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Ian Miller talks a big game, but he can back it up.
Just ask his opponents or, better yet, his teammates on the Oak Harbor wrestling team.
“I feel no one can touch me right now,” Miller said. “I wrestled the toughest kids in the country over the summer and I performed well. My goal is to go undefeated.”
Miller won a Division II state championship at 145 pounds as a junior last season, but he's moving up to 152 pounds for his senior year. After losing in triple overtime at the Ironman tournament at Walsh Jesuit High School early last season, he won his final 35 matches and finished with a 44-1 record.
Miller capped the season with a 19-4 destruction of Dylan Ice, from Lisbon Beaver High School, in the state championship finals in Columbus.
Oak Harbor coach George Bergman knows the type of person and wrestler he has in Ian Miller. The veteran coach knows that competitors like Miller are seldom content and never rest on their laurels.
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Ian Miller has an opponent down on his way to winning a state
championship at Ohio State University’s Value City Arena last year.
(Press file photo by Lee Welch/www.familyphotogroup.com) |
“He's very, very blessed,” Bergman said. “He's got freakish strength in his hips, a very strong individual. He works very hard in practice. He's a hard worker and he's got a big tank. If you wear him out, chances are you're probably laying somewhere. He's a great workout partner and one of our hardest workers in the (practice) room.”
The 5-foot-6 Miller usually drills with teammate Alex Bergman, the coach's son who competes at 140 pounds. Miller also wrestles live matches against teammates like Konner Witt, a 160-pounder, Jake Cramer (171) and Sean McGee (189) and assistant coach Aaron Bomer, who weighs 200 pounds.
“For Ian to get a good workout wrestling live,” Coach Bergman said, “he has to work out against bigger kids because he's so strong and powerful. He beats those guys, too.”
Miller, who has 122 career victories and 66 pins entering this season, said competing against various teammates in practice enables him to work on his strengths and weaknesses.
“Alex is a scrappy wrestler and he's good at scrambling, and that's what I need to work on,” Miller said. “They're all bigger than me and stronger than me. Jake, Sean and Bomer are probably the three strongest guys on the team. Konner is flexible and can get me in a lot of weird positions that I don't normally get in with other wrestlers. I wrestle strong kids and flexible kids, so I get a variety. That's helped me for the past four years.”
Miller is not an individual who likes to take it easy in practice.
“I try to push myself to my breaking point,” he said. “Usually I can go 10 minutes straight and try to build on that. Matches are six minutes and I try to build and see how hard I can go, until I can't move. I drill until I can't go anymore, so that when matches come around it's a lot easier.”
Miller kept busy over the summer, competing at the Junior National Duals in Oklahoma City in July and, a week later, at the Junior Olympics in Virginia Beach, Va.
He went undefeated in 10 matches in Oklahoma City while wrestling for coach Eric Burnette and Team Ohio, which finished third.
“It was one of the best tournaments I've ever wrestled in,” Miller said. “Eric Burnette is my freestyle coach and he has his own club. I've trained with him since I was a little kid and he's been a big help training me, and he got me prepared for this summer.”
At the Junior Olympics, Miller went unbeaten in 12 matches at 152 pounds while giving up just one point. He earned the tournament's most outstanding wrestler award.
“I saw a lot of the same guys from the Duals,” Miller said. “I got used to wrestling at 152. Last year I wrestled 140 and went up to 145 halfway through the year. I thought I would be a little small at 152, but in the summer tournaments I found I could hold my own. I'm going to stay at 152. I'm not going to cut weight this year. I don't like cutting weight, and 152 is where I need to be.”
Miller, who has signed to wrestle at Kent State University next year, has a unique opportunity this season. He can become Oak Harbor's seventh two-time state champion, joining his father, Ferd Miller (1986, '87), Carlos Mincheff (1980, '81), Rob Huston ('80, '82), Greg Goad ('84, '85), J.D. Bergman (2002, '03) and Cody Magrum ('06, '07, '08).
“I always mess around with my dad,” said Miller, who placed third in the state as a sophomore at 135. “I always want to top him; this year I can match him. This could be the first time in Oak Harbor history that a father and son have won two state titles. We always mess around with each other. If we wrestled each other when he was in high school, he thinks he would win, but I think I would win. My whole family thinks that, even his mom and dad.
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