This is the first feature of a series leading into fall camp focusing on the Panther football coaching staff. Coming Tuesday: Assistant head coach Harold Etheridge.

Kaylee Miles is only eight years old, but she already knows exactly what she wants to be when she grows up.

“Kaylee says she is going to be the first female football player at Georgia State,” said Trent Miles, the Panthers' first-year head coach and Kaylee's dad.

“She loves football,” Miles continued. “Last Christmas, the only gift she really wanted was a football. This fall, she is going to play in a flag football league.”

Kaylee, a frequent visitor to Georgia State football practice, is the oldest of Trent and Bridget Miles' four children. She is followed by Anna, 6, Charlie Elizabeth, 5, and Noah, 3.

“It's definitely chaos in our house, but my wife keeps it all together,” Miles said. “As excited as I am for the start of fall camp on Aug. 3, Bridget is even more excited for the first day of school in August.”

Miles' involvement in sports is deeply embedded with his family background, particularly his late father, Chuck Miles.

“One of my first sports memories is of my dad taking us to St. Louis to a Cardinals game,” Trent Miles recalled. “They were playing the San Francisco Giants, so I saw Bob Gibson and Lou Brock against Willie Mays, Bobby Bonds and Willie McCovey.”

Chuck Miles played minor league baseball and went on to become a Missouri Valley Football official and later an officials' evaluator for the conference.

 “I grew up in baseball dugouts and football locker rooms,” said Miles, a native of Terre Haute, Ind., where his mother still lives. “My dad would work the Indiana State scrimmages and I would tag along. The most important thing he taught me was how to compete.”

Another connection to the Indiana State program for Miles in his youth was his childhood friend, Cam Cameron, the former NFL head coach and offensive coordinator who is now the offensive coordinator at LSU.

“Cam Cameron's step-father, Tom Harp, was the head coach at Indiana State, and Cam and I were the ball boys,” Miles said.

Eventually, Miles became an Indiana State Sycamore himself, playing wide receiver on the 1983 and 1984 squads that each won nine games and advanced to the FCS playoffs. The 1984 Sycamores were ranked No. 1 in the nation for much of the season, and that team was later inducted into the Indiana State University Hall of Fame.

But Miles knew that his future in the game would be outside the lines.

“When I couldn't outrun a linebacker, I figured there wasn't much demand for a slow, 5-7 wide receiver, so my coaching career was born,” Miles laughed.

He earned his degree in criminology in 1987, and after serving a year as a graduate assistant at his alma mater, Miles left home for Albuquerque, N.M., and the University of New Mexico. He worked as a graduate assistant, under then-Lobos' assistant coach Marvin Lewis, now the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals.

“Marvin Lewis kind of turned me loose on the field and let me coach linebackers, but one of the biggest things I learned from him was the time commitment that this profession takes,” Miles said. “I already knew how to work hard because my dad taught me that, but [Lewis] taught me about the hours you have to put in to be successful.

“When I first got to New Mexico, I didn't have a vehicle, so we would ride to work together,” Miles continued. “He would pick me up outside my apartment at 5:30 in the morning, and most nights it would be 10 or 11 when he dropped me off.”

Following Miles' hire at Georgia State, Lewis had this to say about his former pupil: “Trent did an incredible job getting the program at Indiana State turned in the proper direction. He's a great recruiter, and even more importantly, he showed the ability to get the players to buy in to his program and believe they could win each and every week. He's a colleague I've been proud to know for a number of years, and he's a great choice for Georgia State to build their program.”  

After two years at New Mexico and another at Oklahoma, Miles landed his first full-time coaching job at Northern Illinois in 1991. Stints at Hawai'i (1995-96) and Fresno State (1997-99) followed.

In 2000, Miles had the opportunity to join the Green Bay Packers' staff of Mike Sherman. It was there that he first worked with Jeff Jagodzinski, now his offensive coordinator at Georgia State.

The following year, Miles began a seven-year association with Tyrone Willingham through stops at Stanford (2001), Notre Dame (2002-04) and Washington (2005-07), preparing him to return to Indiana State for his first head coaching position in 2008.

“Bridget and I met at Notre Dame, and we were married by the team priest, Father Paul Doyle,” Miles said. “She went to Alabama and worked at Notre Dame (in athletic academic services). When people would ask her who she was rooting for in the BCS National Championship game, she would say, 'Roll Irish!'”

While they have fond recollections from their previous schools, now Trent, Bridget and the Miles children are creating new memories as part of the Panther Family.