SEATTLE — There was an Excel spreadsheet and a list of criteria and, essentially, a top three.
Jalen McMillan, a star receiver from Fresno (Calif.) San Joaquin Memorial, would likely attend either USC, Oklahoma or Washington.
Except he already had decided, and nobody else knew.
During an unofficial visit to UW in June 2019, McMillan wandered from the recruiting lobby into coach Chris Petersen’s office. He emerged with a “gigantic grin” on his face, said his mother, Belinda McMillan Haener, and Petersen announced to the gathered visitors: “We’ve got a Dawg!”
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“We got it on video,” McMillan Haener said. “Everyone starts woofing, and our jaws kind of dropped. It was a great day, because it was definitely a decision we wanted him to make on his own. We were there to serve as guides and help him talk through everything, but the final decision, we definitely wanted it to be his and his alone.”
When McMillan eventually signed with the Huskies — following a whirlwind winter that saw Petersen resign and Jimmy Lake chosen to replace him as coach — he did so as one of UW’s highest-rated recruits of the internet era. A four-star prospect with 25 offers, McMillan ranked No. 67 nationally by the time the 2020 recruiting class was finalized, higher than all but three signees during Petersen’s tenure.
His high school numbers tell the story: 260 catches, 5,234 yards and 54 touchdowns in 50 games, meaning he averaged more than 100 receiving yards and a touchdown per game for his career. The Huskies lacked elite playmakers at receiver for most of Petersen’s six-year tenure, and McMillan’s prolific production — and the list of high-profile suitors who wanted him — suggested centerpiece potential once he got to college.
So his breakout game last month against Arkansas State was the initial realization of those expectations. He caught 10 passes for 175 yards and a touchdown, using his speed to beat man coverage and looking like the kind of big-play threat the Huskies have so badly needed.
He plays like a natural, like he was meant to run routes and catch passes and elude defenders.
And yet …
“I’ll still contest that he’s a better baseball player than he is a football player,” his mother says. “Even if he’s All-American, Biletnikoff, I will still say, ‘That’s great. You should see him play baseball.’”
And yet …
“As good as he is in football, as good as he is in baseball,” said Fabian Barrett, the track and field coach at San Joaquin Memorial, “I really think in track, he probably could have done multiple events in track — long jump, high jump, triple jump — I think he would have been a dynamo in all of those.”
Jalen McMillan did not catch the baseball.
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It was hit into the left-center field gap, and McMillan, shaded toward right field, did get his glove on it, but the ball smacked off his palm and fell to the ground.
And yet it is this play that Brandon Simon, McMillan’s longtime outfield and travel-ball coach, first recalls when describing his range as a center fielder.
“I watched where he was playing at, and I saw him track this ball down, and it was unreal,” Simon said. “Our coaching staff was like, ‘I can’t believe he even got close to that baseball.’”
Baseball was McMillan’s first love, his mother says, and the first sport at which he excelled. It’s why she still can’t quite square the idea that he won’t play the game again.
“Hopefully, his baseball days aren’t done, as a mom who likes non-contact sports, or for my blood pressure,” McMillan Haener said. “Several schools were interested in having him as a dual-sport athlete.”
USC and Oklahoma, she said, made Jalen’s final cut in part because they were open to him playing both football and baseball.
Jalen McMillian was the highest-rated offensive signee in UW’s 2020 class. (Abbie Parr / Getty Images)His coaches in Fresno are convinced he could have been a pro ballplayer. Simon began working with McMillan when he was about 12 or 13 years old and said, even then, it was obvious he was “a star in the making.” The game came easy to him, and McMillan stood out even among other elite players at Simon’s outfield workouts.
“He played center field like a wide receiver,” said J.D. Salles, McMillan’s high school coach, “and got some of the best jumps on balls I’ve ever seen. … He had natural bat-to-ball skills and was advanced on his baseball knowledge.”
“I actually was in talks with professional teams about him, and they knew exactly what he was and what they were going to have to offer him,” Simon said. “They were going to have to pay him a lot to not play football. … Just think about if he didn’t do one, how good he could have been. Just think about if he focused on doing one.”
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Simon submits Brock Jones, a two-sport athlete at Stanford, as an example. Jones played safety for the Cardinal football team while also playing baseball, but he dropped football and has since developed into a potential early pick in next year’s MLB draft.
“With the focus of one,” Simon said, “there’s no doubt in my mind that in baseball, (McMillan) would have been a big leaguer.”
In a 10-game senior season shortened by the pandemic, McMillan was batting .400 with eight RBIs and had gone 4-for-4 with a home run against Bakersfield Garces Memorial, one of the last baseball games he played.
“He was really starting to get going offensively before our season was shut down,” Salles said.
And yet …
“He was by far the best version of himself his senior year,” said Barrett, the track coach, “and it is really, really unfortunate that we couldn’t get in more than just a meet out there on the track.”
No, the Central Valley doesn’t operate on some kind of bizarro spring sports calendar; baseball and track happen concurrently, which seemingly precludes an athlete from participating in both.
Seemingly.
“When it comes to sprinting, most of the boys, at least, are football players who are off in the spring,” Barrett said. “But with him, he would literally show up to our practices the first hour, and then the second hour, he would go get a baseball training session in.”
Barrett and Salles decided they wouldn’t try to pigeonhole McMillan into one spring sport.
“We’re going to make it work if you’re willing to try to make it work,” Barrett said, “and Jalen and his family were on board.”
Track is the one sport that might not have come naturally to McMillan. Barrett first saw him as a seventh-grader. “He wasn’t super-talented right out of the gates,” he said. “He kind of grew into his own, and I really admire that about him.”
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Barrett took the head coaching job at San Joaquin Memorial prior to McMillan’s sophomore track season, by which point he already had won a league championship in the 100- and 200-meter dash as a freshman.
Barrett told him: “You will definitely get out what you put into the sport. If you are willing to make the time commitment to come out to the track and be in the weight room in the spring, I think you’re going to reap all the benefits of your hard work.”
As a freshman, McMillan’s best 100-meter time was 11.21.
He ran a 10.79 as a sophomore, then a 10.67 as a junior.
As a freshman, McMillan’s best 200-meter time was 22.59.
He ran a 21.85 as a sophomore, and a 21.64 as a junior.
McMillan wasn’t just getting faster and winning more races. He was setting a new standard for a program that, save for a handful of star athletes sprinkled throughout its history, had never achieved any kind of sustained team success.
“As far as his personality and the way he carries himself and the talent that he brought to the table, it kind of legitimized our program,” Barrett said. “Our numbers increased every year. By the time his senior year came, we had roughly 40 kids out there from a program that normally had only 10, and he was a huge part of that.”
Formerly an annual doormat at the six-team league championship meet, San Joaquin Memorial instead challenged for the team title in 2019. McMillan again won the 100 and 200 and helped win the 4×100 relay, but the 4×400 relay — an event San Joaquin Memorial had never won — loomed as the main event.
Running the anchor, McMillan took the baton trailing the leader by maybe 30 meters. He had closed about only 10 meters or so, Barrett said, heading into the final 100 meters.
“I never want to count them out,” Barrett said, “but I’m looking at him saying, ‘I don’t think he’s going to get him.’”
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But McMillan found another gear — the same gear, perhaps, that gives him such an advantage against man coverage at the line of scrimmage — took the lead with 10 meters to go and fell forward across the finish line to deliver San Joaquin Memorial a win for the ages.
Or so they thought. The runners were so jubilant in their celebration, Barrett said, that an opposing coach complained and got their score disqualified. The record book will not show McMillan and his teammates as the winners of that race. But it hardly mattered in the big picture.
“That was the moment, I think, right there, where they’re like, ‘We are an official team now. We are as good as anybody in our league,’” Barrett said. “Even though we don’t have 100-plus kids, we have a lot of talent and a lot of kids that work hard.”
If the UW football team is to have a similar renaissance in 2021, McMillan figures to be a big part of it. He fought off a high ankle sprain at the end of 2020 and hand surgery that kept him out of the 2021 opener against Montana to emerge as one of the Huskies’ most important offensive players, and for the first time has a chance to showcase his athleticism on nearly every snap.
But his mother wants you to know: “He’s more than a football player.” He’s “such a good big brother” to his 9-year-old sister, Lauren, and 4-year-old brother, Carter. He loves the outdoors and playing video games with his friends, and he’s developing an eye for social causes as he navigates his college years. When he wandered into Petersen’s office on the day he committed, it was no surprise that he had disappeared, because “he’s a little butterfly-ish sometimes.”
“He’s just a genuine, fun, goofy kid who loves to laugh and kind of just embraces everyone around him,” McMillan Haener said.
During even the most grueling track workouts, Barrett remembers, “The guy would be out there joking around, smiling, having a good time, interacting with everybody. That’s just not something that comes along too often with somebody that good.”
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Somebody that good doesn’t come along too often, either.
And, as Simon said, imagine what could come next, now that McMillan finally is focused on just one sport.
(Top photo: Stephen Brashear / USA Today)
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