Washington High School has a new activities director. Former Demon baseball coach Nathan Miller will take over the office directing athletics and activities beginning this academic year. Miller replaces Washington wrestling coach Brent Van Weelden, who is retiring from both positions.

As a graduate of Washington High School in 1998, Miller tells KCII he feels a responsibility to make sure that his home town and its school continue to give students a great high school experience, which he believes is best exemplified by the new motto of the program, “The Washington Way.”

“The Washington Demon activities department will strive to enrich the lives of students, their families and the community with fine arts, athletics and activities while representing our school and community,” Miller says. “We’ve developed several core values that will be the focus of not just within our activities department, but that we’re going to try and instill within our kids involved and participating in all these different activities: academics first; high levels of character; knowing what it means to be a good teammate; sportsmanship; and then that our coaches and directors are highly involved with one another, but also our athletes and our musicians and our drama performers, that they’re all highly involved with one another and being apart of the different activities we have.”

Miller was the activities director at Hillcrest Academy in 2005 before coming to Washington High School one year later. During his time as the baseball coach, the Demons won well over 100 games, including the program’s last trip to the state tournament in 2012.