The Craig Hall Chronicles :: Jill Miliffe

It was an odd scene outside Craig Hall one afternoon last week, where Jill Miliffe sat in the grass for an interview on an upper-80s day wearing a hooded sweatshirt, this girl of Florida enjoying the relatively chilly conditions of her new home.

"It's hot, desperately hot in Florida this time of year," she says. "It's too hot to work out in the afternoon, so you have to train at 6 a.m. You can't train after 11. The turf literally burns you if you step on it. So, this is kind of colder for me. It feels really nice."

It was noted that the other freshmen – non-Florida versions – who were entering and exiting Craig Hall during move-in week were wearing as little as possible, their method of battling the heat – Montana-in-August version – perspectives based on experience. "They think this is hot?" Miliffe asked.

But what made the scene truly bizarre was the sight of half a dozen Griz football players, freshmen putting their heads together to try to figure out the best way to enter a locked room through a ground-floor window, determining which of them could fit through the narrow opening.

Someone had either lost a key or forgotten it inside before the door locked behind the last person out. It could have been a comedy routine if it hadn't felt so serious.

It all seemed fitting, it all felt right, this circus of activity taking place during an interview for the only goalkeeper in this year's freshman class. This sort of thing just seems to come with the territory. Goalkeepers? Yeah, they're not like you and me.

"We're way different," Miliffe said. "You have to be crazy." Maybe have a screw loose? "Yeah, probably, I'm not going to lie," which is something she seems incapable of doing, her filter set to Just Say It Straight Up, which makes her an ideal interview. And probably ideal for goalkeeping.

"You have to do anything to put your body on the line. You have to be willing to take hit to not let the ball go in the goal. It hurts sometimes but you get back up and do it again. It will leave a bruise tomorrow but adrenaline covers it up in the moment."

She does that, starts talking and just gets on a roll and keeps going, especially when she talks about the position she's been playing since the age of 8, since the day her coach lined everyone on the team on the goal line and started taking shots, his way of finding the replacement keeper he needed.

Didn't he know this girl had been catching footballs fired at her by her quarterback-playing older brother as he practiced for his sport, unknowingly giving her a head start on hers? Didn't he know this was a soul of a football player inhabiting the body of a soccer player? She was made for this.

"Okay, who's not afraid of the ball? Put me in. Yeah, I'll dive for a ball," she says. "I fell in love with the position. I'm the only one who can use my hands? What? That's so cool. I was really good with my feet too, so that had me sticking out.

"And I was the only one who could talk! So, I was talking when I was 10 or 11, which is insane. Man on right! Man on left! It's insane to think about."

She's fired up about the position in general and especially right now, during that interview in the grass, those football players just background noise as she keeps getting asked questions that will keep her dialed in on that thing she loves to talk about, like, what's her favorite moment in a match?

"Ooh, there are multiple," she says, then proceeds to rattle off just about every situation a goalkeeper could find herself in. "Making a big-time save and getting the crowd cheering. Clearing out a ball. Charging out on a ball. A big-time cross and catching it, no bobble, nothing."

Is that it? "Ohh, time-wasting. It gets everyone mad. I've done it when I've dribbled away from a player, then when she gets near me I'll dive on the ball dramatically. Everyone gets mad. She can't do that! Yeah, I can do that."

Is there anything else? "When your team scores and you run up to join the celebration," she continues. "It used to be not a lot of keepers would do it, now a lot do it. You want to be included and congratulate the player that scored a banger."

That should probably do it, right? Nope, one more. It seems she loves just about everything there is about playing in goal, even not doing something. "And I don't mind not having a shot at all. That means my back line and I did our job," she adds. "Not doing anything is the best thing you could do."

Everyone, meet Jill Miliffe, the next great Grizzly goalkeeper and the player you should definitely find time to sit with in the grass outside Craig Hall and have her entertain you for nearly an hour.

All that conversation up above? Those are words put to the player Griz goalkeeper coach J. Landham saw on video that day, when Miliffe, excited about the chance of going to Montana for college after a family ski vacation to Whitefish, after she watched highlights of the Ohio State match, reached out.

It's not unusual, players who think they have what it takes to be the Next Big Thing at Goalkeeper U reaching out, contacting Montana's coaches, letting them know they are interested, wondering if the coaches might watch their video, might come to a showcase event to see the real thing in person.

He's been doing this for a while now, so Landham knows maybe 10 percent of those keepers have what it takes to make it even to Step 2, the point when he goes from Who Is This One? to Okay, I'm Intrigued Enough to Want to Learn More. Miliffe breezed through the steps, all of them.

"There is this it factor, this dynamic presence in goal that just looks like the goalkeeper is hard to beat," Landham said. "They are controlling the space around them, not just protecting the goal but protecting the 18-yard box in a way that 90 percent of goalkeepers don't do.

"They are instinctively protecting space differently than most. Jill was that way. She had that presence in goal, this sense that she is hard to beat." She had made the first cut. Landham was intrigued. Landham kept watching.

"Then it's skills and personality. Do they support their back line by being aggressive, do they protect their 18-yard box by reading the right cues and being brave, then protect the goal by having advanced shot-stopping skills? That was Jill. On top of that, she is tall, athletic and has a great personality."

Okay, so that's Jill Miliffe, the 2025 edition. What about the building blocks that got her here, that created this shot-stopping force of nature, catcher of footballs, product of Florida, graduate of one of the top private schools in the country, future GK1 for Montana?

Who does she want us to talk to, to give this article some historical depth? "My dad, for sure," she says. "You need to talk to my dad." So we did.

It was the right time to get Kevin Miliffe on the phone, early in the week before Sunday night's Notre Dame-Miami game, the one between two teams ranked in the preseason top 10, the one being played in front of a national audience on ABC, the rebirth of the Catholics vs. Convicts rivalry of the late 1980s.

He'll be there, part of his job responsibilities as a Senior VP for City National Bank of Florida, which a year ago became the official banking partner of the Miami Hurricanes. He'll put on the right face, doing so with his teeth gritted behind the requisite smile.

He's a Gator after all, having attended Florida for nearly a decade while getting three degrees, his time in Gainesville coinciding with the last years of the Steve Spurrier dynasty, the brief Ron Zook letdown and the Urban Meyer resurgence, the full spectrum of fanhood.

He's got a backstory of his own worth telling, born in Tokyo, raised in Japan, Hong Kong, Guam until the age of 13, the family following his dad's work, then relocating to Florida, where he's been ever since, now in Fort Lauderdale, closer to Miami than Gainesville but far enough removed from Tallahassee.

It's another high-school-sweethearts story, Kevin and Jessica meeting at St. Thomas Aquinas High, she a product of Ohio, following her mom to South Florida as a fourth-grader, her mom, a nurse, tasked with helping to open the Cleveland Clinic's first foray into the South.

Did we mention Jessica is a teacher? At American Heritage School? How to put that in perspective? This will do: Stanford (perhaps you've heard of it) is the American Heritage of the college ranks, an elite academic school with high-level athletics to match, like high-high-high-high level athletics.

Jeffrey, the first of three Miliffe children to arrive, was a quarterback at the school, though it's hard to fault him for being QB2. It was tough to beat out Torrance Gibson, who would sign with Ohio State.

So, he got to run the scout team, and imagine what that was like, reading one cornerback – Patrick Surtain II (Alabama > Denver Broncos) – then checking on the other – Marco Wilson (Florida > Cincinnati Bengals). On opening weekend of the 2024 NFL season, the school had 10 former players on rosters.

"Jeff was a really good quarterback. He didn't have the size you needed at that level to play but was a really good technical quarterback who understood the plays," says Kevin. "That sort of mentality goes through the other sports as well. It's one of those powerhouse athletic schools."

That's why he was sitting on the very last part of the very edge of his seat at Florida Class 5A state championship matches when his daughter was GK1 at American Heritage, standing alone in goal as the title matches of her sophomore and junior years went to a shootout.

"She blocked the final kick in both of those to win. I can't believe I lived through that," says Kevin, who got to enjoy American Heritage's third straight state title back in February, this one by an easier-on-dad score of 3-0.

If he ever stood in front of the mirror and asked, What did I possibly do to bring this upon myself, being the parent of a goalkeeper, when there are less stressful positions my daughter could have played? the answer would be looking right back at him.

Sure, they tried gymnastics, but he had been a goalkeeper himself in high school, used to the wide-open space of the soccer field. Now he was sardined into a tiny viewing room at a gymnastics facility, every parent trying to get a piece of the window to watch their daughter.

"We've always viewed sports as a good thing for the kids. It keeps them busy, they stay fit and they are around the types of kids who all had the same motivation," he says. "I always wanted to provide our kids as much opportunity as we can, allow our kids to explore."

When that led to soccer instead of gymnastics, he quietly rejoiced. When that led to tryouts for goalkeeper and his daughter showed a knack for it, he jumped into action. Gymnastics? He would have been along for the ride. Soccer? More specifically, goalkeeper? This he knew something about.

"She was the only one who didn't duck and caught a couple of them," he says of that impromptu tryout when his daughter was 8. "I played goalkeeper in high school, so I trained her a little bit. She is a far better goalie now than I ever was. It was a fun thing we shared."

To see her now is to see her dad's initial influence and stressing of angles, where to set up to present the largest obstacle for an opponent, ball at her feet, looking for an opening. "If you have your positioning and angles right, the shot has to be damn-near perfect to get by you," he says.

It becomes critical at the age of 13, when goals become the same size as those used at every level up, from high school to college to professional to World Cup. It's standard but it's huge to someone who just entered her teens. And she was playing up a year, not even a teen yet.

"How do you as a 12-year-old girl cover the same amount of goal space? Your positioning becomes that much more important," he says. "Now I think she innately knows where she is on the field, always sensing behind where she is in the goal to make sure she has it covered correctly."

Playing college soccer was never the be-all, end-all. The goal, instead, was to reach her potential and see where it took her. "My philosophy with her was, do everything as fast and as hard as you can and opportunities will present themselves."

Opportunities, like trying out and making a boys ECNL team when she was 12 and 13? Then going with Miramar United to a showcase in South Carolina? And only after a long while did the people watching from the sidelines realize it was a girl in goal?

It was a lot happening with the family, and that's before we've even mentioned the youngest child, Jackson. What better break than to get out of Florida over the holidays and hit the mountains for some skiing. Off to Wyoming, to Utah, to Colorado, and, fatefully, to Montana.

Now she's in ninth grade, every player she's surrounded by, in club, at American Heritage, is on the path toward playing college soccer. Now she is too, at least has it in mind after that first school nuzzled up to her coach and said, That one's going places.

But what did she want? What mattered? The name of the school? The location? "It's going to sound super cringy because everyone says it, but team culture was the big thing," she says.

"Soccer gets hard sometimes. If you don't like the people you're doing it with, if you don't like the coaches, it's not going to be fun. Even though practices are hard, doing it together makes the biggest difference."

She remembered the family ski trip to Montana, had the Grizzlies in mind, watched highlights of the team's match against Ohio State, the one that ended 2-2 in front of a program-record crowd of nearly 2,000. "Okay, this is a competitive team that wants to win," she remembers thinking.

She reached out, got the Montana coaches interested, so they sent assistant coach Ashley Herndon to Miliffe's field at a Florida event. "Ash was like, I want her as a keeper," says Miliffe. Wait, just like that, after one save? "It was a really good save. We set up calls, now I'm here."

There is a little more to it than that, fitting that this week Montana announced it had no more football season tickets to sell, maxed out at almost 20,000, nearly 80 percent the stadium's capacity. She is ready for some football.

"She grew up around it, she understands the game. All the schools she was talking to fit a very similar mold. She wanted to be part of a school that had a football team, and Montana has a great football team," says Kevin.

She's into football? Dia Bell is the nation's top-ranked high school quarterback, the son of 14-year NBA veteran Raja Bell. He plays at – surprise! – American Heritage. He's committed to Texas. Yep, "he's a friend of hers," says Kevin.

"And I wanted it to be a good school. I told her, use soccer to start your life. She is going to be professional in something other than sports, so use soccer to have a great college experience."

She's here and that brings up the Montana goalkeeper situation. As she watched from afar, she saw then redshirt freshman Ashlyn Dvorak earn first-team All-Big Sky honors in 2023. In 2024, it was redshirt freshman Bayliss Flynn, with Dvorak sidelined with an injury, leading the nation in save percentage.

It was at Cambie Taphouse + Coffee, across the street from South Campus Stadium, where coaches and family had that conversation, before she had committed.

"The coaching staff was completely honest and open about it. Listen, it's 100 percent open, the best keeper will play," Kevin recalls being told. "That being said, we don't foresee an incoming freshman being able to take over the position at the level of an established, strong keeper."

That passing of the torch, from Claire Howard to Camellia Xu to now Dvorak and Flynn, each of them first-team All-Big Sky, wasn't viewed as a negative. It was looked at as being part of the strength of the program, new talent replacing outgoing talent, the winning continuing.

"The program's been successful, and successful programs build that pipeline, then the machine keeps rolling," says Kevin. "We knew exactly what she was getting into. It's been according to plan, not a surprise."

She is asked about it, on the lawn in front of Craig Hall in her hooded sweatshirt, the football players now gone, having either succeeded or given up, off to find another way in, and away she goes, into full Jill mode. There is nothing like it. It's the best.

"(Ashlyn and Bayliss) are pushing me to be better than anyone ever has. Coach J. has been pushing me to the next level, levels I never thought I could reach," she says, just getting started. "Okay, I got this. I'm going to come in and be even better next year, then the next year.

"The speed of play in college soccer is nothing you've experienced until you get here. Then you have to think 10 times faster. I've gotten much better at it. The way J. has coached them, now he's training me like that. It's just impeccable. There are no words to describe it."

She's a big spirit, a big personality, this girl who figures she'll probably head to law school once her playing days are done. You just won't be able to experience the Full Jill, at least on the field, for a while. But her time as GK1 is coming.

"I really see her fulfilling what we envision, that she is the next Grizzly goalkeeper," says Landham. "She has a really bright future and is working toward that in an impressive way and at an impressive pace. She is so, so talented. She's not years away."

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Ashlyn Dvorak

Bayliss Flynn

Jill Miliffe

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