Jalen McMillan is here because of Herle.
Granted, Herle Gene McMillan hated his first name.
But he loved his grandson a million times more.
“(Jalen) was the first grandbaby, and they were just inseparable,” Belinda McMillan Haener said of her dad, Jalen’s grandfather, who died on Aug. 20 at age 68. “From the beginning, there were so many pictures and videos of them being just ridiculous together. They were just best pals and they understood each other better than all of us understood them individually.”
Herle Gene McMillan — who went by Gene, and his grandkids called “Opa” — was born in Emory, Texas, on June 28, 1954. He specialized in heavy equipment operation in the United States Army, and met his wife — Angie — while stationed in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1978. They married in 1981 and welcomed their daughter, Belinda, later that year.
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Huskies 52, Portland State 6
After being discharged from the armed forces, Gene and his family settled in Fresno, Calif., where he worked as a state humane officer for the Central California SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) for 33 years. His grandson, Jalen Miles, was born in 2001.
From the beginning, Opa was always there.
“He was around all the time,” Jalen McMillan said Saturday, after recording four catches for 127 yards and an 84-yard touchdown in UW’s 52-6 win over Portland State. “He took me for my first haircut. I did a lot of my first things with him.”
That inevitably included athletics, as Jalen became a standout in football, baseball and track and field. The 6-foot-1, 186-pound wide receiver registered 260 receptions, 5,234 yards and 54 touchdowns in 50 career games at San Joaquin Memorial High School, from 2016 to 2019. He was ranked as a four-star recruit, the No. 5 player in California, the No. 6 wide receiver and the No. 38 overall prospect in the 2020 class by 247Sports.
But success didn’t arrive by accident.
“There would be times when (my grandpa) would randomly come up to me and he would try to instill a different type of mindset into me,” Jalen McMillan recalled. “When I started getting good at football and started getting into sports, he was the one that was always telling me, ‘You need to work hard. Things don’t come easy. Without work ethic, you’re really nothing.’ He instilled that in me.”
At Washington, Jalen produced 40 catches, 486 receiving yards and three touchdowns in his first two seasons and 14 career games. Meanwhile, his grandfather — who routinely wore Jalen’s jersey to doctors appointments — battled both lung and esophageal cancer.
“Towards the end his doctors weren’t even sure which was the dominant one,” Belinda McMillan Haener said. “He had treatment for almost a couple years, and the scans started looking good. And then it just came back everywhere, and he opted not to keep putting his body through all the radiation and chemo. At the time they gave him about six months, but he (fought for) closer to nine months.”
That fight ended on Aug. 20, while Jalen was concluding preseason camp. Belinda called it “the hardest thing (Jalen’s) ever had to go through. This outweighs any injury. Injuries you can heal from and they can feel temporary, but this is going to be a permanent pain for him. It’s probably something that will never fully go away. Anything momentous in his life, he’s going to be wanting him there, and he’s not going to be able to have that.”
Jalen would have wanted Opa there on Sept. 3, when he recorded five catches for 87 yards and two touchdowns in UW’s 45-20 win over Kent State — pointing to the sky after his first score of the season. He would have wanted him there on Saturday night, when he outran a pair of Vikings down the left sideline for an 84-yard touchdown — tied for the seventh-longest reception in Husky history.
Still, the McMillan family provided ample support — with Jalen’s parents, grandmother (and Herle’s wife) Angie, younger siblings Carter and Lauren, uncle and multiple friends nestled in the northwest corner inside Husky Stadium.
The third-year sophomore also felt his grandfather’s presence on Saturday, under a smoky Seattle sky.
“He was my best friend,” Jalen McMillan said. “He was looking forward to seeing me this season and unfortunately he passed away before the season started. So just him being in the sky watching me is something I have motivating me.”
That motivation has yielded prolific production, as McMillan leads the Huskies in catches (nine), receiving yards (214) and receiving touchdowns (three) in an explosive 2-0 start. With faded eye-black smeared down both of his cheeks, Jalen said Saturday that “I feel like putting on a show for him is what I need to do. I kind of expect it of myself.”
He’s playing for a purpose.
As well as a person.
“You talk about a guy I’ve just seen grow, not just as a player but as a person and go through some hard times during fall camp,” UW coach Kalen DeBoer said Saturday. “Man, I couldn’t be more proud of how he’s handled everything — how he’s handled himself as a man, how he’s stood strong even though he’s hurting inside. His grandpa meant the world to him, and I know he’s playing for more than himself — not just today, not tomorrow, but the rest of his career, the rest of his life.”
Jalen McMillan is playing for Opa.
Because of Herle Gene McMillan, he’s doing it at UW.
“It makes the victories a little sweeter, to know he stuck through it (after a 4-8 season and two coaching changes),” Belinda McMillan Haener said. “He could have left. A lot of kids can and do in this day and age, and it’s probably an easier decision to walk away. But I know he and my dad talked about it a lot, and he advised him that, ‘You made a commitment here, and it was more than just football. You picked UW for a host of reasons, not only the football program.’
“So I think that helped him really recognize his purpose there.”