Wabash College Athletics

Charles Eugene Miiller, you came to Wabash in 1971 as an All-Conference standout at South Newton High School, where you set your basketball team’s single-game scoring record, set records for assists, and won a Sectional Championship. You were also a four-year starter in football, class president, and a member of the National Honor Society. At Wabash, you were a member of Phi Delta Theta and the Sphinx Club, and a three-year basketball letterman. A mathematics major, you earned the George E. Carscallen Prize in Mathematics and graduated with honors.

On your freshman questionnaire at Wabash, you noted that you were a member of the Future Teachers club in high school, and unlike so many Wabash graduates, you stuck with that plan. You began your teaching and coaching career in 1975, serving as an assistant basketball coach and math teacher at Kankakee Valley High School. A year later, you became the head coach and led that team to a five-year record of 85 wins and 40 losses, winning four Sectional Championships and the school’s first Regional Championship in 1981.

Your career took off after that. You became the head basketball coach at Vincennes Lincoln in 1981, and continued that program’s proud winning tradition. In 1984, you led Lincoln to a 24-4 record and a berth in the State Championship Game, where the Alices lost to Warsaw in a very close contest. You would go on coach at Lincoln for 17 years before moving on to Lafayette Jefferson, where you coached seven seasons, and eventually you landed at your current post, Washington High School.

The state title that eluded you in 1984 became reality when you won the first of three Indiana State Championships in 2008 with back-to-back 3-A titles in 2010 and 2011. Two of your players on those teams were named Mr. Basketball — Tyler and Cody Zeller. Your record of accomplishment is stunning: 621 wins in 38 seasons, which ranks you sixth among active Indiana basketball coaches and 12^th all-time; 21 conference championships; 28 Sectional Championships; eight Regional Championships; and four Semi-State Championships. You have coached five Indiana All-Stars, including Tyler and Cody, and in 2012 you were inducted in the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Perhaps more impressive than the wins and state championships is your approach to coaching basketball. Your coaching peers admire you for your hard work, attention to detail, and old-school approach to the game. You are a proud husband, father, and grandfather, and you are an exemplary role model for the students at your school. Gene Miiller, you embody a Wabash Always Fight Attitude and inspire greatness in the students you teach and the athletes you coach, and therefore it is with the utmost pride that the National Association of Wabash Men inducts you in the Wabash Athletics Hall of Fame.