Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 21, 1994 TAG: 9404210169
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BRIAN DeVIDO STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At 5-feet-8, 125 pounds, he doesn't appear to have the power necessary to carry him more than 24 feet in the air.
But Millner's opponents don't know about his superior technique. They don't know about his mental preparation, which the William Fleming High School senior says is the key to his success. They don't know about the burst of power inside that supple body.
"Guys will look at me and they'll say, `That's not the guy from Fleming, is it?' " Millner says.
Then he'll take off down the runway and jump. When the leap is measured, they'll know it's the guy from Fleming.
Millner recently placed second in the long jump at the National Scholastic Indoor Track and Field Championships in Syracuse, N.Y. His jump of 24 feet, 3 inches at the Carrier Dome was the best of his career, and just 2 inches short of the winning leap by Aaron Fox of Flagstaff, Ariz. Both were named Foot Locker All-Americans.
"It was like a high, something I'd dreamed of," Millner says of his second-place jump. "It was pure adrenaline, just pure adrenaline I was going on."
College coaches were so impressed with that performance that Fleming coach Rudy Dillard said he recently received a call from Florida, a school that has some of the best long-jumpers in the country. Virginia Tech, Virginia Commonwealth University, Liberty University and Virginia Military Institute also have contacted Millner.
"I want to go where I think I'll be challenged," says Millner, who received an American Society for Microbiology Award at a science fair last year for a project he did on pimples.
Dillard says Millner's success is the product of hard work.
"I'll come by on Saturdays and Sundays and see him out on the track," Dillard says. "In ninth grade, he was jumping 16, 17 feet. He's got a lot of determination and works hard."
Says Millner: "I knew just two hours a day at practice wouldn't make me a champion."
Before the national indoor championships, Millner's best leap was 23-9 1/2 during the Group AAA indoor state championships at Fairfax. Millner said the reason he does so well at big meets is that he's mentally prepared. Much of that comes from his father.
"He gives me cards with affirmations on them daily," Millner says. "He asks me what I'm doing each day to reach my goals. He tells me to write my goals down and look at it every day when I get up and before I go to bed at night. It's like he tells me, `It's 90 percent mental, and 10 percent physical.' "
Millner says he read a book about Carl Lewis, arguably the greatest long-jumper ever, and said Lewis told his friends he was going to jump 25 feet by the time he left high school. To motivate himself properly, he got a jacket that had a big "25" on it.
"I'm thinking about getting me a jacket and putting `25' on it," he says.
The next goal for Millner is to break the Fleming outdoor long jump record of 25-3 1/2, set by Robert Majors in 1985. While thumbing through Colonels' records, Dillard found that Millner already had a school record, the indoor mark in the long jump.
When he found out, Millner started to laugh softly and his mouth opened wide, as if he had just been given a Christmas present in the middle of the summer.
"Amazed, amazed," he said, holding the treasured piece of paper that showed his best indoor jump was better than any by the Fleming athletes who came before him. "Oh man, I can't believe it."
But don't think this will stop Millner's pursuit of the outdoor record. Not for a second.
"Oh, no," he says, rising to the challenge. "That's just going to make me work that much harder."
by CNB