A common thread has wound its way around each of this year’s inductees. Family. And no one person exemplifies this reality more than Nyla Milleson. When she accepted the position as the first Lady Panther women’s basketball coach, Drury embraced her entire family...and her family embraced Drury. That combination developed a phenomena unlike many. It is now called “Lady Panther basketball”.
On May 14, 1999 the Drury Board of Trustees approved the recommendation to add women’s basketball. A nation-wide search ensued and six weeks later the best person for the position was found, only blocks away. The person with the proven track record of integrity, education, experience and success that the search committee wanted was Nyla Milleson. As they say “the rest is history.” Nyla laid the foundation in 1999-2000 by recruiting young ladies who were also outstanding student-athletes. She shared “a dream” with them and the Lady Panthers hit the venerable hardwoods of Weiser Gym for the first time on November 28, 2000. The Lady Panthers finished that year with an amazing 20-6 record, a conference title, a team grade point average of 3.4406 and Nyla was named Conference Coach-of-the-Year. Home attendance was 12th best in the NCAA-II. It only got better.
Nyla was the architect for a program whose success continues today at the conference, regional and national level. In her seven seasons as Lady Panther head coach, Nyla’s teams had a cumulative record of 185-36, good for an incredible .837 winning percentage. Five of her seven Lady Panther teams qualified for the NCAA-II national championship tournament. Her 2003 and 2006 teams made the NCAA-II Sweet 16 while her 2007 team made the NCAA-II Elite Eight. Her seven-year stint as the Lady Panther head coach was punctuated by her 2004 squad advancing to the NCAA-II National Championship game. She was named Heartland Conference Coach-of-the-Year four times and in her two years in the Great Lakes Valley Conference (2005-06 and 2006-07) she was 19-0 and 14-5 in conference play. Nyla was the head women’s basketball coach at Missouri State University for six years (2007-2013). She is now in her fourth season at the helm at George Mason University.
But as mentioned at the outset, the winning basketball is only a fraction of the Nyla Milleson story. A native of Goodland, Kansas and a 1985 graduate of Kansas State, the Milleson “family approach” has been the constant throughout her life...and career. That career started with a 10-year stint at the prep level, Junction City, Kansas and Springfield (Mo.) Glendale High School, where she fashioned a 187-77 record. Every step of the way she has shared the wins, losses, thrills and disappointments with her players as a mother shares life’s ups-and-down with her children. At the same time, and always at her side have been her parents, Bill and Roberta Wilson, her husband Brent, and her two children, Barrett and Caylor.
The Milleson family has grown as a result of Nyla’s impact on others through the sport of women’s basketball. Beginning with that first game in the fall of 1989 in Junction City, Kansas to her next game at George Mason University, Nyla has touched thousands. The Drury Community cherishes that for eight years she was a significant part of our family. For all she did as a coach, mentor, peer and friend, she will now remain forever a significant part of the “Drury Family” as she is joined by her family and many friends on her induction into the Drury University Sports Hall of Fame on this day: Saturday, November 26, 2016.
