THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 26, 1996 TAG: 9610260478
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: 65 lines
If there's one thing Old Dominion's Kim Miller wants you to remember about her prodigious reputation as a field hockey player, it's this: forget about it.
Shelve those 160 goals she scored at Virginia Beach's Cox High School, the third-largest number ever scored by an American high school player. File those two years of experience she's had on the national Under-18 team. Mothball that 10-goal game of hers last year.
An ebullient freshman who will help the third-ranked Monarchs face top-ranked North Carolina today (1 p.m.) at Foreman Field, Miller prefers you regard her as a blank slate.
Her high school triumphs were staggering, but after a couple months under the eye of ODU coach Beth Anders, Miller says she realizes the bank of field hockey savvy she brought to college was laughably limited.
If speed, drive and athletic instincts can carry you to 160 goals while you operate in a veritable vacuum as to how and why you do things, well, that's what happened, she says.
The inside game was outside her grasp.
``I guess a lot of people would think that I knew the game in high school,'' says Miller, who describes her former style as ``just take the ball and run. . . . You develop a passion for the sport in high school, you learn to love the game, but when you go to college it's more like you learn how to do it.
``I feel like I was going on natural talent in high school, and it took me far. Now that I'm learning how to play the game, oh boy, I can't imagine how far I'm going to go. I'm excited.''
In time, of course, in time. At the moment, Miller insists she is but an equal member of a 14-2 team that hopes to hand the Tar Heels (14-1) their second loss, a month after beating them 4-3 in double overtime at Chapel Hill.
She has scored 12 goals, second to senior Danielle Chellew's 14, and is fourth in total points with 26, so life on the field is following the script.
The really good thing, though, is that light bulbs are going off all over Miller's brain. Not that they aren't giving her headaches.
``Just the first five minutes of camp, it felt like this bucketful of information was dumped on me, like, `Ahhhhhh, what do I do, I don't know any of this stuff,' '' Miller says. ``You kind of have to take a step back and take a deep breath. I always forget to breathe.
``It's almost overwhelming. It's like my body can take it, but mentally I can't take it anymore. So it's really about staying with it and not getting frustrated with myself. I really want to learn everything, but I can't learn it all in one day.''
Anders, with 298 victories in 15 seasons, has plenty of experience breaking them down and building them up. Miller, Anders says, has been a model student and, just as important, a good fit within the critical team structure.
``I think just getting her feet underneath her and using her instincts is all we're really asking for her to do this year,'' Anders says.
``Kim's instincts are her main attribute, and you don't want her to lose them by overloading her. (But) to get her better, she must pay attention to detail, and if you're going to do that you need instruction, because we're talking about taking her to the next step.''
And they are steps, not leaps, even for the golden children.
``I know what I did in the past is in the past,'' Miller says. ``I'm proud of it. But this is a totally different chapter.'' ILLUSTRATION: To improve in field hockey, ODU freshman Kim Miller is
honing her mental skills to match her natural talent. by CNB