Calling It A Career

RC Hall Of Fame Mentor Miller Retires

In his 37 of coaching high school sports, David Miller became known for his quiet confidence in his athletes, as well as his ability to add humor and fun.

Miller, 66, retired from coaching at the end of Rockbridge County High School’s golf season in the fall of 2024, and he retired from teaching alternative education this spring, after 38 years. He coached golf for 13 years, leading the Wildcats to the state tournament as a team or individually every year. Prior to working with the golf team, Miller coached boys tennis, football and boys basketball. He also served as the Wildcats’ athletic director for six years, from 2004-2010.

Now Miller and his wife of nearly 44 years, Joan, are enjoying their retirement and frequent visits to the beach, living in Murrells Inlet, known as the “Seafood Capital of South Carolina.”

Known to many in Rockbridge County as Weenie Miller, a nickname originally given to Miller’s father and passed along to Miller because he looked the most like his father, Miller grew up in Lexington and was constantly around sports. His father, David, coached at Virginia Military Institute, where he was the head baseball and basketball coach and an assistant football coach.

The younger David Miller participated in sports at Lexington High School and graduated in 1978 before playing junior varsity basketball for a year at Virginia Tech. He got married before finishing his undergraduate degree at Radford University, and he then got his master’s degree from Shenandoah University.

After graduating, Miller came back to Lexington and work in real estate for Mead Associates, but it wasn’t long before he decided teaching and coaching was the career path for him. He started teaching at the Natural Bridge Learning Center in 1988 and coached football and boys basketball at Natural Bridge High School.

When NBHS, Lexington High School and the old Rockbridge High School consolidated into Rockbridge County High School in 1992, Miller continued coaching there. He started as an assistant football coach in the fall of 1992 and was an assistant basketball coach that winter before becoming the head boys tennis coach the following spring. In his early years of coaching for RC, Miller was teaching at the old Highland Belle school a few miles west of the high school.

He was on the football staff that won the school’s first district championship in 1993 and became the head boys basketball coach in 1997. With Miller coaching, the RC boys tennis team won several Blue Ridge District championships, and he was named district coach of the year several times.

“I loved getting the tennis program started at Rockbridge,” said Miller. “The first couple years, I was just trying to get enough to have a team. We became very competitive very quickly.”

A few of Miller’s tennis players went on to play at the college level. One of them, 2001 RC graduate Wray Sherman, was the Wildcat’s No. 1 singles player for three years and was on the No. 1 doubles team all four years, compiling more than 60 wins. As a senior, Sherman was voted the Blue Ridge District player of the year after going 12-0 in both singles and doubles competition. He went on to play tennis at Shepherd University in West Virginia and continued with tennis for 10 years as a United State Professional Tennis Association-certified tennis teaching professional and coach, in addition to coaching at Waynesboro High School and as an assistant coach at James Madison University.

Sherman, who was inducted into the RC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2024, said Miller’s influence on him “extends far beyond the court. He had a way of effortlessly inspiring his athletes — not through loud speeches or complicated strategies, but through a quiet confidence in the people around him.”

Recalling a moment that stood out from his high school career, Sherman said that, as a senior, he was undefeated through seven matches and facing Blacksburg’s top player – also 7-0 and the reigning district champion – in a match that would decide the Blue Ridge District player of the year. “After jumping out to a 5-2 lead, I hung on to win the first set 6-4 but then completely unraveled, losing the second set 6-1 and falling behind 5-2 in the third,” recalled Sherman. “I had lost 14 of the last 18 games and was one game from defeat. I rarely spoke to Coach [Miller] during matches, but on that changeover I called him to the fence and told him I was out of ideas. Cool and calm as always, he smiled and said, ‘Wray, I don’t know how you’re going to win this match … but you do.’ Then he walked away.

“After a minute of frustration, I had a moment of clarity,” continued Sherman. “I suddenly saw a path forward. What Coach had really given me wasn’t a tactic; it was self-belief. I won the last five games, I took the match, and became Rockbridge’s first-ever tennis player of the year. His words taught me something I carry to this day: the best leaders don’t give you all the answers – they give you the confidence to find them yourself.”

In 2004, Miller took a break from coaching when he became the Wildcats’ athletic director. He said that coaching several sports that were so different from one another came in handy when he took on the position. Miller considers one of his biggest accomplishments as athletic director to be hiring Jason White as the school’s head football coach in 2005. The following year, the Wildcats won the district and regional championships in the fall of 2006 before falling to Richlands 29-28 in the Group AA, Division 3 state championship game. In his last year as athletic director, he was named the Valley District and Region III administrator of the year.

Commending Miller’s work as RC’s athletic director, former RC boys and girls basketball coach Darrell Plogger said, “He was a great athletic director, great for the coaches, great for the kids. He knew how to take care of officials when they came in.”

When Miller later got back to coaching, he served as an assistant coach for Plogger’s boys basketball team for several years, including the 2017-18 season, when the Wildcats beat perennial Valley District champion Spotswood for the district title. “Even before we coached together, he was like a brother to me, “ said Plogger. “We played a lot of basketball together. We played a lot of golf together. He’s a great guy to be around because he’s so positive to be around.”

Plogger, whose son Aaron played golf for Miller and the Wildcats in the late 2010s, said Miller “is a first-class guy. They don’t make them like him anymore.”

After his time as RC’s athletic director concluded, Miller was glad to go back to focusing on teaching and coaching. “I liked being at school and enjoyed the kids,” he said.

In 2012, Miller was hired as the head golf coach at RC, and the team had tremendous success. “Golf was amazing,” he said. “We had such a good run, and the kids were wonderful. I really enjoyed it.” During his time as golf coach, the Wildcats won several district titles, both in the Blue Ridge District and after they switched to the Valley District. They also won several Region III titles, and the Wildcats finished in the top five in the state three times. The team’s best finish was in 2017, when they placed second in the Group 3A state tournament, finishing just 13 strokes behind state champion Abingdon, playing on its home course. Over the years, several of Miller’s players have gone on to play golf at the college level.

One of the players on the 2017 team, Garret Huffman, came back to become the Wildcats’ head golf coach last year after Miller stepped down. Huffman, a 2021 RC graduate, said Miller “is a great coach, wonderful mentor, and great friend. He is super personable and a joy to be around. He is definitely someone I look up to and hope to have his same positivity in everything I do.”

Miller keeps in touch with many of his former players, including Huffman, whose wedding he attended last month.

Among the biggest success stories of RC golf was having two female golfers, Grace Huffman and Sofia Vargas, go on to play collegiate golf at the Division I level. Grace, a 2018 RC graduate and 2025 RC Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, played for Longwood University and went on to work with the First Tee of Greater Richmond as a player development professional, teaching children and adults how to play golf and how lessons from golf apply to life.

Vargas, a 2023 RC graduate, is a rising senior golfer for The Citadel in Charleston, S.C. Her first experience playing golf was as a freshman in high school. Miller was impressed by what Vargas accomplished, “never having played golf in her life until she walked onto that driving range as a freshman.” She went on to earn all-region honors and represent the Wildcats in the Class 3 state tournament as a junior, and she was one of the top female golfers in the state.

In Miller’s final year of coaching in 2024, Andrew McCoy led the Wildcats and was named Valley District player of the year before earning all-region honors and tying for 14th place in the Class 3 state tournament. McCoy, a 2025 RC graduate, is a rising sophomore at Campbell University in North Carolina, majoring in the school’s Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) management program.

With recognition of his coaching dedication and success, Miller was inducted into the second class of the RC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2023.

In addition to spending time with Joan, a retired administrative assistant at Washington and Lee University, Miller is enjoying playing golf and spending time with his friends and his brother Charlie, who lives about 20 minutes away. The Millers look forward to upcoming visits from their son, Michael, and their daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband and two children. Michael works in cybersecurity in Charlotte, N.C., while Elizabeth is a teacher in Taiwan.

As he looked back on his career, Miller said, “One thing I always tell people, when people talk about kids being so different as time goes on, is that kids are what they’ve always been. If you get them to focus on something, they’ll work just as hard as anybody did when I started coaching.”

Above all, Miller said he enjoyed seeing his athletes “get the best of what they can do.”