A Lasting, Limping Legacy

A Lasting, Limping Legacy

By: Paige Ellenberger

Challace McMillin knew he was destined to be a football coach. What he didn’t know was the impact he would have on athletes over 750 miles away from his hometown. 

“He was there with me during the cold days, the hard days and the painful times,” Charles Haley, a five-time Super Bowl champion and NFL Hall of Famer, said.

             

Haley lived with depression and bipolar disorder while in college. He is also one of McMillin’s former players. 

Haley played for the James Madison University Dukes in 1987. Something that wouldn’t have been a possibility just 16 years prior. 

It all started from predominantly female class registration lines and a muddy Godwin field.

McMillin, his wife and two babies left their childhood hometown of Memphis and traveled northeast to the Valley in 1971 because of an opportunity he knew he couldn’t pass up.

“We’ve never heard of Harrisonburg, Virginia,” Mary Lou McMillin, his wife, said. “But we knew if Challace wanted to make football and coaching his career, then we knew this was a great opportunity and we knew he needed to get out of Memphis to do that.”

A longtime friend of then-President Ronald E. Carrier and newly hired Athletic Director Dean Ehlers, Challace started recruiting as soon as he got to the campus. His poll of male students? A little under 2,000.

“I got into the line of people signing up for classes and everything and I would talk to the men and I would tell them that we were starting a football program,” Challace said.

He recruited over 60 men and held an interest meeting later in the week on the third floor of Godwin Hall. After going over his expectations of exceptional grades, practices two times a day and early-morning workouts, he told the men to travel downstairs to get their equipment. When McMillin reached the first floor to meet them, less than a few dozen remained. 

A year later, the day had come for Madison College. Approximately 30 young men would take to Harrisonburg High School’s field as the never-before-seen football Dukes. 

But with storms in the area, the high school did not allow the team and the Rams of Shepherd University to play on that Oct. 7 afternoon.

So, Challace came up with a plan B. They would play on the field across from the bookstore back on JMU’s campus.

“We had to put down the lines and put up the goal posts and that’s what I was doing the morning before we played in the afternoon,” Challace said while laughing. “That was crazy.”

The Dukes went 0-4 in their opening season and stayed at the junior varsity level in 1973 and 1974. Then in 1975, they had a winning varsity season.

McMillin held the reins of the team for 12 years, coaching national championship caliber players and creating lifelong relationships doing so.

 “Our relationship has been forged through fire,” Haley said. “I walked on campus with no purpose and no dreams. I can still hear him telling my mom that I ‘will graduate college. I promise you that.’”

For Haley specifically, Challace was more than just a coach.

“He became my second dad,” Haley said. “He showed me a better way to live and how to be a man of my word. He cared about me and the promises he made to my family.”

Challace went on to start two more teams, men’s track and field and men’s cross country. He also created the sports psychology program.

Now, over 40 years later, the JMU Athletic Hall of Fame inductee, 77-year-old Coach McMillin, still limps around practices, no matter the weather conditions, cheering on the current athletes and putting smiles on the players’ faces.

“They get to know me… we do fist bumps all the time.” Coach McMillin said while grinning ear to ear.