Jesse has been the Head Coach for Boys Basketball at Norcross High School
for 11 years and has been a teacher and coach at Norcross for 19 years. He
spent 12 years in the Norcross High School Language Arts Department before
transitioning to Health & PE classes. During his time as head coach,
Norcross won two state titles (2011, 2013) and finished state runner-up in
2017 and 2018. He has a winning mark of better than 80% in Georgia’s
largest and toughest athletic classification. His Norcross teams
participate in showcases and invitationals across the nation. Jesse grew up
in a family of educators and knew early on that teaching and coaching was
something he wanted to do.
He spends about 335 days a year at Norcross working on the basketball
program, and during the season many of those days are over fourteen hours
long. Jesse is successful in part because he holds the players in his
program to a high standard and evolves the program from being “coach lead”
to “player lead”, empowering the team to make suggestions and approach
during games, and hold each other accountable. Coach McMillan has been
recognized in the Gwinnett Daily Post as showing “ a great ability to build
chemistry [among the players]”. His fondest moments and most satisfying
victories are Final Four and State Championship victories and memorable
playoff wins versus Pebblebrook (2017), McEachern (2018), and Grayson
(2019). Those games stand out because the team rose up against great odds
and competed at the highest level. He’s also a bit superstitious; he makes
sure to use his lucky pencil to fill out the scorebook at each game!
Coach McMillan, his wife Elizabeth, and two children (Elyse and Mason) are
long-time Norcross and Peachtree Corners residents. We thank them for
their support and sacrifice to make the Norcross basketball program the
best it can be!