July 27, 2008

I have never used this site for my own personal use or for editorial comments,              
but an event happened today that has caused me to change my thinking.

The Hope Mills community and South View family lost a coaching icon today 
with the sudden passing of Coach Ron Miller.

Coach Miller was a dear friend of mine and I am personally feeling a tremendous loss.  
I know this loss will be felt literally across the country  as the word of his death is circulated, because of the lives he touched during his coaching career.

You knew exactly where you stood with Ron Miller.  If he liked you, he really liked you. 
If he didn't like you or disagreed with you, he let you know. 

The Coach and I took many trips over the years to ball games and we shared many 
thoughts on life and sports.  He was the king of sports trivia,  or at least he thought he was.  We were both big major league baseball trivia addicts.  There probably wasn’t a week, he did not call me with a  stupid baseball trivia question that he usually stumped me on.  He called himself the “Cesspool of Worthless Information” and he was.  It is really  ironic, that this afternoon prior to hearing of his death, I was watching the Baseball Hall of Fame inductions and thinking to myself, that going to next  year’s ceremonies would be a great trip for us. We always talked about going to Cooperstown and we would have been like two kids in a candy store. 

I started doing Ron’s basketball stats in 1996 and we developed a great friendship over the years.  His near death experience with heart trouble in 1997  deeply affected me. He always thought that he was living on borrowed time since then.  When he retired from South View after the 2001 season, he was kind of lost.  Ron was a gym rat? Loved the gym and working with kids. He always liked the teaching aspect of basketball, more so than the games  themselves.  

I will never forget his last game for South View in 2001 at the Eastern Regionals in Greenville against Broughton High School featuring  Shavlik Randolph. South View lost the game by 11 points without one of their star players, Roderick Williams who was ineligible because he had gotten thrown out of a game a week earlier at the Sectional Championship against WilmingtonHoggard, coached by current Terry Sanford coach, Bill Boyette. After coaching the South View ninth grade team for several years, he got a new  lease on life when Fayetteville Academy came calling last fall and  he got to coach again on the high school level. 

I, like many others whose life he touched, have many, many Ron Miller stories, some 
you can print and others you cannot.  He was a wonderful  coach, a mentor for many 
young coaches, but more importantly a wonderful person and I will miss him terribly.

Mike Molin

Related Articles
(links to articles no longer available)

Former South View coach Miller dies (Fayetteville Observer - 7/27/08)

Coach Ron Miller dies (Fayetteville Observer - 7/28/08)

Funeral arrangements announced for former South View coach 
(Fayetteville Observer - 7/28/08)

Ron Miller always did the right thing (The Sandspur Online - 7/30/08)

Miller was more than just a basketball coach (The Sandspur Online - 7/30/08)

Community mourns loss of former coach (The Sandspur Online - 7/30/08)

Rainmaker teaches us to believe rain will come 
(Fayetteville Observer/Bill Kirby - 8/1/08)

Coaching icon honored (Fayetteville Observer - 8/2/08)

Former South view coach remembered, honored (The Sandspur Online - 8/6/08)