COLUMN: MacMillan travels new road to success

From, Josh Callahan's, "A View from the Porch," Fall '98 That's where you will find a wide 'V' shaped scar, the result of his collision with a five-foot fence the All-Ivy steeplechaser was trying to clear during the first run of 1997 summer cross country camp. The injury left MacMillan with 35 stitches, a seat on a cot for the rest of camp and on the sidelines for the next two months. "I thought they were joking. You're heart just sinks for the kid," Penn track coach Charlie Powell said. When he returned to racing, it was not the same. His training base eroded, for the first time the former New York state high-school steeplechase champ watched the rest of the pack leave him behind at races. It was a shocking revelation for someone who had always finished on top. It was tough enough freshmen year running in the middle of the pack at races, but not running at all, and then running slowly, was nearly too much. "It drove him nuts," Penn track coach Charlie Powell said. "He had to question whether running was worth it. You enjoy the things you are good at. If you were terrible, you wouldn't want to keep doing it." Frustrated and down on his sport, MacMillan thought seriously about giving up. A year later, MacMillan is poised to challenge for top individual honors at the Heptagonal Championships tomorrow in New York. A win would be the first by a Penn runner since All-American Dave Merrick won in 1975. MacMillan attributes his turnaround to a change in attitude and lifestyle which began during his rehab last fall. To his own admission MacMillan said he partied too much freshman year, didn't sleep enough and didn't eat the right things. "Freshman year we were up until two, three in the morning," his freshman roommate Jim Miranda said. "He wants to be a champion now and he realizes what it takes." Realizing that half his collegiate running career was already behind him, MacMillan got serious. Some of his housemates and teammates decided to commit themselves to a serious training regimen which included more sleep and less alcohol. "After cross country last year I decided I would give myself like six months of doing everything right and seeing how it came out," MacMillan said. "My spring season went really well and it pretty much just rolled from there." MacMillan's friends and teammates noticed two sets of changes. Former hallmate P.T. McNiff said he saw a first big shift after MacMillan's injury, and another huge jump when he returned to school this fall. "He reached a point where he was bored with going out and doing the same things," McNiff said. "It's a big change, now he's always in bed by midnight." That discipline took MacMillan's already improving speed into the elite level. Last spring's track season saw MacMillan finish second at Heps and third at IC4As in the 3000 meter steeplechase. In the process he set the fourth fastest time in school history for the event at 8 minutes, 55.6 seconds. And his times have kept on dropping this fall. He has been Penn's No. 1 runner in every meet this year and has beaten almost everyone he has faced on both coast's of the country. It has been quite a turnaround for Sean MacMillan. A missed hurdle two summers ago has allowed him to get beyond performance hurdles he might otherwise have missed out on. "I regret already wasting two years," MacMillan said. "I'm not gonna let a race go by where I'm not running my ass off."