Miller Hales has recently returned to the Park City area, joining the tennis staff at the MARC. Hales is bringing an expansive knowledge and passion for the game, which she both played and coached previously at the Division 1 collegiate level. 

Hales had previously lived in the Park City area, coaching at the MARC during a recent summer. She believes she left a positive impact on the juniors she coached that summer, allowing her to return, where she will now be coaching players of varying ages and skill levels. 

Hales is confident she’ll be able to handle mentoring a wide variety of players. “Through my coaching experience, I’ve learned a lot of ways to say kind of the same thing,” she said. “It’s how you word it to make it stick.”

To date, Hales has had no trouble getting her advice through to others, and even herself. While coaching at Appalachian State University from 2020 to 2021, she helped lead a singles player and doubles pair to first-team all-conference honors. Hales was also an all-conference doubles player at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

As a doubles specialist, Hales is ready to bring the more finite strategies of the game to those who may not have been privy to the same coaching as she was. “I love doubles,” she said. “A lot of adult players have never really gotten the coaching strategy that you do in college … there’s just different things that they can apply to their games that they haven’t seen before.”

Hales hosted a meet-and-greet event on Friday, July 21, free of charge, where interested players were able to meet the center’s newest teaching pro and partake in a fun game of King of the Court. She will be at the center full-time now, waiting for any locals looking to bolster their tennis games.