By Sara Page, Midlothian Exchange
spage@midlothianexchange.com

Jack Miller is one of those rare people who knows where he’s going in life.

Miller wants to be an orthopedic surgeon. In the more immediate future, he’d like to be a college football player. Anyone who knows him, knows he has the gut determination to do whatever he wants and overcome any obstacles in the way.

A perfect illustration happens to be the story of how he became the starting linebacker for the Trinity Episcopal School football team.

“Jack is somebody who was always looking for a bigger challenge and was always looking ways to improve himself,” Trinity Athletic Director and head football coach Eric Gobble said. “When he was an eighth grader, he played on the JV team and the JV season ended a week or two before the varsity season. As an eighth grader, he refused for his football season to end and insisted that he be allowed to go out and play football as long as anybody in the school was playing football, so he spent a couple of weeks with the varsity football team.”

“I played in the last varsity game, the last three minutes, but I did get in as an eighth grader,” Miller laughed.

As a freshman, Miller made the varsity football squad as the second string middle linebacker, but two weeks into the season, found himself back on the junior varsity team.

“This bigger, older guy came in as a transfer after we’d already had two games and just by virtue of being older and stronger took my position,” Miller said. “So now, I’m not a one, I’m not a two … That’s a steam of boost destroyer right there.”

Downtrodden, Miller went to then lifting coach, the late Skip Johns, who gave him the support he needed in a rather unexpected way.

“When I went to go and complain to him about losing my position, he got mad at me,” Miller said. “He wanted me to physically work harder in practice and play, and I ended up working as hard as I could, and it turned out, a week later, I was the starting middle linebacker for the varsity team. So I didn’t just get my spot back, I started.”

Though his coaches gave him the kick-start he needed, Miller would likely have reached the conclusion that he needed to work harder on his own.

Born in Nuremburg, Germany, to Dr. David and Kathleen Miller, he is now an honors student at Trinity Episcopal. But reaching that level took a lot of effort. As an early elementary school student, “my teachers thought I was mentally [challenged],” Miller said. “I was not getting things right, I couldn’t form letters. I wasn’t illiterate, and I could speak, but it was obvious I had some major issues.”

Miller was eventually diagnosed as dyslexic and dysgraphic, which means that writing and reading were more difficult for him. He enrolled at Riverside School where he got one-on-one tutoring and learned various tricks to quickly reading, forming and recalling words. He is now well on his way to enrolling in college as a pre-medical student, and following a path that has been his life-long dream.

Miller would like to follow in the footsteps of his father, who is an orthopedic surgeon at West End Orthopedics clinic in the Hioaks complex of Chippenham Johnston Willis Hospital.

“I am my father’s son,” Miller said. “He’s been a big influence on my life. Things that he’s interested in, I find myself interested in. When I was a little kid, Legos were my favorite toy. I love tinkering with things, putting it together, and then I’ve always been interested in how the human body works and why this muscle does that. The whole science behind the human body really just interests me. If you take tinkering with building stuff and you take the human body and just stick it together, you get an orthopedic surgeon.”

Miller is certainly not shy or squeamish when it comes to the anatomy.

He played the last five games of Trinity’s football season this year with his left hand wrapped in bandages. That was to keep his pinky finger in place.

During the Oct. 2 game against Blessed Sacrament Huguenot, Miller found himself closing in on the Blessed Sacrament quarterback Austin Wingfield, who happens to also be his best friend. As he was pulling Wingfield to the ground, his finger got extended.

“It got caught in a mound of dirt and just snapped,” Miller recalled. “I thought I just dislocated it because I picked my hand up and my pinky was laying across [the bottom of] my fingers [at a 90-degree angle]. I shook my head like ‘That’s not right’ and grabbed it and [snapped it back into place] and walked back to the huddle. It was real weird because I put it back, and it cracked and popped and I [opened and closed my fist] and was like ‘Oh it worked!’ So my last five games as a senior, I had my hand bandaged up like a club.”

Miller is a member of the Trinity Honor Council, Key Club and track team and is treasurer of the Student Government Association, but, like being an orthopedic surgeon, football is his first activity of choice. That those two have always been his passions is simply part of the steadfastness of his personality.

“He’s earnest and excited and incredibly positive about what is going on in his life and the possibilities of the things that he can accomplish in life,” Gobble said. “The confidence that he has in himself comes from his singleness of purpose.

“I think another reason that he will be successful is he has such a strong network of support,” Gobble continued. “His parents are very positive support people and he has surrounded himself with teachers and coaches that now believe in him because of his hard work and effort. Everybody is as excited for his success as he is.”

Miller sees three possibilities for college: University of Richmond, Georgetown University and Virginia Military Institute. Wherever he goes, no matter if he’s on the football field or in the classroom, he will continue down his path of choice with the same grace and confidence that has marked his time at Trinity Episcopal School.

“I know who I am,” Miller said. “I know I’m a football player. I know I’m dyslexic. I know I want to be an orthopedic surgeon. I know who I am, and I’m comfortable with that; so there’s no reason to pull myself back.”