Top High School Performances - February

Field Hockey Star Leads Team to State Title, Becomes Assists Leader

By Bob Herman


Chantae Miller, a senior at Buffalo (New York) Williamsville North High School, ended her field hockey career in a way that few others could match.

Miller and the 23-0 Williamsville North squad won the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class A state championship, defeating Shrub Oak (New York) Lakeland High School, 2-1, November 18.

During the 2007 season, Miller had 11 performances that will qualify for inclusion in the 2009 National High School Sports Record Book – one of which is the national record for most career assists (117).

"I think it shows her unselfishness," Williamsville Athletic Director Steve Ferenczy said. "It's a team sport, not an individual sport, and she sacrificed individual goals scored in order to make the team better."

Miller also holds three separate records for most assists in a season (35, 32 and 31), three separate records for most consecutive games with an assist (17, 11 and eight) and still finished with 126 goals in her career (ninth-most all time).

What's unique for Miller is this was actually her sixth year on the Williamsville varsity field hockey team.

The New York State Education Department has "Selection/Classification" procedures in which a seventh- or eighth-grade student can participate in an approved sport after going through the required screening process, which includes a mile run and other exercise activities.

Miller was able to show that she had the physical ability and maturity to take a quick step up to the high school field hockey level, thus leading to her six-year varsity career.

"I had never played before seventh grade, except for a little bit with my sister," Miller said. "I definitely looked up to her, but she was a defender, and I was geared a little more to go for the goal."

Miller's records, however, do not include any of her statistics from when she was on the team in her seventh- and eighth-grade years.

Ferenczy, who considers Miller to be the best field hockey player he has ever seen, said she has an ability to take over a game at any point.

"She can control the game with her stick skills and her vision," Ferenczy said. "She's been such a dominant player that she's hard to defend."

Miller, whose career record at Wil-liamsville North is 79-6-1, will take her game to the next level at Michigan State University (MSU) next fall, but the honor roll student will actually start taking classes at MSU in the spring semester.

"I played for the coach, Rolf van de Kerkhof, when I traveled to Holland for the (USA Field Hockey) Futures Elite Team," Miller said. "I loved playing for him and how he coached.

"I really miss (playing), even now after a month of it being done," Miller said. "It was a great opportunity."

Like father, like son

By Bob Herman

High-definition televisions, iPhones, wireless Internet. Technology has advanced rapidly in the past decade, which has resulted in close communication between people - even people who are halfway around the world.

Bryce Jenkins, a junior cross country runner for Wahiawa (Hawaii) Leilehua High School, won his second consecutive individual Hawaii High School Athletic Association championship this fall with a time of 16:07.97 on the 5K course. And his father Bruce - who is a lieutenant colonel for Schofield Barracks in Hawaii and has been in the U.S. Army for 22 years - was able to follow all of Bryce's events via the Internet while he was on assignment in Iraq.

"(The Internet) is a great tool," Bruce said. "I had family and friends take pictures of him racing, and those were e-mailed to me as well. The Internet was reliable most days. We did lose power several times a week, so delays were to be expected."

Bryce won the 2006 championship as a sophomore, which blew away his father for a reason other than his young age.

"I was amazed, but not for obvious reasons," Bruce said. "Last year, Bryce broke his foot at the most critical point of his preseason training. He was unable to run for six weeks. The only thing he could do was run on the elliptical trainer. After the doctor cleared him to run again, Bryce ran his first race only four days later. Amazingly, he finished second out of 200 runners, and Bryce never lost another race all season."

Bruce was deployed in September 2006 and returned in mid-September 2007, just in time to see his son's state title run November 2.

"It was not my first deployment, so I'm accustomed to being away," Bruce said. "I've been away from my family for four long periods of time now, and quite frankly, it never gets any easier. We are a very close family, so we talk on the phone and e-mail often."

Bryce's 5K time of 16:07.97 was 30 seconds faster than any other runner in the event (the second-place runner was senior teammate Paul Williams), and Bryce's father was able to coach him (electronically) during the fall season.

"This year's course was very hard," Bryce said. "I had to push myself in order to run a good time. I wasn't really nervous, but I respected the field and did not take my previous (regional) win for granted. (My dad and I) were able to stay in touch throughout the season and stay on top of my running. We talked about my competition and strategies for the upcoming races. It was good that we could stay connected."

In honor of all of the deployed soldiers, Leilehua's team wore camouflage uniforms for the entire season. The team spirit paid off as Leilehua also won this year's team state championship.

"The uniforms were great," Bryce said. "They were camouflage because our team (nickname) is the Mules, and we got our mascot from West Point, so I guess there was a military tie from the beginning of our school. (Also), the past two seasons, we had a lot of support from my dad's division and Schofield Barracks because a few other members of the team and I had family members in the military."

Bruce and his wife, Susan, have been married for almost 22 years, and Bryce's sister, Summer, is a freshman at Leilehua who also plans to run track this spring and cross country next fall. Although Bruce said leaving his family is one of the hardest things to do, he thought he had the easiest job of the bunch.

"I just had to stay alive, keep my troops alive and accomplish my mission," Bruce said. "My wife had the hard job - full-time job, taking care of the family, handling house and car challenges, paying the bills - she did it all."

Bryce's father similarly ran cross country and track when he was in high school and college, and it's unfortunate the two running enthusiasts couldn't have raced each other in their primes – something that can't be technologically accomplished just yet.

"I've never been known to be the humblest person, so I would say I could beat him," Bruce said. "We ran the Ford Island 10K together (during the summer) while I was home (on rest and recuperation). Bryce beat me by 30 seconds. He finished in seventh place, and I finished ninth out of a field of 1,000 runners. I joke with him and say, ‘Just be glad the race wasn't one mile longer, or I would have caught you.'"

"I think it would be a good race, but I think I have much more endurance then he does," Bryce said. "He was a good runner back in the day, so it would have been a good race for sure."

Field hockey streak continues

By Bob Herman

In 1999, "The Blair Witch Project" frightened moviegoers in theatres around the nation. That was a long time ago, but that was also the same year that the Voorhees (New Jersey) Eastern High School field hockey program began its incredible state championship winning streak.

On November 11, Eastern won its national record-tying ninth straight New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) Group 4 championship as it defeated Bridgewater-Raritan (New Jersey) High School, 4-0.

Eastern sophomore Kelsey Mitchell scored a hat trick in the game to lead the Vikings' charge. Eastern then moved on to the second annual, four-team NJSIAA Tournament of Champions, but its hot streak did not continue. The team lost, 3-2, to Summit (New Jersey) Oak Knoll High School. That loss does not affect its nine-year title streak.

Bob Herman was a fall semester intern in the NFHS Publications/Communications Department. He is a junior at Butler (Indiana) University, majoring in journalism (news editorial) and minoring in Spanish.