Duxbury: Olympic father passes torch to son who joins the U.S rowing team

28 year-old Will Miller of Duxbury was a lacrosse player growing up before he started rowing in college, and now he joins the U.S rowing team for the Olympic Games.

His father, Bill Miller who rowed 40 years ago in the international competition, says the team left last Thursday night in hopes of making it through all three races, “They went to Switzerland and qualified in May, knocking out New Zealand and France. There are eight other countries that qualified. What they do is the final race, which will be Wednesday August 1^st, there’ll be six boats racing for the medals.”

Miller’s and his son’s journey to the international games is almost identical, with both attending Northeastern and taking the role as captain on the university’s rowing team.

“We both ended up doing the same thing but not by design, not by plan, it just happened that way,” says Miller.

Having shown little interest in the sport growing up, Miller wasn’t expecting Will to become a rower but says he’s blown away by his son’s ability,  “He’s exceeded everything and anything I’ve ever done. He’s just a better athlete. He’s a tougher person to the workload he puts in, to the condition he’s in; the technical level is just amazing. I’m just so impressed with him as an athlete.”

Miller calls his son a ‘veteran’, having rowed on the U.S team for the past three years.

The first Olympic rowing match is Saturday July 28^th.