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Preps RAMS COACH GUIDES TEAM TO TITLE |
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Rams Coach Guides Team to Title
By Will Webber
Journal Staff Writer
RIO RANCHO — Whoever thinks there's no such thing as pressure in the country's most popular leisure sport has never walked a day in Mike Miller's shoes.
Or bowled a meaningful 10th frame like Dalton Smith, for that matter.
Miller has spent most of his adult life with a bowling ball in his hands. A professional who has toured more towns than your standard carnival, he has learned a thing or two about calming the nerves in a sport usually regarded as a fun activity for people who like to wear crazy shirts and smooth-soled shoes.
Both he and Dalton were front and center for Saturday's high school state bowling championships at Tenpins & More, a 24-lane bowling alley owned by Steve Mackie.
Twenty-eight teams from across the state took part in the single-elimination tournament.
Rio Rancho, Piedra Vista and East Mountain took home championships in 5A, 4A and 1A-3A, respectively. Rio Rancho capped an undefeated season with its run through four rounds of play. The Rams, whose roster is stacked with more than 40 players, beat Manzano 3-1 in the best-of-five finals.
As the team's coach, Miller did what he does best as he watched his team roll through the competition. Calm, cool and collected, he barely changed expressions as his kids capped a 15-0 season.
"Pressure is what you make of it; that's one thing I learned playing professionally all those years," he said. "I tell the kids all the time that when you get into moments like that, you have to welcome it because it's in those moments that a person should want to be. You learn from them and it makes you better."
The brother of Dana Miller-Mackie — Mackie's wife and, perhaps, the most famous bowler to ever come out of the state — Miller said the toughest things about his job are deciding which players to place in his five-person rotation and not expecting too much out of those he chooses.
He admitted he sometimes sets the bar a little too high for his players because that's what he did for himself while on tour — elements that make him the perfect coach, of course.
His co-ed roster for the finals included Hannah Stedman, a senior who has already secured a bowling scholarship to West Texas A&M next year. She had the high-game score for the entire tournament with a 278.
As she and the rest of the Rams were doing their thing before an overflow crowd that Mackie said was the biggest he's seen in his nearly 10 years of owning Tenpins, Piedra Vista was putting the finishing touches on Del Norte.
The Panthers trailed 2-0 in the finals, then won the final three games by a combined five pins. The last one had Smith at the controls for the final roll.
A Piedra Vista junior, he served as his team's anchor entering the final frame of Game 5. Needing at least seven pins in his final roll to lift the Panthers to the state championship, he went dead-center and toppled eight.
No big deal for a player accustomed to big moments.
As a freshman, Smith needed a strike to hand Piedra Vista the 2007 championship. He did it then; he did it Saturday.
"I was nervous, yeah, but there was more pressure when I needed that strike," Smith conceded.
Smith's passion for bowling is similar to several of those out there Saturday. He started the game when he was barely big enough to hold a ball, but found himself drawn to it in high school because of its counterculture nature.
"It's the one sport a person can play from cradle to grave," Mackie said. "No other sport offers the enthusiasm bowling does for people of all ages."
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