Stacey Miller was introduced to golf less than a mile from her home. The former Royal Links Golf Course in Normal had a driving range, where Miller went with her father, Terry, and a par-3, nine-hole layout ideal for beginners.
That’s what Miller was when a Northpoint Elementary School classmate, Brittany Kilborn, invited her to give playing a try. Kilborn’s father, Harland, was co-owner of the course.
“She would just take her clubs and walk down the street and go over to the course and play,” Terry Miller said. “It was really just buddying up with Brittany to do something and have fun.”
Thus began a golf journey covering a whole lot of miles, too many to count. A multisport star, Miller made time for junior golf, high school golf at Central Catholic and collegiate golf at Illinois State. She played briefly on the LPGA Futures Tour, then spent seven years as the assistant professional at ISU’s Weibring Golf Club.
Golf has given her a college education, life lessons, lasting friendships and now this: a place in the Illinois State Athletics Percy Family Hall of Fame.
A three-time all-Missouri Valley Conference selection and the 2009 MVC individual champion, Miller will be among five inductees Saturday during homecoming weekend. She received the news this summer in a phone call from Dr. Jeri Beggs, ISU’s interim director of athletics.
“I was shocked,” Miller said. “One of the girls on the golf team with me, Katie Jean, got inducted a few years ago. I was so happy for her. I wondered, ‘If I play my cards right, maybe down the road … ’
“I know I had a heavy pause when Jeri Beggs told me. I thought to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, this is certainly a dream that I had hoped for and I’m so grateful to be selected.’”
Miller thrived in golf after also excelling in soccer and basketball at Central Catholic. She competed in additional sports as a youth – softball, track, volleyball, tennis, swimming.
A three-time state tournament qualifier in golf and an All-Area selection in soccer and basketball, Miller was the Pantagraph Female Athlete of the Year as a high school senior in 2006.
“Growing up, I played almost every sport and I just think I enjoyed athletics and competing and playing on teams,” she said. “So to end up in an individual sport like golf, it was quite the change.
“Swimming wasn’t my jam, but anything I could do to get outside and just play and chase the ball around. I remember always loving being outside and riding my bike and doing anything athletic.”
That “go for it” spirit was encouraged at home. Terry and Mary Miller wanted their daughters, Joellen and younger sister Stacey, to experience new things.
“We were just like, ‘Try stuff,’” Mary Miller said. “You want to try piano, fine. You want to try soccer, fine. The deal is as long as you’ve signed up, you’re going to finish that commitment. There’s no quitting. And at the end of the year, if you want to move onto something else, that’s fine.”
There was a wait and see aspect to golf. When Stacey first expressed an interest, Terry Miller had an old set of clubs cut down to her size. No new clubs would be purchased until golf became more than a “two-weekend, kind of fun thing,” Mary Miller said.
It became a lifetime thing.
Stacey Miller gives lessons at Ironwood Golf Course in Normal and Bloomington’s Carle Health and Fitness Center, where she is director of member services and experiences.
She relishes the opportunity to “help people with their passion for golf and grow the game that I absolutely love and adore.”
The rewards for Miller go beyond golf at Carle Health and Fitness, a medically-based facility with multiple departments and specialties. She is inspired by how the departments share a common goal, much like a successful athletic team.
“What’s really neat to see is all these different people who come together. Everyone has a passion for helping others,” she said. “At my core, that’s who I am as well.”
She will tell you she had plenty of help reaching the Hall of Fame. In addition to her youth and high school coaches, she cited her ISU golf coaches – Ray Kralis and Pina Gentile as a freshman and Darby Sligh her final three years. Each provided a different perspective that made her better, she said.
Also having an impact was Rick Sellers, Miller’s swing coach in high school and college. She credits Sellers for helping “take my game to the next level when I made a couple of major swing changes.”
The result was a Redbird career in which Miller earned her degree in business management, won four tournament titles, improved her stroke average each year and, through consistent performances in weekly team qualifying, played in every event all four years.
She called choosing Illinois State a “leap of faith,” and in the end, she soared.
“I truly feel like I became a product of my environment because I was surrounded by such successful people,” Miller said. “I attribute a lot of my success to the teammates I had, freshman year all the way up.
“I remember walking in, I was so nervous because I knew we had a big recruiting class and I had heard about all the success of my soon-to-be teammates. It was just learning from them and realizing that, 'I’m surrounded by competitive people on the golf course and in the classroom.’ My mentality was, ‘OK, I just have to keep up.’ It was everything that I could imagine, and it was even more than that.”
Miller’s big day Saturday will be shared by four other inductees, including former Redbird volleyball star Jenny Kabbes Fuente who, like Miller, is a Central Catholic graduate.
When Miller was in seventh grade, Kabbes Fuente was her volleyball coach.
“It will be great to see her and I’m hopeful she remembers me,” Miller said. “If not, I’ll introduce myself again. For sure it’s a little bit of Central Catholic pride there.”
There is parental pride as well. Terry Miller said his daughter’s connection with her former teammates, business degree, position at Carle Health and Fitness and, now, Hall of Fame selection, make it clear, “ISU was a really good fit for her academically and athletically.”
“You go back to the conversations you have with your kids as they’re growing up … ‘Work hard, be dedicated to what you’re doing, find something that you like and good things will happen,’” he said. “This is just the culmination of that, right?”
Stacey Miller’s golf journey continues not just through lessons, but playing at least once a week. She reports her swing is still there and passion for the game is strong as ever.
Those short walks to Royal Links charted a Hall of Fame course, with Mom and Dad along for every step.
“I’m so grateful for everything they did for me,” Miller said. “They set me up for success. To this day, they’re my biggest fans. They’ll be sitting next to me when I get inducted. When I look back at college memories, they’re there for every one of them.”
