Leadership. It’s certainly a hot topic in the modern era of organizational psychology. From the thousands of books written on the subject, to hands-on workshops, to TED Talks, anyone who wants to learn about leadership can easily find the resources. Even here on campus, the Bucknell Athletics Leadership Institute is a popular, highly focused program designed to help student-athletes become better leaders.
For junior Tyne Miller of the Bison women’s tennis team, “leadership” is more than just a buzzword. It’s her driving force.
While many of her peers are still working on honing their passions, Tyne seems to have a very clear picture of who she is and who she wants to be.
“For me, it comes down to living and leading with meaning and purpose. My parents raised me to live with values and to lead with values, and really just be confident in myself.”
At Bucknell, Tyne has immersed herself in as much experiential leadership opportunities as possible. As one of the veterans on a young tennis team that has no seniors on this year’s roster, she is serving as a team co-captain as a junior. She is also involved with the Leadership Institute, she is working on a double major in literary studies and psychology, and she is one of a handful of student-athletes who are also active cadets in the Bison Battalion of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
Among all of those endeavors, Tyne has learned that developing positive leadership skills also requires excellent mentorship, and Bucknell has provided that along many different avenues.
“At Bucknell, the professors, the coaches and athletics staff, the ROTC cadre, they aren’t just people that you pass along the way. They really do impact you. They sit you down and mentor you. And that’s one of the things that’s so special and makes balancing everything so manageable.”
Tyne is not from a military family, although she did move around the country a few times, as her parents are private-school educators. She came to Bucknell not knowing that she would get involved with ROTC, but serving in the military was something she had considered. After checking into the program and making sure she could balance being a student-athlete and a cadet, she reported to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training during the summer between her freshman and sophomore years. She didn’t just graduate from Basic Camp, but she was top-five in her platoon.
“I’ve always been drawn to serve, and I’ve felt like it’s a duty that I have. I met some people who were in the program and decided to do it. After freshman year I went to basic training for 32 days at Fort Knox. I loved it. If you’re not the focus of the drill sergeant at the time, it’s a great experience. The first two weeks are basically dedicated to discipline. That’s when the drill sergeants are really on you. And then the second two weeks after you have some military understanding, your basic military knowledge, then you go into the field and start learning tactics and leading missions.”
Cadet life at Bucknell consists of physical training three days a week, field training every other weekend, and classroom work focused on topics such as military tactics and platoon leadership. This weekend, for example, Tyne will play a match against Loyola on Friday, spend Saturday in the field doing recon and raid with her ROTC unit, and then hit the courts again on Sunday when the Bison host Marist.
When Tyne graduates in 2024, she will complete her Basic Officer Leadership Course and then be commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Two of Bucknell’s rivals in the Patriot League are Army and Navy, and Tyne says she has connected with some of the cadets on the West Point tennis team to talk about what lies ahead. She certainly sees her opponents on the other side of the net in a different light than most.
“I’m in contact with some of the Army girls because we’re going to be serving together in the future. The Army is big, but it’s also very small. So there is a chance that we will meet each other again on similar paths. Even being a part of women’s tennis in the Patriot League, it’s a cool little network.”
Tyne says she wants to go on active duty after she graduates from Bucknell, as opposed to serving in a reserve unit or in the national guard. Her ultimate goal is Airborne School, which would entail jumping out of helicopters.
In the meantime, Tyne is focused on helping guide the Bison tennis squad to a successful season. The Bison are 7-7 so far this spring. After this weekend’s matches and a Spring Break trip to Charleston, South Carolina, the team will play nothing but Patriot League matches over the final four weeks of the season, leading up to the conference tournament at West Point on Apr. 27-30.
The Bison tennis team consists of only eight players with a great deal of travel involved, so team camaraderie is critical. Tennis is an individual sport woven into the concept of a team, and as a captain, Tyne is working to foster those bonding moments.
“I really believe in the locker room. It’s been a place where we all meet and transition from classes to competitive tennis. We’ve created this cool little space where we have snacks and quotations posted on everyone’s locker. It’s a space where everyone just kind of comes together before heading out to the court for practice or a competition. It’s one of my favorite places.”
Tyne learned many of those tennis leadership skills from a mentor outside of Bucknell – her mother, who not only introduced her to the sport but was Tyne’s high school coach during her senior year at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pa.
Both of Tyne’s parents – Len and Penny Miller – were standout athletes at Williams College. Len played on the basketball team, and Penny was not just a member of the tennis team, but she was a four-time All-American.
Influenced by both of her parents, Tyne competed in both basketball and tennis growing up. Her start in competitive tennis came around the age of 11, which she admits is actually a bit late for the sport but has actually paid off in the long run.
“I think starting later benefitted me in a lot of ways, because I was old enough to know that I really loved it. And that’s still true to this day, which I think is a huge strength. Especially seeing a lot of burnout in athletes with hyper-specialization at such an early age. I was doing the basketball, I was doing the tennis, and it really just came down to how much I just loved the sport. I started playing competitively when I was 11 or 12, and my mom started out coaching me. Tennis is crazy because you travel around the country almost every weekend for tournaments.”
Tyne was homeschooled for two years, she attended a day school for her first three years of high school, and then as a senior she boarded at The Hill School, where her father was the associate headmaster as the time. That same year, Tyne’s mother stepped in as the school’s tennis coach, which brought things full circle.
“It was the coolest experience; I still tear up thinking about it. She started me out on this path and then was my last coach before going to college. She made it more than just about tennis. She really helped with both leadership and the holistic growth of everyone on the team. It was a cool little segue into college, because you have all these individual athletes who are just thrown onto a college team, and those elements of being a teammate really matter.”
Like most Bison student-athletes, Tyne says she chose Bucknell because it provided an opportunity to be a Division I athlete, and so much more.
“I really wanted the Division I experience while still being a scholar, and Bucknell was the perfect place to pursue the whole-person development. Coming into Bucknell, I didn’t know I would be involved with ROTC. I didn’t know I’d be doing research with a professor or doing internships or being a team captain my junior year. I didn’t even know what my major was going to be. It all kind of came together. And really, that just speaks to Bucknell and the sense that you really can come here and figure out who you are.”
And for Tyne Miller, that who is a highly motivated scholar-athlete who truly is, as she puts it, “living and leading with meaning and purpose.”
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