The most popular member of the Greenbrier High School football team has never played a down, but he keeps the players and coaches upbeat.
B.J. McMillen of Wooster, 35, started volunteering when he was in the seventh grade when former Greenbrier Junior High School football coach Todd Edwards recruited McMillen to be the team manager. McMillen’s titles include motivation coordinator, assistant coach and assistant athletic director.
Edwards, now principal of Conway Junior High, said he used football to help improve McMillen’s behavior. He said McMillen, who was in the special-education program in the Greenbrier School District, was “a runner.”
“I literally ran into him one day; he was running from his teacher,” Edwards said. “He came around the corner, and I caught him.” Edwards said he talked to McMillen’s teacher, who often brought McMillen and a couple of other boys from her class to watch seventh-grade football practice.
“I said, ‘Do you think B.J. would like to be on the sideline at the football game Thursday night?’” Edwards said. The educators talked to Doug and Lameta McMillen, who gave the OK for their son to get involved with football.
Edwards said he struck a deal with the young McMillen — if he behaved, his reward was getting to be on the sidelines during football games.
“We never had another second’s trouble out of him,” Edwards said. “I realized pretty quick, he was right at home.” The next year, McMillen traveled with the team to all the away games.
And in 23 years, McMillen has rarely missed a game. He was sidelined after he fell from a deer stand in November 2013, broke his foot and had to be taken by helicopter to a Little Rock hospital. Surgery included 26 screws and three metal plates, Lameta McMillen said. “He was at practice in his boot on the sideline,” she said.
McMillen strode across the football field with purpose during Wednesday’s practice, wearing a blue Panthers floppy hat, and a gray shirt and shorts, both bearing the team’s logo. Around his neck, he wore a whistle on a lanyard with the words “Whatever It Takes” imprinted on it.
“I worked my way up through the years,” McMillen said.
He described his many responsibilities. He attends all the practices, which are at 6:30 a.m. during the summer and 2:30 p.m. after school starts. He has a clipboard, and parents must come to him and sign out their children.
“[Before a game], I get all the headsets on the chargers, make sure the boys have cleats, helmets,” he said. “I make sure they clean the locker room up. I tell them at practice, ‘Drink water, no Coke.’”
McMillen said that during the games, he makes sure the coaches “keep off that white line so the refs can run up and down that line.” If the coaches step on the field, it could be a penalty, McMillen said.
Football is a huge part of their son’s life, the McMillens said.
“It’s been unbelievable,” Doug McMillen said. “With his special requirements, it was hard to find something you could take away from him on his behavior. As soon as football got in there, that was it. He’s the greatest kid in the world; I can ask him to do anything, anytime, and it’s, ‘Well, sure.’”
Lameta McMillen agreed. “Every day’s Saturday for B.J. He never has a bad day,” she said. “He’s a great kid.”
With every coaching change through the years came nervousness for the McMillens.
“Every year, we just cringed, because we thought, ‘This is it,’” Lameta McMillen said. She said every coach has welcomed their son, and when current coach Randy Tribble took over, he called to make sure B.J. was coming back.
“Coach Tribble is so great to him, and all the coaches have been,” Doug McMillen said.
“Coach Tribble’s a real nice guy,” B.J. McMillen said. He said Tribble calls the plays. “I just help him out.” Sometimes that includes suggesting a play, McMillen said, a printout of the plays stuck in the waistband of his shorts.
Tribble, who is in his eighth year in the Greenbrier School District, said McMillen is “fired up and ready to go” all the time.
“He’s just a guy that he’s out there enthusiastic for us all the time. He loves kids, and kids love him,” Tribble said. He said McMillen likes to help the quarterback coach, and Tribble lets McMillen speak at all the pep rallies, where the students cheer for him.
“He’s enthusiastic about Greenbrier Panther Football. He loves being a part of it, and he has a great outlook on life, and it’s great for the kids to see that about him. It’s good to be around a guy who’s never had a bad day,” Tribble said.
“I’m always happy,” McMillen said. “If we win, I’m happy for them.” If they lose? “We got to come back and practice again the next day and get the momentum back,” he said.
Senior linebacker Sam McNabb, 18, smiled when asked what McMillen means to the program. “He’s just the life of the team, man. He’s just such a happy guy. He loves coming out here — 5:30 in the morning, or 9 at night, he’s here. He loves being out here more than anybody.”
“I like my boys out here,” McMillen said. “We’re just one big happy family.”
McMillen predicts the team will have a successful season.
“I think we’re going to be good,” he said. “I think we’re trying to keep people from getting banged up and bruised up. The key — we go out there and just focus, pay attention. We’ve got to run the ball and don’t drop the ball as many times as we did last year. We just didn’t hold onto the ball.”
He likes the artificial turf on the Greenbrier football field, which wasn’t there when he started volunteering in junior high.
“We didn’t have turf back then, just old wet, muddy grass,” he said.
McMillen loves football, but he also enjoys other sports, he said, rattling off the list: “I’m a Greenbrier Panther fan — I’m a basketball fan, volleyball fan and baseball fan — softball, too — all the sports around here.”
He also attends the Martinville Church of Christ with his family, and his enthusiasm hasn’t gone unnoticed by the community. He is a past grand marshal of the Greenbrier Christmas Parade, and he received the 2014 Spirit of Greenbrier Award from the Greenbrier Area Chamber of Commerce.
“I was proud of that,” McMillen said. He pointed out that he was wearing his George Strait T-shirt in the photo taken that night and, “I’m smiling big,” he said.
Edwards said everyone could learn a lesson from B.J. McMillen.
“The thing about him, we should all be like this — wherever he is is the best place in the world to be. Sometimes we get caught up in the everyday grind of our lives, and we forget how great life can be. When you’re around B.J., he never lets you forget. He’s a joy.”
Edwards said his son played football and got to know McMillen.
“I said, ‘You let B.J. make you happy; that’s one of his gifts. He’ll make you happy if you’ll let him.’”
McMillen is raring to get back out on the field — he glances out the window to the field where the action is going on.
“I want to be coaching as long as I can,” he said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.