, and Miller was by her side throughout those final months.
“As awful as COVID was, it gave me the opportunity to be with my mom and not have to walk away (from coaching) at that point,” she said. “ … Me still being in this program almost didn’t happen.”
However, in May, Miller wrapped up her seventh and most successful year at the helm of her alma mater’s softball team. She led Manhattan to a 17-6 record and its first state tournament appearance since 2004, which earned her Centennial League Coach of the Year honors while Sports In Kansas named her a finalist for the Kansas 6A Coach of the Year award.
That’s not too shabby for someone who didn’t get into coaching until nearly 30 years after she played her last competitive softball game and who came so close to ending that career three years ago.
Miller was born in Attica and moved to Manhattan at age 6. Her father, Paul, was a multi-sport athlete; she took after him in that respect. Miller represented the Indians during the volleyball, basketball and track seasons, but, because Manhattan High did not have a softball team then, she played shortstop for the Optimist team during the summer months.
“She may be the best player we have produced in our program,” her Optimist softball coach Jerome Berry told The Mercury in May 1985. “Connie has an outstanding glove and great range. But not only is she an outstanding defensive player, she swings a good bat as well.”
Miller originally intended to play softball at Kansas State but changed course and committed to play softball and basketball at Cloud County Community College after rumors pointed toward K-State dropping its softball program, which it did in 1986.
But after two years of playing at the college level, Miller returned to her hometown, saying she was “tired” and ready to pursue her professional endeavors. The Riley County Police Department hired Miller first as a 911 dispatcher and then, a year later, as an officer.
Miller’s career in law enforcement spanned two decades before she retired in 2007 to work full-time at MK Property Management, the business she started in the early 2000s and continues to own today.
During all that time, Miller’s only dalliance with softball comprised a few years of recreational slow-pitch, which she quit playing after tearing her Achilles tendon.
But when her son began dating a player on the Manhattan softball team, Miller found herself regularly attending games. Then-head coach Scott Mall retired from that position in 2015 and Monty Enright replaced him, leaving an open assistant spot.
“I thought, ‘Well, you know, I’m going to all the games, I know a lot of the kids, so I’ll just throw my name in the hat and see what happens,” Miller said.
She got the job, serving first as the junior varsity head coach before her promotion to varsity assistant in 2017. However, after that season, Enright resigned, and Marsh tabbed Miller as the Indians’ next head coach beginning in 2018.
It was a whirlwind for Miller, who hadn’t expected Enright to leave so soon. She had gone from having zero coaching experience to being the leader of her own 6A squad in the span of three years.
“I’d never done this,” she said. “I’d been a player and I felt like I could communicate with the kids and such, but I had never run a program. So it was a big learning curve for me. It’s just trial and error, seeing what works. You have to be flexible; each kid learns differently. It’s much like being a teacher in a classroom. You have to figure out what motivates them and what gets the information across to them. But it’s been great. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Though she was by no means a grizzled coaching veteran when she took over at Manhattan, Miller said her background in law enforcement and property management had equipped her with vital skills for the job.
The most important of those, she said, were patience and the ability to listen and communicate.
“(Senior center fielder) Takara Kolterman, this year when she was giving her speech at the banquet, one of the things she said she appreciated the most about me was that I listened to them,” Miller said. “When there was something going on that they didn’t understand, we stopped right then and there, and we figured it out.”
But Miller soon realized she had a different philosophy from many of her counterparts at other schools. High school softball has changed in the way coaches are more intricately involved in the pitch-by-pitch occurrences almost to the point of “micromanagement,” as Miller put it. However, she favors a more traditional approach, much like the one her own coaches had when she was playing. Miller emphasizes instruction and development in preparation but trusts her players to go out and perform on the field without too much meddling on her part.
“I want to help them better their skills, and we do that day in and day out in practice,” she said. “But when it comes game time, that’s when they want to play and that’s when they need to shine. And so I let them play. I tell them all the time, ‘Look, it’s my job to argue for you and fight for you, but the rest is up to you.’”
As a result, Miller has let her catcher, junior Reagan Neitzel, call pitches the past three seasons, with the pitchers providing their input based on what is working for them. That dynamic, particularly between Neitzel and senior ace pitcher Kierra Goos, was a significant factor in Manhattan’s success this season.
But Miller said she would not have been able to guide the Indians to the heights they reached without the support of her family, including her partner of 33 years, since coaching requires so much of her time and attention.
Her father, now 88, is exceedingly proud of her and tries to attend as many games as he can. Following her mother’s death in 2020, Miller has invested as much time as she can with her dad. Fortunately for both of them, Miller’s father loves talking shop, and so they spend long periods discussing practices and games.
Miller may not have foreseen herself becoming — or still being — the head coach of her high school’s softball program, but she is grateful for the chance to remain involved with her favorite sport and be a part of something grander than herself.
“It’s kind of a cliché thing, but it really does feel very cool to be able to give something back to something that gave you so much,” she said. “Even though I didn’t get to play this sport in high school, I got to play all the others, and all those others helped me move on through college and probably helped shape the person I am today.”
