THE FRONT ROW with JASON ELLIOTT June 1, 2013

Ron Miller has always been about the kids.

Whether a coach, teacher or grandparent - Miller, who has taught and coached in the Plummer-Worley School District since 1986, did whatever he could to help out the district.

MILLER ANNOUNCED his retirement from coaching earlier this week, but will remain with the school district as a teacher.

"I've been at this school longer than anyone currently employed here," said Miller, 52. "I'm the only one that taught at Plummer High and the longest continuously employed person in the Plummer-Worley district. When I started here, I was young and just wanted to help out with the kids and help the school and took what I could do."

After playing college baseball as a pitcher at Oregon Tech and Pacific Lutheran, Miller came to Plummer, starting as the varsity baseball coach and assistant girls basketball coach.

"I was a coach's kid, so I played every sport I could when I was a kid," Miller said. "They'd just started the baseball program when I got here and it was an interesting time. We didn't have any uniforms and nobody had pitched out of the stretch or off the mound."

Miller coached baseball for three years before moving to softball - and became the head girls basketball coach soon after.

"I think we went to state (in basketball) nine times in the first 12 years I coached," said Miller, who won a state A-4 title as the coach of Plummer in 1991. "It was a challenge being at a small school because you don't always get to do things the way you want to. Sometimes, you have to be flexible with the kids on the floor and work with what you're given."

Miller retired as girls basketball coach before the start of the 2012-13 season.

As football coach at the school since the 1992 season, Miller said the team often times had to go from playing 8- to 11-man games within the North Star League.

"I had to learn how to be an 8-man, then 11-man coach," Miller said. "When I first started, us and Mullan played 11-man and both Clark Fork and Kootenai had just switched to 8-man."

IN ADDITION to his coaching duties, Miller was also the school's athletic director for nearly 20 years.

"It's pretty tough to step away," Miller said. "I'm just getting to where I've got grandkids and wanted to have a little more flexible schedule. When you're a coach, your schedule is pretty much wiped out with practices, summer camps, leagues. All my kids are grown and off in different places. At a point, I kept finding it harder and harder to get started again. I wanted to turn a page in life and do something else."

Something else, for now, will still including teaching agriculture, science and technology at Lakeside. In his time with the district, he's also taught math, shop and forestry.

However, retirement - especially at a smaller school - is not always permanent, so Miller is keeping the door open - even ever so slightly - for a possible return to coaching down the road.

"In a small school like ours, you do so many things, you just move around with what the school needs," Miller said. "I've really enjoyed it. I really loved being a part of those kids life and watching them grow up. I wouldn't have done anything different, but right now, it was a good time to make a transition. Someone had to leave to give me a chance, so hopefully someone is ready to do that all over again."

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d'Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected].