Ahead of his fourth season as baseball head coach, A.J. Miller ‘11 received a contract extension in December to remain at the helm of the program until 2029. He also hired a new assistant baseball coach, finalizing a coaching team looking to trump a 9-16 Patriot League record next season.
“I’m really grateful for the people that I work with and for,” said Miller, who had set a college home-run record as a player and coached five All-Patriot League team selections in 2025. “I’m a proud alum of this place, and I’m looking forward to the future here.”
Miller said penciling the new contract was something he’d “been working on with administrators for a little bit,” ahead of the winter break. The college confirmed Miller’s contract in a news release on Dec. 17.
“As an alum, A.J. has a keen knowledge of what it takes to build and maintain a winning baseball program here at Lafayette,” Director of Athletics Sherryta Freeman said in the release. She declined to comment further.
Miller led the baseball team to a Patriot League tournament appearance in 2023. After a slower 2024 season, he marginally improved the team’s record and upset Power Four opponent Penn State University in 2025. Miller emphasized that building a team as a coach “takes time.”
“I think the team’s done a really good job of creating their own identity and culture, and it’s brought together a special cohesiveness and a family,” he said.
Junior captain Matt Colella said that Miller is the “right fit” to lead a team at his alma mater.
“We were all just super pumped to hear the news,” Colella, who starts at shortstop, said of the team’s reaction.
Miller is one of three alumni to lead a Lafayette College Division I team, along with football head coach John Troxell ‘94 and field hockey head coach Jennifer Stone ‘04.
“Lafayette is a Division I athletic institution, but it’s also what I equate to Division I academics,” he said. “It’s not easy to do both, so I have a good understanding of the challenges that come with managing both and achieving at a high level. And so I think that certainly caters to the way that I coach the team.”
Six days after Miller’s contract was announced, another athletics news release sealed Colin Houck — who graduated from DeSales University in 2025 — as Miller’s assistant baseball coach.
“He’s just more in the know of what’s going on, and college kids’ minds,” Miller said of Houck, calling him “very mature for his age.”
Houck will coach the team’s infielders and serve as a first-base coach.
“I’m not going to teach my first baseman to play the same way as our shortstop,” said Houck, who until January had coached at Bloomsburg University. “I need our guys to be able to make the plays that they’re going to get in games and make the outs have to be outs.”
At Bloomsburg, Houck said he learned from his head coach, Mike Collins, that a coach should be a mentor beyond a college career.
“He talks a lot about he’s your coach for four years, but he wants to be your coach for 40 years,” Houck said of his previous boss. “That’s something I want to bring over and help the guys succeed on and off the field for their lives after baseball.”
