Monmouthiana

MONMOUTHIANA

THE PRINCE OF MONMOUTH ATHLETICS

After a Stellar Playing Career, Walter McMillan ’07 Devoted His Life to Inspiring Young Athletes

Walter McMillan

By WILLIAM URBAN

Emeritus Professor of History

The sports section of the 1908 Ravelings was dedicated to “The Prince of Monmouth College Athletics,” Walter Wilson McMillan, captain of the championship football teams of 1905 and 1906, the basketball team of 1905, and the baseball teams of 1904, 1905 and 1907. Not bad for a 5-9, 145-pound athlete from Biggsville, Ill.

Born in 1882 and known as “Pete,” McMillan was the son of a farmer and Civil Emeritus Professor War veteran. In 1902, of History he enrolled at Monmouth College, where he quickly became an all-around man, joining the Eccritean literary society, managing the basketball team and playing baseball. He was a math major—under the demanding eye of Alice Winbigler, who tolerated no slouches. In 1907, he played the minor role of Shylock’s clown in The Merchant of Venice. Otherwise, athletics and the ultra-secret Phi Kappa Pi fraternity allowed him little time for the oratorical, theatrical and musical events that were important for so many students.

The 1903 football seasson started off against national powerhouse University of Chicago, coached by the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg. Undoubtedly, the “Red and White” expected something like the 24-0 defeat of 1902, but came home on the wrong side of 108-0! There was quite a rebound that season, however, with Monmouth finishing 5-4-1. “Pete” played left halfback on the single-wing formation, everyone playing both offense and defense, with the captain calling all the signals.

Football was rough before the 1906 reforms that allowed the forward pass, and serious injuries were common. Opponents were a mixture of high school teams, colleges, community squads and major universities. High school students were often older and more accustomed to hard labor, colleges were all very small, and universities were not yet sports factories—except for Chicago, Michigan and the military academies.

The 1904 season (3-3-3) was only a warmup for the championship seasons of 1905 (10-1) and 1906 (8-0) under Coach Cliff Bell—in 1905 losing only to the University of Iowa. The 1907 Ravelings reported the 1905 football team was “the smoothest going, swiftest, most perfectly balanced western football team outside of the big nines.”

Coach Bell wrote of McMillan in the 1908 Ravelings that “his tackling has been perfect” and his running good. The editor commented that the backfield “for speed and ability outclassed any team we met” and that “the men owe so much to their captain, Walter McMillan, who proved himself a leader worthy of the team.” Only one team scored against the splendid 1906 defense, and that in the closing minutes on a blocked kick.

McMillan played baseball five seasons, being captain in 1904 and being moved from third base to pitcher in 1907. He was left guard at basketball 1903-06, with a team record of 26-19. Following graduation, he played professional baseball for a short time—but in an era when salaries were low and owners overbearing, it was not an attractive career. In 1908, he entered Rush Medical College in Chicago, but did not graduate.

In 1910, McMillan married Mary Ethel Sensemen (class of 1907 and editor of the Ravelings), then teaching school in Alexis, Ill. The event was front page news: the headline of the Monmouth Review read, “Claims Bride at Home Wedding. Ceremony Simple but Impressive.”

Presided over by the minister of the First Presbyterian Church, with the assistance of President T.H. McMichael, the ceremony included 75 guests from Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Ohio and Canada. They were crowded into the parlor of the bride’s parents’ Monmouth residence, decorat- ed in the green and gold colors of her Zeta sorority, and they later feasted on a three-course wedding supper. The reporter noted that she had been a member of the Monmouth Country Club and “prominent in the younger society set for years.” He had obviously been courting her since graduation and possibly returned to Monmouth to pursue her.

Walter had come back to Monmouth in the fall of 1910— he was head linesman at the William and Vashti game in October and field judge of the Beloit game. It had not been a pretty season. Although the team played over its head to hold Missouri to 9-0, the injuries were so extensive that subsequent games saw few scores except those run up by opponents. However, he had purchased Ye College Inn, an ambitious restaurant at 207 E. Broadway, and had a busy social life at the country club, with “the younger society set” and “the college crowd.” After a honeymoon in Chicago, they lived briefly in a Monmouth rooming house before moving in with her parents until 1913.

McMillan’s return to Monmouth College as baseball coach in the spring of 1911 allowed Coach Archie Hahn to concentrate on his specialty (track), but it was a very different campus from the one he had left in June 1907. Old Main was gone—burned in the fall of 1907. In its place stood Wallace Hall, flanked by two new buildings, Carnegie Library and McMichael Science Hall. Only the athletic fields were familiar —a large fenced area on South 11th Street, with crude bleachers for fans who did not want to stand along the sidelines. Since 1908, the old gym (later the Little Theatre) had boasted an elevated corrugated rubber linoleum track—16 laps to the mile.

Football had also changed. New rules in 1910 had traditonalists moaning that the game was “listless and uninteresting.” Flying tackles were outlawed, and interlocking blocking, too, making drop kicks harder, but there was a new ball more suited for passing, and a punt was no longer a free ball for either team. The game was divided into quarters, and any player who left the field could not return until the next quarter.

McMillan’s 1911 football team had difficulty scoring, falling to Northwestern and traditional rivals Beloit, Millikin and Lake Forest. He had no chance at Millikin, having left many injured players at home, but a victory over Knox would have saved the season. However, on the day of the game there was a cloudburst, leaving the field covered by more than four inches of water, then an icy wind blew in. The game had to be canceled, and when Knox absolutely refused to reschedule the contest, the season ended 4-4. He said of his team, “I have never had experience with a gamer bunch, and from first to last I saw no indication of a ‘quitter’ among them.”

He must have impressed opposing coaches—they elected him vice president of the College Athletic Conference of the Midwest, which met at Lake Forest in October.

In 1912, McMillan handed out 25 uniforms, but only three lettermen put them on. The first game was lost 40-0 to William & Vashti; two close losses—Knox (14-13) and Millikin (16-15)—were followed by scoreless contests to end the season at 2-6. His captains were Charles McMillan (no relation) and Harry “Bill” Ghormley—an impressive looking right guard who was hired to coach the team from 1913 through 1915 (ending with a 16-5-4 record).

The Millikin game had seemingly ended with Monmouth ahead, but the opposing coach stormed onto the field to object to the clock; while his discussion with the referees proceeded, Millikin lined up and threw “a sensational forward pass” for 50 yards and a touchdown; the referees counted up the score and added three useless minutes to the clock. “Two things were responsible for defeat in nearly every contest,” McMillan said after the season. “Lack of weight and poor tackling. The first is a misfortune but the second is a crime.”

The basketball record for these years was better—16-11— though marred by a late-season slump in 1913 of four straight lopsided losses on a long road trip following the Armoury Institute game in which one player was knocked unconscious and several injured; since the 1909-10 team had been champions of Illinois, many had hoped for a repeat.

The baseball seasons that went 21-23 included a memorable 14-inning, 3-2 loss to Waseda University of Japan.

In 1913, Walter and Ethel moved to Hibbing, Minn., where in a 34-year career of coaching high school football, basketball and track—and serving as athletic director for 13 years—he instilled “the ideals of sportsmanship and fairplay.”

His 1921 basketball team won the state championship— the only such achievement in the school’s history. This helped him persuade the commujnity in 1922 to build a complex of three gyms, an indoor track and swimming pool, with an adjoining football field. Being almost in Canada, Hibbing has a long winter!

When “Mac’s” portrait was added to the school’s Wall of Fame, it was noted that “he served as mentor and friend to his athletes and staff with a radiant smile and kind words that ‘fixed the standard’ for compassion, and ‘shaped the destiny’ of generations of Hibbing athletes.”

In 1916, Walter and Ethel had a son, Robert Sensman McMillan, who would found an international architectural firm. Ethel died in 1945 and Walter died in 1950.

It had been a fine life for a man of whom his coach, O. C. Bell, had said: “Captain McMillan is without question the greatest all-around athlete that Monmouth College has ever had.”