Miller Preston, who built Haddon Twp. wrestling's elite program, dies at 87

After learning the tricks of the trade in the sport of wrestling at Ursinus College, V. Miller Preston brought that knowledge to Haddon Township.

“The rest is history,” Brian Farnham, a Haddon Township graduate and current head wrestling coach, said.

Preston built the Hawks into one of the elite teams in the Colonial Conference, winning 398 matches and two South Jersey championships over a three-decade-plus career at the helm before retiring in 1997. He died Saturday at the age of 87.

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There is a picture of Preston that hangs outside the school’s wrestling room, which is also named for the legendary coach.

“He set the bar very high for this program,” said Farnham, who planned to talk to his current wrestlers about the late coach on Tuesday. “Coach had his core values that he always tried to convey to us. Good sportsmanship and humility were two that he hammered into us for four years. Wrestling is all about hard work, but there were other lessons that he wanted the sport to teach us.

“He had a gift for talking to you. He would always have these speeches, and they would go on for 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes, but it was his words that really sunk in over time.”

After five years as an assistant coach at Long Branch, Preston landed in Haddon Township, where he was an assistant for a year before taking the program over in 1965.

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The Hawks won South Jersey Group 2 titles in 1980 and 1987 along with two Colonial Conference banners and 11 district team championships. Preston also coached two state champions – Todd Young (1987) and Brian's brother, Kevin Farnham (1993) – along with 21 region titleists and 85 district champs.

His teams produced winning seasons in 29 of his 32 years.

In September, Preston was inducted into the New Jersey Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. The Manasquan native was also a member of the South Jersey Wrestling, New Jersey Coaches and Haddon Township High School Sports Hall of Fame along with the Harry E. Lake Award winner in 2006 and Region 7 Coach of the Year in 1985.

Among his other contributions to the sport, Preston was the president of the South Jersey Coaches and Officials Association for seven years. He worked on the Executive Committee for 15 years and was the region ranking chairman for eight years.

Howie O’Neil worked across the mat from Preston as Woodbury’s head coach, and alongside him on many wrestling committees to better the sport.

“He was a great coach and a good guy. He wasn’t just the Haddon Township coach, he gave back to all of South Jersey wrestling,” O’Neil said. “I enjoyed his friendship, competing against him and working with him in wrestling committees.”

Farnham said the Preston kept things simple on the mat, but success always followed.

“He got a lot of kids who started wrestling in the ninth grade,” Farnham said. “He taught them the cradle and they got a lot of mileage out of it.”

Tom McGurk is a regional sports reporter for the Courier-Post, The Daily Journal and Burlington County Times, covering South Jersey sports for over 30 years. If you have a sports story that needs to be told, contact him at (856) 486-2420 or email tmcgurk@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @McGurkSports. Help support local journalism with a digital subscription.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Haddon Township's legendary wrestling coach Miller Preston dies at 87.