Millet Tries to Be Best in Her Field : Track: The UCLA junior, who won NCAA championships in the discus and shot put, is setting Olympic-size goals for herself.

The pleasant demeanor of UCLA’s Tracie Millet makes it difficult to believe at first what her coach, Art Venegas, says about her.

Venegas, weight events coach for the Bruin men’s and women’s track and field teams, said that Millet, who recently won NCAA championships in the shot put and the discus, is “the meanest athlete” he has ever coached.

To set the record straight, Millet, a junior from the state of Washington, is not fond of kicking small dogs or tearing the wings off flies. When Venegas says that she is mean, he is merely calling her a tough competitor.

“What sets her apart is her competitiveness,” said Venegas, who has been with the UCLA track and field team for nine years.

“I have seen so many athletes who just dazzle you in practice. They have their technique down, (have a good) attitude and (demonstrate) strength and training. They’re just perfect and ready to take on the world.

“But on the day of a competition, they just fold. They tighten the noose around their necks.

“Tracie is definitely a pressure performer. When she’s really mentally up, she is awesome. When a meet comes she is very fierce. She is very tough when a meet is on the line, and she dominated the NCAAs.”

Millet, who went to high school in Auburn, Wash., was awesome when she performed before family and friends this year at the Pacific 10 Conference championships in Seattle.

She set school records as she won the shot put with a throw of 53 feet, 9 3/4 inches and the discus with a toss of 190-2. Her mark in the discus was the second-best ever by a Pac-10 performer. Arizona State’s Carla Garrett had a 198-5 throw in 1989.

At the NCAA meet in Durham, N.C., she was not quite as awesome, but still dominated her competitors. In the discus, her mark of 183-9 was more than 18 feet farther than that of her nearest competitor, Rachel Lewis of Minnesota, who had a final toss of 165-5. After shot putter Christy Barrett of Indiana State took a second-round lead with a throw of 53-2 1/2, Millet edged her for the championship with a mark of 53-6 3/4.

Her two national titles were firsts for a UCLA woman at an NCAA meet. Evelyn Ashford won national championships as a Bruin sprinter in the 100- and 200-meter dashes in 1977, but that meet was under the auspices of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women. The championships were also firsts for Millet; she was third in the discus in her freshman and sophomore years.

Millet said that setting personal records in the shot and the discus before family and hometown fans at the Pac-10 meet in Seattle was “by far probably one of my best track experiences.” She said that, although she finished first in both events at the NCAAs, she did not approach that meet with the same fervor that she had in the conference meet.

She also said that her successful but long collegiate season made it “hard to get motivated” for last week’s USA/Mobil National Track and Field Championships, a qualifying meet for the Goodwill Games, which will be held in Seattle in July.

She qualified for the final in both the shot and discus in the USA meet at Cerritos College, but she finished far back in the field in both events and won’t be competing in the Goodwill Games. Connie Price of the Nike North Track Club won the discus at 191-6, and Millet, competing for the World Class Club, was eighth at 171-1. Price also won the shot put with a mark of 60-10 3/4 and Millet was ninth at 50-1 3/4.

Nevertheless, she had an excellent season, and her two NCAA titles will not be forgotten.

“We’ve had some excellent (women) athletes at UCLA, (including)--Flo Jo (Florence Griffith Joyner) and Jackie Joyner Kersee, but none of them won two individual NCAA titles,” Venegas said. “That’s a unique thing.”

Her setbacks at the USA meet won’t deter her from a goal of making the U.S. national team and competing in the 1992 Olympics at Barcelona.

Venegas said that Millet was “a little overmatched” at Cerritos College but that she has “an excellent chance of making the Olympics, particularly in the discus. She probably just has to keep her head focused and maybe put on a couple of extra pounds (on her 6-foot, 185-pound frame). She has an outside chance in the shot.”

He said that she will have to increase her range in the shot to about 60 feet, which still would not guarantee her a spot on the national team, and that she should make the team in the discus if she improves from her best mark of 190-2 to about 210 feet.

“She is an up-and-coming discus thrower, and I know the top girls are already noticing her presence,” he added.

Millet said that she has been able to put on the pounds that are necessary to weight throwers, but that she has had some difficulty turning the additional pounds into muscle.

She said that Venegas has been “on my case to gain weight and threatened to make me a distance runner.” She said that she drinks high-protein milkshakes to maintain her weight and lifts weights and runs to harden her body. But she said it requires constant effort to maintain that regimen.

Doing what is necessary to be a top weight thrower, including watching what she eats and getting enough sleep, doesn’t leave much time for studies or a social life, she said. But she is determined to stay with it and reach the Olympics.

She said her goal is to weigh about 185 but to look like 160. She said that she hopes to reduce her body fat to less than the 16% it measured in the fall of 1989, the last time she was tested.

Venegas said that no one wants to put on fat and that throwers have to be “athletic and lean. The only overweight person allowed on the program is me.”

Top-flight competitors have to work hard and make sacrifices, “but they gain things that other persons never aspire to,” he said. He said that Millet will be rewarded for her hard work when The Athletic Congress, the governing body of amateur track in the United States, sends her and other college throwers to compete this summer on a three-week tour of Europe.

Millet said that she might take a redshirt season at UCLA next year. She would use the year to work toward a goal of breaking the college records in the discus, shot and javelin the following season. She qualified for the NCAAs in the javelin, but she said that she didn’t compete in the event because she didn’t “want to risk the strain and stress on my body.”

She thinks that her chances of breaking the three college records after a redshirt year “are pretty good with Art’s coaching and understanding. All it’s going to take is a lot of work.

“I’m awkward, and I need a lot of coaching. But I have the potential. I’ve gone from not knowing to a better understanding of how to throw.”

Venegas might call her awkward, but he would only be kidding her. “Without a doubt, she’s the best (woman) thrower I’ve had at UCLA. . . She’s just scratching the surface of her talent.”