After devastating knee injury in soccer, Raymond Millero rises to the top in his first cross country season

By Theresa Juva Brown for DyeStat 

A year ago, Raymond Millero was homebound, recovering from surgery after suffering an excruciating knee injury during a soccer game.

“I was just on the couch and in a lot of pain,” recalled Millero, known by his middle name Blake. “I was always tired. I couldn’t stand up without feeling dizzy or weak.”

Lying on the couch, Millero had no idea that a year later he would not only leave soccer behind and compete in cross country for the first time, he would win a state cross country title and take aim at the national scene.

The 17-year-old senior at Faith Lutheran High School in Las Vegas, Nev., is set to run Saturday at the Foot Locker West Regional Cross Country Championships at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif.

The top 10 finishers in the championship race qualify for Foot Locker nationals Dec. 14 in San Diego, Calif.

“I’m stronger now than I was before, and it’s amazing,” Millero said.

In September 2018, Millero’s athletic life came to a painful halt in one unlucky moment on a soccer field.  Hit by another player, Millero, also a standout middle-distance runner in track, felt his right knee twist as he fell to the ground.

“He was not moving at all, and I knew right then he had hurt himself really bad,” recalled his father, Raymond Millero, who watched from the sidelines.

With the help of his teammates, Millero eventually limped off the field.

“I was a little nervous, and I knew there was something really wrong with my knee, and I wouldn’t be able to play soccer for a while,” recalled Millero, who at the time considered himself a soccer player first and then a track runner.

Not able to extend or bend his knee much, Millero saw an orthopedic surgeon and was diagnosed with a completely torn anterior cruciate ligament, (ACL), which helps stabilize the knee joint.

After undergoing knee surgery in November 2018, Millero, not used to lying around all day, began a long and frustrating recovery.

“At the beginning, he was very down,” his father said. “Sometimes he was good and very upbeat about his recovery, and other times he took a step back, and he didn’t feel as good.”

Still, Millero kept plugging away at physical therapy, slowly regaining movement and strength in his knee. He started walking on a treadmill. The walks turned into slow jogs. As he recovered, Millero also contemplated his athletic future. After talking with his father, Millero decided he wanted to focus solely on running, a difficult decision for an athlete who had been playing on elite-level soccer teams since he was 12. (Frequently moving for his father’s career in the U.S. Air Force, Millero competed on soccer teams across the country).

“I didn’t want to go through the surgery again or risk re-tearing (my ACL),” Millero said. Most importantly, he felt a growing passion for running.

Not a pushy, overzealous sports dad, Millero said he totally supported his son’s decision.

“I just wanted to him to be happy,” he said. “(Children) need to find their own way. Do your best is all I ask.”

With his knee fully healed and his doctor’s approval, Millero decided to run some races on the track last summer. In his first one, the 3,000 meters, things didn’t go smoothly.

“I noticed my endurance wasn’t the best,” he said. “After that competition, I was disappointed, and said, ‘It’s going to take me a while to get back to where I once was.’”

But, true to his determined attitude, Millero kept training, and by the end of the summer, his fitness had turned a corner.

Still, he was unsure how his first cross country season would unfold. In his first race, the Palo Verde Labor Day Classic, a 5-kilometer race in Las Vegas in August, he pleasantly surprised himself.

“My first race, people were joking, ‘Oh, Blake you are going to get first,’ and I would say no,” he recalled. “I set the bar low initially and then lo and behold, I won that race. I was pretty excited. I kept setting the bar higher and higher.”

By the time he got to the Nevada state cross country championships (Class 4A Division) on Nov. 9 in Reno, he knew he had a shot of placing in the top three. In the last half mile of the 5K, Millero broke away from the pack and won in 16:47.

“I was really surprised and ecstatic — I didn’t think I could pull it off,” he said. “There were a lot good runners in that race.”

As Millero’s fitness has improved, so has his confidence. With a boost from his state win, Millero wanted see how far he could take his cross country season, so he signed up for the Foot Locker regional meet.

“It’s going to be a very, very tough competition,” his father said, “but I never count him out.”