Nov. 7, 2008
by Matt DaSilva, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff
Lisa Miller's timing was terrible. She admitted as much. She left Syracuse at its zenith for Harvard at its nadir. She sold high and bought low.
Miller probably deserved as much credit as Gary Gait for what the Syracuse women's lacrosse team accomplished in 2008. She was the architect of a program that Gait ushered into the NCAA Division I semifinals for the first time. She founded it in 1998, fostering the Orange for 10 years before leaving for Harvard following the 2007 season.
There was nothing lateral about Miller's move. She knows it - and relishes it, really. While Syracuse was coming off a Big East championship and its first NCAA tournament victory, Harvard was dealing with the backlash of its fifth straight losing season and the uncertainty left by Sarah Nelson's resignation. From 2003 to `07, the Crimson limped to a 22-55 record.
But Miller considers herself more of a builder than a finisher. In Harvard's case, she wants to rebuild. Being back in her home state of Massachusetts reminds her of less lean times in Cambridge. She remembers a team that won 12 Ivy League championships between 1981 and 1993 and, yes, an NCAA championship in 1990.
The renaissance has already begun, as Harvard finished 9-7 in 2008. It wasn't the final four. But it was a start.
"Countdown" caught up with Miller to talk about Harvard and the Ivy League in '09, Canada's World Cup aspirations, the state of women's lacrosse and getting worked back in the day by a 14-year-old named Kelly Amonte.
Coming off a 9-7 season, how are you feeling about things in Cambridge?
I thought we overachieved, did pretty well [in 2008]. It's going to take a couple of years to build. I go back to when I was a kid. Harvard was one of the best programs, if not the best program, in the country.
Was it hard to see Syracuse qualify for the final four without you, considering it was a team assembled almost entirely by you?
I left the best team I'd had. They were preseason No. 4. But ultimately, I'm a builder. I like to build things up. This is home for me. If I hadn't made the move now, I don't know if I would have had the opportunity again. I don't mind weighing in and taking a beating for a bit, and building up. We're going to take our lumps.
Do you think you have any players at Harvard who will make headlines the way Katie Rowan has in Syracuse?
We did have the Ivy League Rookie of the Year last year - Jess Halpern. There's Kaitlin Martin, too. We're still a little thin. We need to generate depth to be able to move through midfield. There are a couple of freshmen that are going to hold their own now.
What are your preliminary thoughts on the Ivy League in 2009?
If you sit down, and just look on paper, you'd have to say Princeton is going to be very good this year. For Penn, it's a rebuilding year. And Dartmouth was really young last year. They have the potential to jump. But the Ivies are weird. Get on the field, and you can throw out the scouting report.
You've got another team you're coaching in 2009 - the Canadian World Cup team. Having finalized a roster in the fall, what can we expect from Team Canada in Prague?
I think they're good. I think that we're significantly better than we were a year ago. The commitment level on the part of the players - out of their pocket, traveling on weekends - has been great. I give them a lot of credit for having the dedication to do that.
More than that, they grasp information quickly, and they like to play. They're very physical, they're tough, and they're getting better every time. Then they retain it. Sometimes it's tough to retain information between camps. They played here in October with BU and BC, Stanford, and a bunch of local teams, and I thought they played really well. I'm looking forward to World Cup.
Canada's always had that reputation as bruisers. Will that be the case again?
I think so. They're physical kids. Some of them have played the box game with the boys. That's the way they grew up. But they're also getting a little bit better running through the midfield and getting the ball out under pressure. I coached Canada in 2001 and thought we struggled in the middle of the field. I think we're getting better at that.
Certainly, Dana Dobbie doesn't hurt in that regard, does she?
Lacrosse is not as big on the women's side as it is on the men's side in Canada. You don't have those Syracuse legends coming out in the '80s. But [Dobbie] has done quite a bit in terms of people now taking a look at the Canadian kids. I have a 16-year-old on that World Cup team who I think is going to be ridiculous - Katie Guy. She's committed to go to Penn State.
Back to college, what's it like to go from the athletic culture at Syracuse to the athletic culture at an Ivy League school?
The practice schedules are really different. That was a huge adjustment. Last fall, I didn't know my kids. Two of them were abroad. Then all of a sudden you have 12 practices. I was just like, "Oh my God, where do I start?"
I feel like it takes you a couple of weeks to get a handle on your team and just the chemistry - what they can do, what they like to do, some things they don't like as much. Here, for the first 10 practices last year, I was trying to get a handle. And when I had a pretty good feel for it, I had two left. It's an interesting philosophy.
How is it different for, say, Florida to launch its program in 2010 than it was for you and other Division I programs launching in the 1990s?
With Florida, it's here's all your money and here's your staff. But when you elevate a club, that's a project. You phase in scholarship money over a seven- or eight-year period, that's a project. You don't fully staff your program, that's a project. Florida's like, "We're not going to deal with those trivial things. You're getting it all up front." Florida's giving them 12 [scholarships] from the get-go. I put 3.4 into the first class, and that actually hurt us after that first class graduated. I didn't have enough money to spread it out.
You coached Kelly Amonte Hiller in high school at the Thayer Academy. How does your memory of her as a player there and then at Maryland reflect on the success she has had building a dynasty as the coach at Northwestern?
I had her for a year, her freshman year. I spotted her. She played soccer, and I was the field hockey coach at the time. Just walking by the field, you could pick out her athleticism right away. She wanted to run track, but I stopped her enough to make her play lacrosse.
Kelly is just...tireless. She did it to the best of her ability all the time. She just never let down. I was training for World Cup [with the U.S. team], and she'd shoot with me and stay out to play one-on-one with me.
More than anything, it's probably embarrassing for me, because she was 14 and using me like a cone.
Countdown to '09: Archive
Oct. 31, 2008 - Limestone's Melissa Howard
Oct. 25, 2008 - Army's Dr. Marie Johnson
Oct. 17, 2008 - Harvard's John Tillman
Oct. 3, 2008 - Vanderbilt's Cathy Swezey
Sept. 26, 2008 - Mercyhurst's Chris Ryan
Sept. 19, 2008 - NYIT's Keith Henderson
Sept. 5, 2008 - Northwestern's Kelly Amonte Hiller
Aug. 29, 2008 - Cabrini's Scott Reimer
Aug. 15, 2008 - Hobart's T.W. Johnson
Aug. 8, 2008 - Penn's Ali Deluca
Aug. 1, 2008 - Chapman's Mike Wood
July 25, 2008 - Southern New Hampshire's Mary Squire
July 18, 2008 - Michigan's Trevor Yealy
July 11, 2008 - Johns Hopkins' Dave Pietramala
July 4, 2008 - Hamilton's Kallie Briscoe
June 27, 2008 - North Carolina's Joe Breschi
June 20, 2008 - Colby's Jon Thompson
