Hold the phone: Glenbard East’s Miller teaches her students the ropes
Glenbard East girls basketball coach and physical education teacher Nicole Miller has climbed to the base of Mt. Everest. She’s trekked through the Andes Mountains in Peru.
It’s not a stretch for her to be acknowledged for implementing an active curriculum at school.
On Sept. 30 the Texas-based Outdoors Tomorrow Foundation named Miller the 2024 Outdoor Adventure Teacher of the Year for Illinois.
A national nonprofit organization whose mission is to offer students an outdoor curriculum, the foundation will present Miller her award Dec. 5 at the Illinois Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance convention in Tinley Park.
Miller takes physical education outside in annual three-day trips to places like Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin. At the end of this school year, she will lead about 20 students on an educational tour in Costa Rica.
As one of her students began her college essay, “My gym teacher taught me how to live.”
A Rams girls basketball head or assistant coach for 31 years and scheduled to retire as a teacher in December 2026, Miller also brings the thrills indoors in her Adventure Challenge I and II classes, scheduled sequentially by semester.
“If they’re in this curriculum the whole year, there’s a lot of growth,” Miller said.
Before Glenbard East built its field house in 2001, she proposed the installation of a climbing wall and a 35-foot-high ropes course, way up in the rafters.
There’s also an odd-looking climbing apparatus for two called the “Dangling Duo” that incorporates ropes and beams suspended down a field house wall.
Students are trained and tested in belaying the rope and all the climbing knots to keep them safe.
“It’s really been the most amazing curriculum to teach because I get to teach people in all areas — physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, all of it.”
She conceded to modern mores in May by establishing an Instagram account for Adventure Challenge. Miller otherwise abhors socialization by cellphone.
“More than ever I feel that kids today, while we were all raised in a play-based childhood, they’re raised in a phone-based childhood,” she said. “Adventure Education is helping students come back to their life. … Come back to nature, and each other.”
She feels it’s crucial to push and support students both physically and mentally, “and build resilience,” Miller said.
When they buy in to Adventure Challenge?
“It’s like they wake up.”
Take it outside
HG Athletics, a Glendale Heights training and fitness facility, has been holding a food drive for the Glen House Food Pantry in Glen Ellyn. The last day of collection is Friday.
On Saturday, instead of their normal functional fitness class, at 11 a.m. members will march the 3 miles to Glen House with backpacks full of the donated food.
“It’s heavy food, too,” said HG Athletics co-owner Aaron Stott, who played tennis at Glenbard West High School, Class of 2000.
All those cans of tuna and boxes of pancake mix won’t walk themselves.
The club’s goal is to collect 500 pounds of food. The plan is for people to parade the goods south down Main Street to Fairview Avenue and east to the food pantry on Park Boulevard.
This is definitely functional fitness, weights and a little cardio.
“Fitness is scalable and it can be in different forms,” Stott said.
Hall of fame couple
In high school, Jen Glonke Stewart played outfield for a Fremd softball team that finished fourth in Class AA in 2000.
She walked on at Northwestern, and after earning three letters she hanged up the cleats and figured that was that.
But no. A family friend recruited her to play on a local slowpitch softball team. Over the next 15 years Stewart’s talent and compete level at the highest reaches of women’s slowpitch has landed her in the Illinois United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) Softball Hall of Fame.
Now retired from tournament play, Stewart will be inducted Saturday at the Radisson in Rockford, cheered on by a slew of family members, friends and former teammates. One of her former teams, Made to Order, also will be inducted.
“It’s not ever something that I aspired to only because it wasn’t really on my radar, frankly. I did see similar opportunities for my uncle (Ken Cooper) and my grandfather (Dick Cooper, both in the Chicago 16-inch Softball Hall of Fame), but it’s something that happened after the fact,” she said.
“She had an ability to change any game she played with her abilities in the outfield,” said her husband, Curt Stewart. “Just a fierce competitor, a very smart hitter, she always played the game the right way. A fantastic teammate. It was a pleasure to watch her play and succeed.”
Both softball players, they met at a tournament, naturally, in Schaumburg.
With more than 1,000 home runs in tournament and league play, after a two-year delay due to COVID, Curt Stewart was inducted into the Illinois USSSA Hall in 2022.
“It was nice for him to have his own time in the spotlight as well,” Jen Stewart said. “Also for me, it’s actually nice to be recognized independently for the things that I did. It’s like the icing on the cake for us to have this thing together.
“And we have bragging rights — the first married couple to be in the state hall of fame together,” she said.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com