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One in a series of profiles from the Spring 2011 issue of Champion magazine.

Big time is no small feat for Goucher AD

By Gary Brown
NCAA.org

Geoff Miller and his Amherst teammates were huddled in a pregame meeting before a clash with Division II American International in 1973. Legendary Lord Jeffs coach Jim Ostendarp was extolling his Division III troops: “We’re big time football; we’re not small time – we’re big time!”

The motivational rave – delivered essentially in an oversized shed with doors secured by a piece of wood through slats – was jacking up the Jeffs. “Yeah, we’re big time, we’re big time!” they chanted, turning as a mob to rush out onto the field. Trouble is, they pinned their scrawny team manager up against the very 2-by-4 he was in charge of releasing.

“That’s right,” Miller recalls now from his AD office at Goucher. “We’re yelling, ‘C’mon, man, open the door – we’re big time!’ And we can’t even get out of the barn.”

Amherst did win the game, though, and the Lord Jeffs always have been big time when it comes to producing graduates who make a difference. Miller is among them.

“I knew right away that Amherst was a special place,” said the man who is making life special for his own graduates at Goucher.

“What struck me about Amherst was that it was tough to get in, but once you were admitted, there was a feeling of ‘You are excellent, so now go be excellent in everything you do, whether it be the glee club, football or the chemistry lab,’ ” said Miller, who captained both the football and lacrosse teams at Amherst. “I try to get our students here to take that same approach as a student, a student-athlete and as a responsible citizen.”

Miller, a devoutly spiritual man, thought he was going to be a responsible lawyer when he was studying history and political science at Amherst. But by his senior year, he was worn out on the books. So he donned his three-piece suit and interviewed with General Foods and IBM. “But I was completely turned off by that,” he said.

That led Miller to teach at a private school for boys in Orange, Va., where he also coached football and lacrosse for two years. He liked the coaching part but wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in a private-school setting. Thus, Miller did go back to school, earning a master’s in business and sport management at Massachusetts, which returned him to his Amherst roots and to the sidelines as a graduate assistant in football and lacrosse.

After assistant coaching stops at Amherst and Swarthmore, Miller took the head lacrosse job at Guilford, where he was named Division III coach of the year in 1986. He became an assistant and then associate AD there, too, which groomed him for his first AD job at Washington College. He hopped the Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore and the Goucher post in 1994.

Goucher, which had been an all-women’s school until 1986, now sponsors eight men’s sports and 10 women’s (and co-ed equestrian). Miller has increased the number of full-time coaches and has beefed up facilities. The school itself also has grown, from about 1,000 students to 1,500. Miller’s daughter Sara, the youngest of his and wife Pamela’s three children, is one of them, following in her father’s footsteps as a lacrosse captain.

“She’s big time,” Miller said. “She doesn’t have any trouble getting onto the field, either.”