Long-Distance Dedication

Washington-Lee Coach Commutes From Denver to Arlington for Her Basketball Team

Michelle Miller was exercising at Washington-Lee High School in November 2006 when she strolled off the track and into the school to ask if she could help coach the girls' basketball team. Weeks later, when the head coach resigned, Miller became the team's fifth coach in four seasons.

But as quickly as she got the job, she had to figure out if she could keep it. Soon after she pledged at the school's winter sports banquet that she would return in 2007-08 to provide stability to the downtrodden team, her consulting job in Washington morphed into an executive position in Denver.

Miller assessed her quandary: Go back on the promise she had made to a bunch of girls she had become attached to and seen improve -- and perhaps be viewed as giving up on them at the risk of them giving up on themselves -- or try to juggle her Arlington team, which was coming off an 0-22 season, with a job 1,500 miles away.

Miller chose the latter, meaning that at Washington-Lee this season, "traveling" has been more than an offensive violation, "going coast to coast" does not pertain only to dribbling the length of the court, and "coach" is not just a title but a flight classification.

Miller, the chief operating officer of Internet domain company Name.com, helped build a company that three years ago sold for a reported $65 million. Now she takes red-eye flights and tries to schedule work trips around games and practices, all for a basketball program with more baggage than she has luggage.

"She did sort of save us in the beginning of the season," said senior forward Natalie Dahlstrom, a team co-captain. "Coming back was really nice. We thought there was a possibility that we could get another new coach, and we didn't like that."

Between summer workouts and this week, Miller has made about 20 round trips between Virginia and Colorado, in addition to business trips to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Bangkok. She has exchanged e-mails with her team from 12 time zones away and is almost on a first-name basis with the flight crew of Denver-based Frontier Airlines.

The former three-sport athlete at Glenelg High and two-year basketball walk-on at the University of Maryland has relied on assistants Angie Kelly and Chris Jacobs to run the program during her absences. At the same time, she has tried to make her Denver co-workers understand why she has been only a part-time presence there.

As Miller wrote in a passionate e-mail to her co-workers at 12:23 a.m. Nov. 2, after months of hand-wringing about what she should do: "Simply put, I just can't break my promise to these kids. . . . Yes, I will be flying across the country for an 0-22 high school girls basketball team! I know it may seem crazy, but as cheesy (and dumb) as this may seem, this is very important to me."

Three months and thousands of frequent flyer miles later, it still is. And the Generals (3-16), who host No. 4 Edison this evening for Senior Night, have a small cluster of inquisitive fans in Denver that they have never met. There is even talk of posting on the company Web site a picture of the team in Name.com T-shirts that Miller brought home from a recent conference.

"I do feel at times like, 'What am I doing?' " said Miller, who is 29 and single. "I love coaching, and the game, and that makes it worthwhile. Most people think I'm crazy, but do what you love, and it works out."

The Generals appreciate all the sacrifices that Miller has made, and they believe she has strengthened the program. They are vaguely aware of her business acumen. (Trade journals refer to Miller as "a bench mark for women domainers" and say she has climbed "all the way to the top of the corporate ladder.")