Less than 10 years ago, Peter Milliman was busy shaping himself as a person and coach in Misenheimer, N.C.

Misenheimer, the town of nearly 1,000 people sitting adjacent to the Norfolk Southern Railroad, is best known as the home of Pfeiffer University. The school boasted approximately 900 students, dozens of whom belonged to the men’s lacrosse program.

Milliman, then 30, took the helm of the Falcons’ lacrosse team in 2009 without visiting campus. He just wanted an opportunity to learn what it took to run a college lacrosse program — and make a little money along the way.

“I needed a job that would pay me because I needed a car and needed to rent an apartment,” he said. “As long as I could make a couple bucks, I wouldn’t have to ask my mom to pay my phone bill.”

At Pfeiffer, Milliman was responsible for mowing the field every few weeks (he rotated with other coaches). He drove the team bus during his first season until he could raise money for a driver. He’d take his team to NASCAR races and set up concession stands to help fund travel.

On game days, Milliman lined the field and brought a bucket of balls for his players to shoot. If it ever rained, which happened frequently, he’d use squeegees and egg-crate mattress pads to sweep the water off his field.

“It was like running a lacrosse program in a park,” he joked. “It was like, ‘Here’s a piece of grass. You can do whatever you want. Everything else you had to build from there.’”

His job description was, in order, to keep his players out of trouble, recruit enough to fill a roster and to win lacrosse games. Through four seasons at Pfeiffer, Milliman amassed a 37-26 record in the competitive Division II Conference Carolinas. 

Milliman had a passion for lacrosse, more than anything else in his life. Pfeiffer tested him and provided the tools to become a successful coach — tools he’d use plenty over the next decade. He worked several assistant gigs in the early 2010s before getting his break as coach at Cornell in 2017.

A successful two years later, the same coach that mowed and lined fields at a small Methodist school in rural North Carolina will sit at the helm of one of the most historic programs in the sport’s history. Milliman was named the next head coach of the Johns Hopkins men’s lacrosse program on April 27.

Milliman, still in the process of saying goodbyes to Cornell and his former program, reflected on the road that led him to Homewood Field.

“I’ve had some really tough days those first few years, especially at Pfeiffer, where I was just trying to figure what I wanted to do,” he said. “A lot of that is really searching for answers. ‘Why am I doing this? Why isn’t someone recognizing how much I care and how hard I’m working?’ You just have to check yourself. You get there when you earn it.”

Through hard work and a few breaks during his coaching career, Milliman has ascended to one of the highest positions in lacrosse. He comes to Baltimore with an overwhelming respect for those that help build a lacrosse program.

“All the things he had to do really made him appreciate everything that’s going on at a Cornell or a Princeton or a Hopkins,” said Hank Janczyk, his former college coach at Gettysburg. “I think that makes him a little unique and special in a way.”

His individuality came at an early age, as did his work ethic. Milliman didn’t pick up the game of lacrosse until ninth grade, when a friend recommended the sport instead of track to stay in shape for football. The Fairport, N.Y., native took a chance and quickly fell in love.

Milliman moved with his sister and mother, Mary Bartolotta, across Rochester to a town called Brighton. He had few friends who weren’t from Fairport, so he spent most of his days playing wall ball. The apartment complex next door to his home has a 15-foot wall where he’d often play from morning to night, taking a break for lunch in between.

Soon, the boy who once dreamed of playing football at Ohio State was obsessively watching taped highlights from NCAA lacrosse championships in the early 1990s. Once he got to McQuaid Jesuit High School, he started to find more friends with whom to play.

Throughout his childhood, Milliman would pull from the contacts written on a piece of paper and call anyone who’d be willing to play and arrange a pick-up game. He even got a young Shawn Nadelen, a native of nearby Henrietta, to join in the fun.

His passion for lacrosse was growing when he fell onto Janczyk’s radar at Gettysburg. The legendary coach saw Milliman playing LSM with the stick skills to man the midfield. He also saw a player who had a passion for lacrosse.

“I was drawn to him,” Janczyk said. “I thought Pete had a great personality and just loved to play lacrosse. That’s one thing about Pete I’ve seen as long as I’ve known him — he just loves this game. Even today, he takes walks with kids with a stick in his hands.”

Milliman chose to attend the university and was ready to meet a group of men just as enthusiastic as he was about the game. He made that apparent Day 1 at Gettysburg.

“One of the first things I did when I got to school was go to Coach’s office to get the numbers of the other freshmen on campus so I could go see if they wanted to play lacrosse,” he remembered.

Milliman quickly became the leader of a group of players who would spend most of the day shooting on the cage, both inside and outside of practice. Once a hole popped up on the Bullets’ attack, Janczyk looked to Milliman, who became an All-American scorer.

More often than not, Milliman was at the field shooting. Admittedly, he could have spent more time on his studies, but he loved the game and wanted nothing more than to have a stick in his hands. At Gettysburg, he led the Bullets to two national title game appearances and was honored as an All-American three times.

He also learned the power of discipline from Janczyk.

“I was just a kid who grew up in a single household and a mother who was working,” he said. “Most of the discipline I got was from coaching. If I wasn’t getting yelled at, I didn’t have anyone to listen to or follow.”

“He wasn’t one of those ra-ra guys,” Janczyk remembered. “Pete just led by example and led when he had to. I don’t think he cared if he was captain or not. He was going to play and help his teammates.”

After he graduated, Milliman spent a handful of years trying to figure out his future. He played professionally with the MLL’s Rochester Rattlers, winning a championship in 2008. He also attempted to crack NLL lineups for a number of years. Meanwhile, he decided to give coaching a try, starting as an assistant at Siena before moving to RIT for two seasons.

He wasn’t making much money, but those closest to him supported his passion. Milliman drove backa and forth from Albany to Rochester so he could tend bar and earn enough to continue coaching.

On the field, Milliman was still learning the intricacies of leading young men. All he knew was what worked for him. He didn’t absorb the details of how to properly set offenses and defense. His first few years, the part of his job he enjoyed most was warming up goalies.

His life changed when he took the Pfeiffer job in 2009. He hadn’t lived outside of Upstate New York, but he wanted an opportunity. He wasn’t sure where his future was, but he intended to dive headfirst into the lacrosse program there.

Four years later, he was a well-rounded coach with a newfound respect for everything that goes into building a successful team.

“For you to have a nice setup on Saturday afternoon for your guys to have a nice game against a conference rival, you had to make sure you checked off everything on the list,” he said. “There was no one to point fingers at.”

His next move was another chance — he wanted to work in Division I men’s lacrosse, and the only opportunity available was as an unpaid volunteer assistant at Princeton. He sought out his old coach for help.

“He said, ‘Coach, I really enjoy coaching at Pfeiffer, but I want to know whether this is going to get me to the next place,’” Janczyk said. “He took a risk going to Princeton to become a volunteer coach for no pay. He said, ‘What the heck, Coach, I love this game.’’’

Milliman spent a season sleeping at a friend’s place, then living in a cheap apartment in Philadelphia. He’d take a bus to the train station in the city, take it to Princeton Junction and make his way to campus. Days started for Milliman at 5:30 in the morning, more evidence of his dedication.

At Princeton, Milliman poured through filing cabinets to find notes from legendary coach Bill Tierney. He wanted to absorb as much information as possible. After two full seasons in New Jersey, one as offensive coordinator, his friend and Cornell coach Ben DeLuca offered him a position on his staff.

“He felt really strongly that I should be at Cornell,” Milliman joked. “He thought it was the right fit for me. He was right.”

Milliman served as an assistant under DeLuca and associate head coach under Matt Kerwick before being promoted to interim head coach in 2017.

He helped recruit new talent to Cornell and bring the Big Red back to prominence. He had some of his best experiences of his life at the helm of the program, which is why it has been difficult to say his goodbyes.

When the Johns Hopkins position became a possibility, Milliman consulted his wife, Megan, who played lacrosse at York College. Milliman wanted to bring his wife closer to her family, and moving to Baltimore would do that.

After seven years in Ithaca, Milliman felt he was prepared for the change.

“I loved Cornell,” he said. “I learned plenty more from that experience than I could ever teach. It was a real challenge. It’s not that there is somewhere else I wanted to go, it was just that the right opportunity presented itself and it felt like that was a good step to take.”

Milliman was still cleaning out his office at Cornell this week. He knows he needs to move forward, but he’s not done bidding farewall to a place he loves. Every step of his coaching career, he’s invested himself in the program and the people that help build it.

He’ll be off to another challenge at Johns Hopkins, hoping to fall in love just like he has many times before. He’ll need to learn a new tradition — the hiring of Johns Hopkins alum Jamison Koesterer as an assistant is a step in the right direction.

He knows he’ll learn something new from Johns Hopkins. Each coaching position has helped him expand his repertoire. However, he’s still the same young man who spent hours shooting, simply because he loved the game, just as his teammates at Lake Placid.

“He has never seen a shot he didn’t like at Lake Placid,” joked Regy Thorpe, his Over-30 teammate at Lake Placid and fellow U.S. indoor national team coach in 2019.

“He’s hard-working. It’s in his DNA, that Upstate mentality. You don’t back down and you work hard for everything.”