Waubonsie Valley's Miller leaving on own terms

One delight when speaking with Waubonsie Valley girls bowling coach Marty Miller is you always left the conversation having learned something. Even when the topic is his own retirement.

"If you go, you really want to go on your own terms if possible," he said. "You want to leave like Barry Sanders."

That's at the top of your game, which is where Miller took the Warriors girls bowling program before he resigned in mid-March after eight years as coach.

"We had a good run, no question, we really had a good run. It was time," said Miller, 69, who sent children Deana, Martin and Matt through Waubonsie.

Finishing third at the state finals Feb. 17-18, that capped the sixth straight season Waubonsie Valley went downstate as a team, a streak matched only by Machesney Park Harlem from 2000 to 2005.

In that span the Warriors won trophies five of six years, earning state championships in 2013 and 2014 and placing third in 2015 and this season.

"We were running the best club in the state the last six years," said Miller, whose teams also won four sectional titles and four regionals - or, each regional Waubonsie competed in since the Illinois High School Association debuted that level in 2014.

In addition, whether with Waubonsie Valley at Parkside Lanes in Aurora or through private instruction at either Bowling Green in West Chicago or Palos Lanes in Palos Hills, Miller has coached each of the last five individual state champions, including Waubonsie's Julia Bond in 2014 and Buffalo Grove's current two-time winner, Jessica Soskich.

Devoting more time to instruction, to coaches clinics and furthering his education in the sport are why Miller resigned as Waubonsie's girls coach.

He already has attained a United States Bowling Congress Silver certification as coach, but Miller would like to gain Gold certification. He said there are only 22 Gold-certified coaches in the world, a distinction he's pursued "off and on" over the years.

"I didn't vanish off the bowling scene, I just am going to a different bowling scene," he said.

Miller assured Waubonsie athletic director Chris Neibch he would still conduct his annual bowling camp every June for Warriors bowlers. He also offers the Power Strike 300 clinic, this year June 12-15 at Bowling Green, which draws coaches from colleges nationwide.

That's another aspect Miller has excelled at. Several among his bowlers, such as Bond (Nebraska) and Violet Kirk (Jackson State) have gained scholarships from some of the best college bowling programs in the country. He said current seniors Mirica Yancey and Angelica Hernandez will be signing Letters of Intent to Valparaiso and Lindenwood, respectively, with Serenity Quintero still poring over similar options.

"There's just such an opportunity, particularly for girls, to get a scholarship to go to college," Miller said. "For girls who love to bowl."

The 'it factor'

Every school has them, athletes who excel in any sport they pursue. Like Wheaton North junior Ally Serbick.

One of the best if not the best talent in any youth soccer game she played, she's gone on to succeed at powerlifting and, for the first time since middle school, track and field.

"I've always wanted to do track," the strawberry blonde said. "Sophomore year I wanted to do track, but since I tore my ACL everything was set back a year."

Thus, some history, with the qualifier that this writer knows Ally and her parents, Ray and Ann, through the club soccer circuit.

An aggressive forward who owned through balls and couldn't be caught from behind, in the spring of 2015 Ally Serbick scored 26 goals during Wheaton North's 17-game freshman soccer schedule.

Playing that fall for her club team, Sockers FC, she and an opponent met at the ball simultaneously. Serbick went down and stayed down. A couple days after her father carried her from the field the fears were confirmed: torn left ACL and meniscus.

Starting in the rehabilitation process and then training with her father - Ray Serbick was a scholarship wrestler at Eastern Illinois and is a personal trainer with a couple past power lifting competitions under his belt - Ally tore into lifting.

When her progress and goals exceeded her father's expertise she followed the path of a cousin, Naperville North graduate Jenny Schmult, who trained under Pete Arroyo at Legacy Strength Systems in Aurora. Ally Serbick had also become frustrated with her soccer playing, believing she'd hit a plateau.

"That's why I'm doing powerlifting," she said, "because you can measure the improvement."

Track and field also provides quantitative results. This indoor season, in her second meet since eighth grade, Serbick ran the 200 meters in 28.4 seconds, not terribly far off the Class 3A qualifying standard of 26.01 seconds considering her brief training and the indoor oval's tight turns.

At the DuPage Valley Conference indoor championships on March 16 she ran the 400 in 1:03.59 to place eighth, and joined Abigail Noyes, Malia Humecki and Leeya Zander on the Falcons' third-place 1,600-meter relay.

"I like the individual achievement that you make toward a team effort," Serbick said of track. "And then everybody seems to be wanting me to do better and always is encouraging me. It's the same thing for powerlifting."

On March 25 at the Amateur American Powerlifting Federation's Illinois State Meet, she set a state record in her classification with a dead lift of 248 pounds, tied another record in bench press at 104.5 pounds and squatted 187 pounds to beat Schmult's state record for the combined lifts.

"She did it with her work, her discipline, her diligence," Arroyo said.

Serbick said she's hooked on lifting for the long term, signing up for the AAPF Nationals May 26-28 at the Westin Lombard Yorktown Center. She also will strongly consider returning next year to Wheaton North's soccer program. Versatility like hers brings tough choices.

"I'd kind of like to make it to state (track) and not regret my decision to not play soccer this season," she said.

Trojans march forward

In the space of two months Timothy Christian gained a full-time steward for its ambitious Project IMPACT addition and a new man to coach in it.

On Monday Timothy athletic director Jack LeGrand announced that 41-year-old Lombard resident Scott Plaisier was hired as the Trojans' boys varsity basketball coach.

LeGrand, who went 150-102 in nine seasons as boys coach, resigned March 8 to focus on his responsibilities as middle school and high school athletic director at the Elmhurst school, which serves students attending preschool through high school.

"It's a different type of coaching, a different type of leadership," LeGrand said. "I'm worried a little bit about missing the relationships with the guys we coach, but I think I'll just have to do that in a different capacity."

On Thursday, Plaisier (pronounced "pleasure") planned to meet his team and tour the new construction. The $16 million addition, on schedule for hosting basketball in 2017, is a 60,000-square-foot building that will house middle-school classrooms and a gymnasium twice the size of Timothy's current competition gym.

"It's going to be a fun building just to be part of because of the state-of-the-art things that are going to be in there. But it's going to be fun for the community as well," said Plaisier, whose two oldest children attend Timothy's grade school with a third on the way.

A Michigan native who played basketball at Calvin College and for a year professionally in the Netherlands, Plaisier assisted John Daniels at Stagg the last two seasons. (Daniels, the former York coach, recently resigned due to family considerations.)

Plaisier teaches what sounds like a fantastic physical education course at Sandburg High School - outdoor adventure education, including rock climbing and kayaking - where he coached several levels of boys and girls basketball for nine years before joining Daniels at Stagg.

Because Plaisier's teaching duties end by 2:15 p.m. the drive to Elmhurst from Orland Park was not a deterrent.

"It's going to work out fine," LeGrand said.

Plaisier himself described his comments on developing players who respect the game, share the ball, value each possession and dictate pace on both ends of the court as "generic." That's no different from the vast majority of new-hire stories.

But given that LeGrand characterized the program's mission as "building men of integrity," Plaisier emphatically checked that box.

"Having the ability to coach basketball and be a mentor for young men who are growing not only as people but growing in their faith and growing in their ability to play basketball, that combination was the most appealing," Plaisier said.

doberhelman@dailyherald.com

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