2021 NewsTribune Girls Tennis Player of the Year: L-P’s Carlie Miller

Junior showed growth throughout season, qualified for state

During practices this season, La Salle-Peru tennis coach Aaron Guenther would put handicaps on No. 1 singles player Carlie Miller.

He’d tell the junior she had to hit the ball beyond the service line, or she couldn’t use her backhand.

“Definitely, during practices that frustrated me a little bit,” Miller said. “One of the handicaps was I couldn’t hit a backhand. That taught me to move my feet more because my forehand is my stronger stroke. That helped me win a lot of points.”

Guenther said handicapping is something he and his assistant coach use when they want a player to work on a specific skill.

“With Carlie, we wanted to see her mental game grow,” Guenther said. “We wanted to see her start developing points a little better and being a little bit more aggressive, so that was the reason we were giving her those handicaps.”

Throughout the season, Guenther saw the skills Miller was working on in practice starting to translate to matches.

“She’d get frustrated by the handicaps, but then all of a sudden you’d see in a match all these skills we were working on coming out and she was winning points because of it, so it was really cool to see her grow as a player this year.”

Miller’s growth helped her finish with a 24-12 record, place second at the La Salle-Peru and Pekin invitationals, take third at the Interstate 8 Conference Tournament and at the Class 1A Ottawa Sectional before going 3-2 at the state tournament to finish in the top 24.

For all she accomplished this season, Miller is the 2021 NewsTribune Girls Tennis Player of the Year.

“I improved a lot from last year,” Miller said. “I feel like overall, physically I improved my game. I improved my serve a lot this year. Mentally, I felt like I kept my composure a lot better on the court and I stayed more mentally tough this year.”

Miller has improved throughout her high school career.

She came to L-P with plenty of experience on the court as she started playing when she was 6, following in her mother’s footsteps.

When Miller first started, she’d hit with her parents, but when she started to become more competitive when she was around 10, she started taking lessons from local coaches and playing in summer tournaments.

As a freshman, Miller had a successful season on the freshman/sophomore team before making the jump to No. 1 singles on the varsity as a sophomore, and she qualified for state although the event wasn’t held due to COVID-19.

“As she’s getting older, she’s getting stronger, so the ball is getting a little bit more pop to it,” Guenther said. “She developed a top spin serve this year, and the balls were jumping into girls and her opponents had no idea what do to with it.

“I saw her start working points better. Her freshman year, it was, ‘I’m just going to keep getting that ball over.’ Then her sophomore year it grew to, ‘OK, now I want to hit the ball hard.’ This year, it got to where she was going to hit the ball with a little bit of pace to it, but she’s also placing it and setting up shots. She’s starting to think about that second or third shot down the line to where she’s setting up points really well.”

Miller, a self-described perfectionist, attributes the improvement of her mental game in part to her ability to learn from losses.

“I just focused a lot more on the game and thought through the game,” Miller said. “I finally realized that even though I want to win, of course, it’s OK to lose because you learn more from your losses than your wins. Every time I lost I looked at it and tried to figure out what my opponent did to have an advantage over me and I tried to incorporate that into future matches.”

Miller’s improvement through practices and ability to learn from losses paid off as she came up big at the end of the season.

Miller won her first-round match at state, and after losing in the second round, she bounced back with two more consolation wins to advance to the second day of the state tournament.

Miller is the first L-P girls player to advance past the first day of the state tournament since Wendy Grabowski in 1998.

“My goal was to make it to state again and I accomplished that, and I exceeded my expectations at state,” Miller said. “Going in [to state], I honestly didn’t think I would do very well because there are a lot of other better players than me out there. I understood that. I just went in there with nothing to lose, and that paid off.”

After exceeding expectations this season, Miller is looking to take another step forward as a senior by finishing in at least the top 16 at state.

To do that, she’s planning to continue working on her game, including taking private lessons in Bloomington.

“I hope to do as best as I can next year,” Miller said. “I’m excited for the future.”