About Laura

Experienced. Certified. Supportive.

Laura Hanner Milton has been coaching volleyball in since 1995. Most recently she was the varsity coach for the Austin Royals Home School volleyball team from 2007-2021. Since 2005 she has coached for Austin Junior Volleyball, the club she played for in high school. She has coached almost every age group in her over 25 years of coaching. Laura also teaches private lessons, clinics, and camps at the Georgetown Recreation Center.

Prior to coaching in the Austin area, Laura played at Virginia Tech where she gained her love and passion for coaching. After two overseas trips with Athletes in Action to Poland and India in 1998 and 1999 respectively, Laura moved to Richmond, Virginia to start the volleyball program at U-TURN - a Christian Sports Ministry. She also because CAP II certified in 1999 and has kept that certification active her entire career.

Laura also spent time playing overseas after a life changing trip to Slovenia in 2003. A friend formed a multinational team for a trip to Slovenia in August 2003. During that trip, the team in Kamnik, Slovenia invited Laura to play on their team professionally. Laure accepted the invitation and spent 6 months in Kamnik.

Laura has a desire to share with other coaches the lessons she has learned over the years. With so much negativity in sports these days, she wants to converse about making things positive and especially coaching for God's glory!

The Bible study that she has written "The Team that Glorifies God" began 2001. She started out looking for a Bible study to use with her team that applied Biblical principles to a team. She didn't find anything that really applied, so she started writing her own. For many years only three lessons existed. Finally, after many more years of experience as a coach, it was finished in 2013.

Laura lives in Georgetown, Texas with her husband Scott, and sons Cole (8) and Ethan (6).

LAURA'S HISTORY

All I ever wanted to do starting in the 7th grade was play volleyball. When I was filling out recruiting questionairres I remember my mom telling me I had to put down something that I might want to study even though all I really cared about was playing. (I was an A student by the way...) I don't know what it was about volleyball for me. When I played, nothing else mattered. My third year coaching, I coached my second club team as a fifth year college senior. I was at a pivotal time in my life when I was asking God what His next step was for me. I remember vividly the first club tournament that year. It was a long day and I think we finished third at the tournament. What I remember the most was the feeling I had at the end of the day...time seemed to stop inside the gym. Nothing that had been happening outside the gym mattered. And when I walked outside the gym I remember feeling shocked that there was something else going on...like the whole world. I guess that's what it feels like to be passionate about something.
I have tried to give up coaching several times, but the Lord keeps bringing me back. When I got married in 2005 and moved back to Texas from Virginia, I tried really hard to give it up. I packed up all of my stuff in a box, put it away, and asked God to show me what my role was going to be in this next phase as a wife. We got married in July and in October I was sitting in the AJV offices talking about coaching a club team. God made some things very clear at that time. Even recently I was talking to someone about a potential job but they said I would have to give up coaching. I turned down that job.

In the last several years, I have known the Lord was leading me to have some sort of bigger relationship with coaches. While I am certainly not a perfect coach nor have I made all of the right coaching decisions, I desire to talk to others about what God has taught me and how God can help them coach for His glory.