Tam's Milechman, McMillan Shoot for State Finals

When 's and made the State Meet in track last spring, it was all about the school.

This weekend, when both have a good chance to make the finals in arguably the biggest prep meet in the country, the athletes are taking center stage.

“This season has been atypical,” Tam track coach Bob McLellan observed. “Until last year, Marin County had maybe two or three kids going to the State Meet. This is the second year in a row that we’ve got seven or eight going.

“And prior to last year, when Dan and Lilla made it for the first time, it had been six or seven years since Tam had gotten a kid to the State Meet.

“So this is unusual. Pleasing, but unusual.”

As their coach noted, this will be the second trip to Clovis in two years for the senior Milechman, the North Coast Section champion in the 1,600 meters, and McMillan, a junior who placed second in the 200 and third in the 100 last week.

Neither is seeded to make the finals at the star-studded state championships, but each certainly has a chance.

Milechman was the favorite last week in the NCS Meet of Champions and lived up to his billing, running nearly two seconds faster than his previous best to beat a tough field.

Nonetheless, he’s seeded only 14th this week, and only 12 will make the finals after Friday’s trials.

“His preferred race is to sit behind the leaders and then, about two-thirds into the race, pull away at that point,” McLellan said. “That’s the same strategy he’s used to win the state cross country meet twice.

“If he gets that kind of race (where he’s able to settle in behind a fast pace), he’s got a good chance. But if the pace is slow and he’s forced to lead, he could be in trouble.”

McLellan said a two-second improvement – from the 4:16s to the 4:14s – is more impressive than the average sports fan might realize.

“That’s a 35-yard difference. He beat his previous best by 35 yards,” he explained. “That’s a lot in the mile.”

If the race comes down to tactics, chances are the Harvard-bound senior will do just fine.

“He’s the most grounded, most disciplined kid I’ve ever known,” McLellan beamed. “He’s been the leader of the distance guys for the last three years.

“He runs very disciplined, very knowledgeable workouts. In doing so, he’s dragged the other guys along with him. As a result, we have a strong distance contingent. We finished sixth as a team in the state in cross country.”

McMillan, meanwhile, competes in track’s other dimension – the world of speed.

“Lilla is a girl that walked onto the (Tam) track her freshman year and hadn’t done anything athletically,” McLellan said of the art-school student in San Francisco as a youth. “Within her first couple of workouts, we were going, ‘Whoa, she’s really fast.’

“By the middle of her freshman year, she was already the fastest sprinter in Marin County. Every year, she’s gotten a little bigger, a little stronger, a little faster.”

She’s now so fast, in fact, that only one girl was faster than her over 200 meters at last week’s Meet of Champions, and only two over 100 meters.

She’s seeded 11th in the 100 and 15th in the 200 entering Friday’s trials. Only the top nine in each event will advance to Saturday’s finals.

“She peaks at the right time,” noted McLellan, pointing to McMillan’s surprising 11th-place finish in the 200 at the State Meet last season. "There’s a good chance she’ll make the top nine this year.”

Now in her third year of prep sprinting, McMillan is getting used to the high level of competition, her coach assured.

“In the (Marin County Athletic League) and the (NCS) Redwood Empire meet, they all look alike,” McLellan assessed. “But after that, she becomes the skinny little white girl.

“Each time she’s reached that level for the first time, she’s gotten intimidated by it. But the more she does it, the more comfortable she gets with it.”