High School Field Hockey
POSTSEASON HONORS
Dec. 17, 2006
What a season for Sacred Heart's Miller, Lewis
By NATHAN CHAMBERS
BeyondTheDerby.com
Sacred Heart Academy field hockey coach Liz Lewis thought it was impressive enough that one of her players, senior goalkeeper Brittany Miller, was named a Penn Monto/National Field Hockey Coaches Association High School All-American last Monday.
Selected to the second team, Miller is the only player from Kentucky and one of only three players from the entire West Region among the 32 recognized as All-Americans. Twenty of them are from Pennsylvania or New Jersey.
“What an honor, with all of that great skill out there,” Lewis said. “I mean, gosh, look at Pennsylvania and New Jersey. That’s the hotbed. It’s huge. It’s huge for Brittany, but it’s also huge for Kentucky field hockey. It helps shine a spotlight on this state.”
But then Lewis was named the Dita/NFHCA High School West Region Coach of the Year two days later, and even Sacred Heart’s athletic director, Donna Moir, had to ask, “What do you say now, Liz?”
“It’s kind of a ‘pinch me’ feeling,” Lewis said. “I can’t believe it. I see it in writing, and it’s like, ‘Wow.’”
Much to her surprise, the Valkyries continue to reap the rewards of a 28-0 record and a state championship more than a month after their season ended.
TopOfTheCircle.com recently ranked Sacred Heart No. 6 in its postseason list of the top 50 teams in the country; Miller and senior Anna Middleton were named to the Penn Monto/NFHCA High School All-West Region team two weeks ago; Miller and Lewis each were honored last week; and Lewis is a candidate for the Dita/NFHCA High School National Coach of the Year award that will be announced on Jan. 5.
Similarly, Assumption had an All-American, Katie Brightwell, and the West Region Coach of the Year, Debbie Judd, after winning the state title last year.
“It speaks well for hockey in Kentucky,” Lewis said. “I guess because we’re not a sanctioned sport (by the Kentucky High School Athletic Association), we don’t get the recognition that other sports get. But I think we’ll be getting recognized more now.”
Sacred Heart made a nice splash outside the state in the middle of the season, winning both regional tournaments it entered in St. Louis and Chicago.
But four weeks after the season ended, during the Thanksgiving break, Miller and Lewis traveled with the International Field Hockey Club of Kentucky (IFHCK) to USA Field Hockey’s National Hockey Festival in Indio, California.
With Miller as its goalkeeper and Lewis as its coach, IFHCK Dynamic won the elite Pool E as NFHCA national committee members watched.
Brittany Miller
Miller acknowledged that the exposure at the National Hockey Festival, where she allowed seven goals in six games against premier club teams, boosted her All-America chances. But she credited Lewis, who has coached her since middle school, and IFHCK’s coaches for getting her there.
“It’s a great accomplishment for me, and I owe it completely to my coaches - especially Coach Lewis,” said Miller, a Division I prospect who is considering Boston University, Michigan State and Ohio. “She’s been my coach for (six) years. She’s given me everything.”
Lewis was hired as Sacred Heart’s head coach in 2004 and made Miller, then a sophomore, her first starting goalkeeper. Miller quickly validated that trust in the season-opening Apple Tournament, stopping three shots in overtime penalty strokes to lead the Valkyries to a 3-2 win over Assumption in the final.
“You saw her ability to perform under that kind of pressure then,” Lewis said.
So began a remarkable - and quite underappreciated - career for Miller, who posted a 20-1 record, a .899 save percentage and a .62 goals-against average in 2004; a 26-2-1 record, a .918 save percentage and a .34 goals-against average in 2005, when she was named to the West Region team for the first time; and a 28-0 record, a .917 save percentage and a .21 goals-against average in 2006.
“Obviously, she’s improved her ability to stop shots pretty significantly,” Lewis said. “That’s amazing, considering the talent we’ve played against.”
Totaling Miller’s numbers over her three years, she had a 74-3-1 record, a .910 save percentage, a .37 goals-against average, and 47 shutouts.
But she wouldn’t have been satisfied with any of those stats had Sacred Heart not won the state title in October, beating Kentucky Country Day 3-1 at the University of Louisville’s Trager Stadium.
The Valkyries were favored to win in each of her first two years but lost to Kentucky Country Day in the 2004 final and lost to Assumption in the 2005 semifinals. Those games gnawed at Miller and her teammates.
“I didn’t want to lose it for my class.,” she said. “I saw how it hurt for the two senior classes before me. We all were determined to not let that happen again.”
Lewis saw that determination in Miller day after day and thinks it was vital to Sacred Heart‘s success.
“She has a competitiveness that drives her and makes her work harder to be a better player,” Lewis said. “But it also drives her teammates.”
Liz Lewis
After Dave Griffiths resigned from his position as Sacred Heart’s soccer coach on Nov. 8, ending a five-year tenure that included three state championship game appearances and one title, Moir told The Courier-Journal that he was the best hire she had made as an athletic director.
But she might not say that so confidently again after thinking more about what Lewis has done in the last three years, particularly in light of the most recent developments last week.
“For Liz to be Coach of the Year, it’s a tremendous honor for her, for the program and for the school,” said Moir, who has known Lewis since the two attended Sacred Heart together in the late ’70s. “Anything like that on a national level means you’re making a name for yourself out there.”
Lewis started coaching on the middle school level when her family moved back from Bowling Green in 2000 and then was an assistant under Lainey Habeeb for two years. When Habeeb resigned after the 2003 season, Lewis applied for the vacant position and received what Moir called “overwhelming support” during the hiring process.
“I knew she’d be a good coach,” Moir said.
Lewis has guided Sacred Heart to three straight Apple Tournament titles, two state finals, and one state championship, and the Valkyries have not lost a regular-season game to a Kentucky team during her tenure.
“From my standpoint, she deserves (the award),” Moir said. “This is the passion of her life. She throws herself into it. So it’s nice to see.”
“I’m certainly honored by it,” Lewis said, “but obviously I couldn’t have done it without my coaching staff, Katie Deskins in particular, or without the kids. I just couldn’t have done it without them.”
Among those kids is her own daughter, Jill, a senior defender who was named to the All-Tournament Team after the state final.
“To win my first state title and have her on the team was pretty awesome,” Liz Lewis said.