Goshen College’s track and field team now has all-star experience with the hiring of Tyler Miller, a former Purdue thrower, to coach the Maple Leafs throwing team.

Miller, who grew up in Goshen, has decided to come back to his roots, coaching the throwers at his home college.

“His background really helped him, making him a really good coach,” said Nick Hofer, a first-year thrower.

Liam Shaw, a sophomore thrower, said, “I may have had four weeks of throwing practice with him and the amount of belief I have in myself again is insane.” He continued, “Tyler gives us this safe space to make mistakes.”

Miller takes a different approach in coaching, partially stemming from his background as an athlete. “There’s definitely a component to what I do that is inspired by what I wish I would have had as a young athlete,” he said. “I don’t care about outcomes … If you eliminate the need for an outcome, that process will get you the results you’re looking for.”

The team has taken this new coaching change well. “Last year, I was struggling to do 285 [lbs] on the back squat for five [reps]. But this year, I’m doing five reps pretty easily,” Shaw said.

Another change Miller has made is how strong his throwers are becoming, not only physically, but mentally. He said, “One of the concepts that I talk about a lot is some days you’ve got a shovel, some days you got a spoon, but either way you got to keep digging.”

“He always talks about meeting us where we’re at,” Shaw said. “I could have had a really heavy week at school, and I’ve not got more than, like, six hours of sleep at night all week. And that’s okay with him.”

“He works on the mindset that you need to have in order to actually be successful,” Hofer said.

Miller had a very ordinary start to his throwing career. Some of his friends wanted to try out for the throwing team at Goshen Middle School, so he did too. “That was kind of the start of it, just hanging out with the boys,” he said.

In college, Miller made it to the Big Ten championships for three of his four years at Purdue: 2004, 2006 and 2007. He barely missed the Olympic trials in 2008.

“That was one of those disappointments in my athletic career, that I really wanted to be an Olympic qualifier,” Miller said. “But now looking back, there’s no failure in that. It’s just the thing that set me up for this state in life. And a lot of times God has a bigger plan than we do.”

After his college successes, he decided it was time to move away from throwing, and chose to pursue coaching.

“At the end of my throwing career, it was really just kind of a skills assessment,” Miller said. “I just kind of fell into it with the love of helping people.”

Making the transition to coaching was a great idea, according to Hofer and Shaw. Hofer said, “He actually makes sense when he’s coaching.”

Shaw said, “He gives us an ample amount of time.” He added, “He is just so observant of everything, and he just makes for a really, really good training environment.”

This year, Shaw is hoping for some solid results. “Personally, I’m looking at throwing well over 50 feet in the shot, and 170 in discus.”

Currently, GC’s shot put record stands at just under 48 feet, set by Shaw himself in February of this year, and the discus record is just over 160 feet.

Miller, on the other hand, just hopes for the players to be proud of themselves and the work they have done. “Really, what I’m looking for is just high levels of effort every day on repeat,” he said.

“I’ve got that fire in my belly now, and I think Tyler can put more fuel on that fire,” Shaw said.

In the future, Miller wants to build the throwing team into a powerhouse, “I would love to have some kind of legacy that people from across the world know Goshen College and Goshen, Indiana, because of the throwing that’s done here.”