By Diane Gasper-O’Brien
University Relations and Marketing
Madi Miller enjoys visiting with her older brother, Jordan, about their lives as student-athletes at Fort Hays State University.
Their stories differ from those of their dad, Jeff, who played quarterback for the Tiger football team in the early 1980s.
Watching his children compete at the collegiate level now is different than what Jeff remembers from several decades ago.
Jordan completed his baseball career as a Tiger five years ago, and Madi began suiting up for the FHSU volleyball team this fall.
The Miller siblings don’t get to hear too much about their dad’s athletic career, although he still holds some FHSU passing records.
“Dad’s pretty humble about everything,” Madi said with a smile, “but I hear from other people how good he was.”
After battling all types of weather to watch Jordan compete on the college level, Jeff welcomes following an indoor sport these days. He usually searches for a place to sit alone in the bleachers in Gross Memorial Coliseum for Tiger volleyball games.
He finds himself glancing around at the spacious arena that seems much the same as when he attended Fort Hays State from 1983-88. Completed in 1973, GMC still is known as one of the best basketball and volleyball arenas in the MIAA conference.
But the atmosphere and the competition are different than they were 30-plus years ago. Most of these student-athletes have been playing competitively since they were in elementary school.
Jeff says that sports for women have indeed come a long way in 35 years, from back in the day when FHSU coaches of non-revenue sports were responsible for driving the team vans in sometimes treacherous weather on long trips in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.
One of those van drivers was Jody Wise, the winningest volleyball coach in FHSU history with 546 victories. Even while road trips could be challenging back then, Wise maintains that the female athletes were always “treated pretty fairly at Fort Hays State.”
“Fort Hays State had such nice facilities, even back then,” said Wise, who coached at FHSU from 1978-95. “With the four Cunningham Hall gyms down the hallway from the main arena, there was always enough room to practice.”
Wise, now retired and living in California, graduated from high school in Nebraska in 1970 and went on to play three sports at the University of Nebraska-Kearney – without a single athletic scholarship dollar.
That was two years before Title IX, in the Education Amendments Act of 1972. Title IX was established to provide everyone equal access to any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance, including sports.
According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, one in 27 girls played high school sports prior to Title IX. Today, that number is two in five.
The addition of more women’s sports to the Olympics, better media coverage and the explosion of youth travel teams all have contributed to the rise of female participation in athletics.
Today, recruiting is different for all sports, both male and female. Thirty years ago, coaches put in a lot of windshield time, as well as relying on word of mouth, to recruit quality players.
Now, they can gather a lot of the players’ data electronically and communicate with them that way, too.
However, some players are still recruited in more traditional ways.
Madi contacted the FHSU volleyball coach when she graduated from Neosho Community College in 2018. Even though the Tigers’ roster was full, Madi still chose Fort Hays State to continue her education, partly because of the great reputation of the radiology program and partly because of family.
One of her grandmothers lives in Hays, the other in Victoria. Her mom, Nancy – also an FHSU grad – grew up in Hays in a family of 14 children. And a lot of Madi’s aunts, uncles and cousins live in Hays or within driving distance.
“We grew up in the Kansas City area and didn’t get to enjoy my family being around,” Madi said. “I thought, why not come out here to experience that and get a great education at the same time.”
To top it off, Madi honed her volleyball skills for a year, got acclimated to college at FHSU and made the team this season. A defensive specialist, she is in the regular rotation for the Tigers.
“I say that I’m a purebred Tiger, so I had to come to Fort Hays State,” she said, “and now I get to continue my volleyball career, too. And having so many family members around, we always have so much support at the games.”
While Madi’s parents get to enjoy a couple more years of watching their daughter compete in a college sport, they are particularly pleased with the quality of education that Fort Hays State offers.
“What it really boils down to is the education,” Jeff said. “Sure, it was nice to be able to play football past high school. But the academics were great here for me, too, and I had a lot of good, positive instructors at Fort Hays State. It provided me with the tools for a really good career.”
“It was a really good fit all the way around,” added Jeff, who grew up in nearby Victoria and, like his children, followed his dad to Fort Hays State. Marvin Miller was an assistant coach for the Tiger baseball team in the 1970s.
Jeff retired from Spring Hill High School this past summer after 31 years in the education field as a teacher, coach and administrator. Now, he has nothing holding him back from following the Tiger volleyball team.
The Millers still make their home in Spring Hill. They make the four-hour trip to Hays for most of the Tigers’ home matches, and they are able to attend a lot of their road games, too.
“It’s really handy,” Jeff said, “because a lot of the team’s opponents are closer to us here than we are to Hays. So we get to see a lot of the Tigers’ matches, both home and away.”
“But,” he added, “we always like coming back to Hays to watch. For me, there’s nothing that compares to Gross Coliseum.”
