FLOYDS KNOBS — If Floyd Central tennis coach Rick Miller has four more seasons like the ones he’s become accustomed to, he’ll reach a milestone that most coaches will never sniff.

During the 2012 girls’ tennis season, the Highlanders chalked up 20 wins, which put Miller at 891 lifetime victories between girls’ and boys’ tennis. That makes Miller the second-winningest coach in Indiana high school tennis history.

Miller supplanted retired Jasper coach Ed Yarbrough, who set the previous bar at 885 wins.

The secret to his success?

“Staying alive,” Miller joked. “It’s hard to win when you’re dead.”

But there’s pretty good evidence that there’s more to it than that. Miller has racked up 644 victories coaching the Floyd Central boys, a job he first started in 1973. He took over the girls’ program in 1995, and Miller’s Highlanders managed just five wins his first year.

“We were pretty darn bad when I took over. We only won like five matches that first year,” Miller said. “I haven’t had a losing season with the girls since that first year in ‘95. We didn’t have any talent. Seriously. I’m not taking anything away from my girls, because they tried hard, but I only had one girl that had ever played tennis on a tennis team before. You talk about the cupboard bare.”

But after that first season, Miller has never had a losing year as the coach of the girls’ team. Girls’ tennis accounts for 247 of his victories.

“It was rough. I felt really bad — we got waxed pretty good,” Miller said of that first year. “We have gotten better just about every year. We’ve gone through ups and downs, but we have a lot of 20-win seasons.”

Miller finds himself 70 wins behind the current winningest coach, Silver Creek’s Mike Crabtree, who won 971 matches coaching both boys and girls. Crabtree coached the Dragons for a combined 62 seasons between the two.

If Miller holds to form, he’ll need just two more years — two seasons with the boys, two with the girls — to get to the very top.

OK, so really, what’s his secret?

“I think we’ve got such a great parent base,” Miller said. “Tradition really means a lot in any sport, and some people have called me and said, ‘You know, kids grow up wanting to play for Floyd Central because of that tradition.’ Once you have all of that attention brought on you and you have some success, and the kids see it’s a reward program.

“Look at Olivia (Boesing). Her picture’s on the front page of the paper. My doubles team’s on the front page of the sports section. The kids like that attention. So do the parents. You can’t be successful without parent support.”

Miller also credits the senior class of his talented girls’ tennis team — which won nearly 90 matches in the last four years — for the more recent string of success.

“No wonder I’ve been on a roll,” Miller said. “I’ve just had great talent with that senior class. I think we’re going to be pretty good with the boys this year. I think we’ll be one of the contenders in the area. I don’t know if we’ll be the best, but we could be right there on the edge.”