Miller Family Has Made an Impact on the Football Program

The only comfort senior Brett Miller could give to his father after beating Shawnee Mission South was an apology.
At the time in tears, Jim Miller wasn’t able to find the words he wanted to say to his son; but just by Brett’s few apologetic words, he laughed and broke out a smile. He couldn’t have been more excited for Brett.
On their senior night, Brett, along with all of his teammates, beat SM South to give their team an eighth win, becoming the winningest football team in Shawnee Mission East football history. The eighth win was one more than none other than Brett’s father and the rest of the 1975 team.
“Sherman said over, over and over that, ‘If you blow this, you’ll never forget it,” Brett said. “The West game won’t feel special if you blow this.’ We had to go out and play our hardest. After that game it was the biggest moment in most of our lives, just because we were in the history books forever.”
Although East’s football history certainly isn’t illustrious, the small periods of success have the Miller family fingerprints all over them, and it doesn’t just lie with Jim and Brett, but also 2007 graduate Bobby Miller.
Out of East’s 20 winning seasons in 53 years, the Millers have been involved in 25 percent of those; putting the Miller’s all-time East record at 36-18 compared to the cumulative losing East record. There have been back-to-back winning seasons only two times. Both times, one of the Millers were there. All of these statistics place the Millers at the pinnacle of Lancer football.
Starting with Jim on the 1975 team, the Lancers set a mark that wouldn’t be beaten for 35 years by going 7-2. The previous season, the team went 6-3.
Next was Bobby with the 2005 team that went 6-3. Bobby’s following season, the team went 5-4. Bobby and Jim were a part of the only two teams in history that managed to have a winning record back-to-back years.
Now, Brett and the 2010 edition of the Lancers finished 8-1 in the regular season, the best season in school history. Although these winning seasons are the collective work of an entire team; it is nearly impossible not to see the connection: when a Miller is on the Shawnee Mission East football team, they are always successful.
“We are very fortunate to play on the teams at the times we did,” Jim said. “Football is a team game; you’ve got to have all the chemistry to make it work. I don’t think it’s all because of us by any means.”
Although these improbable seasons are majorly a coincidence, between the Miller boys, they have used their East football careers to feed their competitiveness.
The three Millers always compare who is the fastest, strongest, or smartest on and off the football field, so naturally the comparison of football teams comes up. Before this season, Jim and Bobby sat at the top above Brett. Both had better records as a Lancer, and both were taller. But this year it all changed. Brett outgrew his brother, and beat his father’s season win record sitting Brett at the top and he lets it be known.
“I knew individually it would be very tough to match my brother,” Brett said. “He was all-metro, all-state — all everything. My thing was the team thing. I thought it would be pretty easy. Going into the season, I wanted to match my dad like crazy. From high school, middle school to elementary school; all the time.”
Growing up, Brett went to all of his brother’s games soaking in every play on the field and every ounce of the Friday night football atmosphere. Brett likes to think that they grew into the team’s biggest fans.
“My thought process was basically how incredible high school was going to be,” Brett said. “How much I couldn’t wait and how much I wanted to be as succesfsul as them. As well as carry on the tradition.”
Before the season began, the seniors drove down to Southern Missouri for a canoe trip, continuing a tradition that had been going since his brother’s time at East. During the trip, the team set what their goals would be going forward among winning league, and going farther in the playoffs than any other team in East history. Brett brought up to the team having the best record in school history.
“When I said that, we all agreed,” Brett said. “We wanted to break some sort of school record.”
Right before the season began, Jim sat in on a team meeting where the players reiterated their goals for the upcoming games, he remembers them talking about winning eight games and beating his team’s record.
“It wasn’t cockiness, it wasn’t a crazy prediction, “ Jim said. “They believed they could do it. Hearing them say it meant a lot to me because I was a part of that record. I’m not totally surprised; they said they were going to do it and they did.”