When a University of Virginia football staff member approached him in the spring to gauge his interest in coaching, former Cavalier linebacker Chris Peace was steadfast in his response.
It was a polite “Nah.”
That was after the first two times Blanda Wolfe, UVA’s director of high school relations, asked Peace on a friend’s behalf. But then Wolfe dropped the kicker: “What if you were coaching under Heath Miller?”
Peace shifted his stance quicker than his old sprint to the backfield for a crushing quarterback sack.
“Yeah,” Peace told Wolfe. “Yeah, I can do that. No problem.”
On April 8, Miller, an All-America tight end for UVA in the early 2000s who had an outstanding NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, was named the head coach at St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville. In the months since, he’s tapped into multiple eras of UVA football to garner many of his assistant coaches.