The William & Mary women’s cross-country coach Jill Miller announced her resignation earlier this week. Miller will move to Wisconsin to serve as the top female assistant for the Badgers in both cross-country and track and field.
Director of Track and Field and Cross Country Stephen Walsh will conduct a national search to identify a replacement.
“We want to wish Jill all the best at Wisconsin,” Walsh said. “It is a great opportunity for her to work with a top-notch program. While we would have liked to keep her in the Tribe, it would have been selfish to deny more coaches and athletes the opportunity to work with her. The team and us coaches will miss Jill, and look forward to competing against her this fall.”
Miller came to W&M in the summer of 2011, and was promoted to the head women’s cross-country coach position in 2012. Over the past two years, her team has made impressive strides, winning back-to-back CAA cross country titles, the 2013 track and field championship and making the NCAA Championships each year.
In 2013-14, the Tribe placed at all three national championships for the first time ever, and finished 13th in the USTFCCCA Terry Crawford Program of the Year rankings. Miller’s athletes included six-time All-American Elaina Balouris ’14, who won the last four CAA Athlete of the Year honors, and Emily Stites (Wyoming, Ohio), a four-time All-American and winner of two USAT&F Junior National Championships as a freshman in 2013.
In the fall of 2013, the cross country team scored the first-ever perfect score in conference history, and finished 12th at the NCAA Championships. Miller was named the CAA Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year each of the last two years, and shared the W&M Alumni Association Coach of the Year honors in 2012-13.
Whomever is brought in to help Walsh in guiding the women’s team will have a full cupboard in the coming year, as the Tribe returns five of its top seven runners from last year and 17 runners in total. The top returnees include CAA Champions and NCAA qualifiers Meghan McGovern (North Wales, Pa.) and Dylan Hassett (Alpharetta, Ga.), as well as All-East honoree Carolyn Hennessey (Herndon, Va.) and Stites.
