For Ashley Miller, this was a dream come true.
The state champion volleyball player for Mount Carmel knew before she graduated in 2011 that she wanted to someday come back to her alma mater and coach her favorite sport.
Her chance has arrived, as Mount Carmel on Wednesday announced Miller as the new volleyball coach after she coached the past seven seasons at Haynes Academy, where she guided the Yellow Jackets to their first state title in 2024.
“I’m really happy at Haynes,” Miller said. “Haynes is a great school. It’s tough to leave Haynes and the work family, and the players here and everything we have built here. But it always has been a dream of mine to come back to my alma mater and build a program there.”
At Mount Carmel, Miller will coach at the school where she starred as a setter and six-rotation standout, ultimately earning the LHSAA outstanding player award following a four-set victory over Dominican in the 2010 state final.
Miller, who will continue at Haynes as a P.E. teacher for the remainder of the school year, is replacing former coach Taylor Ricaud, who left after three seasons and is now the head coach at Pope John Paul II.
Mount Carmel has won 14 volleyball state championships, including six in a row from 2014 to 2019. The Cubs, who last reached the state finals in 2023, lost in the quarterfinals last season against Chapelle.
Mount Carmel athletic director April Hagadone coached eight championship teams at the school.
Miller said she “fell in love with volleyball” when she was a freshman, and she was a junior or senior when she told Hagadone at practice one day that she would like to come back to the school and replace her as coach.
“I knew I wanted to be a P.E. teacher and coach because both of my parents were P.E. teachers and coaches in multiple sports,” said Miller, who remembered thinking, “Man, this would be awesome, to come back here and run a program at a school that I love and be surrounded by an amazing community.”
At Haynes, Miller replaced her mother, Dollie Lala, as the head coach and lifted it to unprecedented heights, reaching the state semifinals for the first time in 2022, two years before the five-set triumph over Hannan in the Division III state final.
Miller comes from a family of coaches and teachers. Her father, Larry Lala, coached football at Bonnabel in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and later coached baseball and football while at Grace King.
Haynes has played the last three seasons at the former Grace King campus, following the closure of that school in 2023.
“We’ve never lost a game in this gym yet,” Miller said, adding that the teachers and students at Haynes “are very understanding, and everyone has been really kind to me about the move. They are happy for me, which helps a lot.”
