{"id":161140,"date":"2025-01-08T11:19:17","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T18:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=161140"},"modified":"2025-01-08T11:23:54","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T18:23:54","slug":"the-team-sport-of-success-justin-miller-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=161140","title":{"rendered":"The team sport of success | Justin Miller \u201914"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Justin Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Just 10 years after joining Colorado Rush as General Manager, UCCS alum and former student-athlete Justin Miller is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the entire Rush Soccer organization.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cProviding kids a platform to play sports is magical,\u201d Justin said of his role leading the largest youth soccer organization in the world. \u201cSoccer is part of me, and I want to give back and that has motivated me to make this my whole career. I\u2019m lucky to be in a position that can impact kids\u2019 lives as much as it did mine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the help of an athletic scholarship, Justin played for the Men\u2019s Mountain Lion soccer team from 2010 \u2013 2014<\/a> before graduating with a degree in finance. Upon graduation, he chose to stay in his home state of Colorado and took a job with Colorado Rush, the local entity of the club he now runs.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Justin Miller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t plan to work in sports,\u201d Justin said. \u201cI was applying for more traditional finance roles but when I found the opportunity to combine sports and business, I knew I wanted to take it because I was so passionate about the game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was then that he met the founder and president of Rush Soccer, Tim Schulz. A graduate of Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs, Schulz took an interest in Justin and his potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a press release, Schulz expressed his excitement about the appointment, saying, \u201cJustin\u2019s passion for the sport and his dedication to the development of young soccer players align perfectly with Rush Soccer\u2019s mission. With his leadership, we will continue to empower youth through soccer and make a positive impact on their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now a CEO at just 33 years old, Justin humbly credits his success to a simple turn of fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am lucky. Everything happens for a reason,\u201d Justin said. \u201cI graduated at the right time and got the Colorado Rush job when the founder was coming back to Colorado Springs. He became my mentor and taught me the ropes. We had a lot of successes and failures together and through the nine years we worked together, he gained trust in me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schulz named Justin as CEO upon his retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin says his finance degree from UCCS is another key point in his success thus far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBusiness is money so having an education in finance means everything,\u201d he said. \u201cOne of the first big projects I took on was changing the financial model of the club and being financially literate definitely helped with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He remembers a particularly tough finance class at UCCS and the instructor who helped him get through it – Mingming Zhou.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe took a very specific interest in me,\u201d Justin said. \u201cI was struggling in one of her classes and she went above and beyond outside of office hours because I was traveling for soccer. She wanted me to succeed and that made a lasting impression on me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a student-athlete, Justin said it was sometimes difficult to balance training and practice schedules with his academic workload, not to mention many of the friendships he still carries today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking back at it, it\u2019s the exact challenge that a young student needs,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don’t need to be erudite in your specific college major; what really matters is being able to juggle multiple tasks at once with precision and focus. With the help of a lot of people I was able to do this. And I\u2019m better for it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin hopes to find a way to give back to UCCS, whether it be through mentoring or speaking at campus events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would like to impart some of the knowledge I\u2019ve found since starting my career. I look back at who I was while I was at UCCS and I was young and naive and needed a little bit more guidance in general,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be amazing to be able to spark something in a student and find a connection that can turn into a mentorship or a learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin said he’d encourage current UCCS students to build and nurture relationships, something he didn\u2019t realize the importance of until his final year of school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuccess is not a zero-sum game. It’s a team sport,\u201d he said. \u201cMost people are unable to reach success alone and togetherness is a powerful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He thinks it\u2019s always worth it to meet that extra person or to put yourself out there in an uncomfortable situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFollow up. Reach out. Say thank you,\u201d Justin explained. \u201cI would not have had any success without teachers and mentors, and I recognize that every day.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just 10 years after joining Colorado Rush as General Manager, UCCS alum and former student-athlete Justin Miller is the Chief Executive Officer of the entire Rush Soccer organization. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":161141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,427],"tags":[370,369,93,40,332],"class_list":["post-161140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-alumni-stories","tag-alumni","tag-alumni-success","tag-athletics","tag-college-of-business","tag-more-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Justin-Miller_1.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-FV2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161148,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161140\/revisions\/161148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/161141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=161140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=161140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}