CHARLOTTE — When the people who have coached Tetairoa McMillan talk about his talent, they start with the physical gifts — the size, the speed, the length. But they also inevitably get to a competitiveness that he's shown, often when it's needed the most.

Matt Marrujo coached him at Servite High School in Anaheim, Calif., and he remembers a playoff contest against Huntington Beach. Seeing McMillan from the moment he arrived on campus, he knew something special was in store.

"When we were playing the best opponents or the best teams or critical moments, you really saw a difference in how he approached it," Marrujo said. "And he just really went to another level on how he competed. He was not—and isn't—someone who is super flashy or talks a lot. There's just a level of focus and drive that you kind of see in his eyes, see in his body, in his body language.

"I remember really vividly, his junior year. We were getting ready for a big playoff match. When he walked to the gym, you could just tell he was locked in. He had his headphones on, just a look in his eyes and you're like, OK, this guy's locked in. And he ended up tying our program's record for kills. He was unbelievable in that match."

Wait, what? Gym? That's not where you play football. Kills? That's not a football stat.

That's right, because for the Panthers' newest wide receiver, sports were a year-round thing, and he wasn't not going to limit his chances to compete.

Marrujo coached McMillan in volleyball for three seasons in high school before he graduated early and went to Arizona to concentrate on football. And to hear McMillan tell it now, that's as important as part of the reason he became a top-10 pick two weeks ago.

"It was super important," McMillan said as he took his first lap around the football stadium which will become his new home. "Obviously, now we're in a day and age when they start playing sports seriously at an early age. When I was growing up, we tried to play as much sports as possible, just trying to get out the house, just try to stay out of trouble, just have fun, just doing stuff.

"I feel like it was definitely important for me just to venture off into different sports, with no future in mind, really just having fun, right?"

The refusal to concentrate on just football, no matter how good he was at it, was central to his upbringing. McMillan said that only doing one thing was never really an option with his parents, so he did as much as he could.

"Just being able to take different skills from other sports and translate them to the field, it's just like adding new clubs to my golf bag, you know? That's how I look at it.

"It's like, man, anything I can learn, any new talents, any new skills that I can learn, is only going to make me a much better football player. And, you know what, that's what I did."

He tried most of them at some point, but he had a special gift for volleyball. When he was an eighth-grader, he played on a national championship club team at the nearby Orange County Volleyball Club.

And he's obviously a pretty good football player, able to walk into the NFL, dreaming of following in the footsteps of a guy like Larry Fitzgerald. But when he was younger, he also modeled parts of his other game off players like TJ DeFalco and Micah Ma'a, members of the US men's national volleyball team. They might not be household names on this coast, but when McMillan was growing up, they were among the stars he idolized.

In that regard, he'll fit in well here, as he stood steps away from a bust of Julius Peppers in the lobby of Bank of America Stadium, for the Hall of Honor defensive end who played football and basketball at UNC. And like Peppers, he had the chance to play multiple sports in college.

When asked who had shown the most interest at the time, he very casually replied: "You know, UCLA, USC, Stanford, or Hawaii, they were the ones who showed interest as far as me playing two sports in college. I had a few chances to play in college, but ultimately, I just decided to put all my eggs in one basket and hang my volleyball shoes up."

But prior to that point, those volleyball shoes had plenty of lift.

Marrujo remembered watching McMillan during that club championship season and thinking he'd be a plus for the Servite High program. Many of the same traits that made him a first-round receiver, such as the ability to elevate and high-point balls, the verticality, also served him well during his football offseason.

"He has a really good arm; he can hit the ball pretty hard," Marrujo said. "He loved to give the football coaches a hard time that he could be the emergency quarterback because he does have a cannon of an arm. That's something you can't really teach. Kind of like a baseball player, you can't teach that arm. So that definitely made him special when you combine that with just his ability to get in the air, really good timing and getting to the contact point.

There are some really, really natural abilities there that make him a pretty special volleyball player."

And if you're on that track, you could eventually play professionally overseas, but the peak for American stars remains the Olympic team.

And that was something that might have been within McMillan's substantial reach, if he had played it more than a few months at a time.

"He could have been really good," Marrujo said. "His athleticism and everything that makes him a great football player translates over to volleyball. Had he decided that's a sport he wanted to pursue, he very easily could have been a volleyball player, had a great career, and potentially be in the USA gym right now. I'd say he could be in the pipeline. I don't want to take away from others, but just some of the things he did, if he had really focused on volleyball, I think he had a shot.

"Because essentially, he didn't touch a ball unless it was our season. He didn't do a ton of off-season training. He'd pick it up in February and play until we were done in May, and then we'd say 'See you next February.' So, what he was able to accomplish with such a little amount of work was pretty special. It would have been cool in an alternate reality to see what he could have done, playing volleyball 11 or 12 months a year."

But many high schools have those kinds of natural athletes, the guys who are good at anything, who can run fast and jump high and can turn their wrists over in a way that allows them to swing a baseball bat or a driver with equal aptitude.

Having that talent is one thing. Applying it is another, and Marrujo said that after coaching McMillan for three seasons of high school volleyball, he was always impressed by his grasp of a game he played as a part-time hobby.

"I think even the way he would ask questions and interact with coaches, right?" Marrjo said. "Any time he was in his competition mode, he just asked very, very specific, very direct questions. Like, hey, we need to solve this problem, all right? What do you see here? To me, that's when it's like, oh wow. The game is really slow for him to the point where he can ask questions like, hey, I saw this; what should I do in that situation? Or how do I respond well to that? I think that ability to have the game slow down so that you can process and ask questions and see things is just what separates professional athletes from high school athletes or college athletes.

"There's a presence, that he's able to get to like a flow-state that he gets to more often than than others. And when he's in it, it's pretty special watching, whether it's on the football field, playing basketball or playing volleyball."

And there were always other sports.

The first was baseball, which he picked up when he was 5.

"If you ask my mom, she'll tell you that I was a better baseball player than I was a football player," McMillan said with a laugh.

But that wasn't the extent of it, as he played basketball, soccer, pretty much anything he could.

"The goal was to just be a well-rounded athlete," he said.

Of course, that has a practical application to his new day job.

Panthers offensive coordinator Brad Idzik's eyes lit up when he was asked about McMillan's volleyball background because he loves it when he gets guys who have played more than just football.

"There's a lot to like when you learn about your body; when you stress it in different arenas," Idzik said. "When you finish a football season, or you finish a basketball season, and you jump into baseball or track, you're usually out of shape for that sport; your body's not ready to go. And you learn something about yourself as far as body control and biomechanics.

"With everything he's played, I mean, the volleyball shows up. When you watch the way he raises up and goes and gets the ball, it's the explosion. But also watching him at the top of routes; for a 6-4 guy to be able to reduce and to break down at the top of routes. The change of direction, the foot speed that he has to adjust and dig out a ball like you would have to do in volleyball, he has such great body control for a 6-4 guy.

"It's rare and he's got the twitch to go along with it. You can just picture a guy like that being in the sand or being on the court trying to dig out a ball that's just out of his reach, and he's got the twitch to go get it."

And now that he brings that to football, the same lessons apply.

"It's the same thing when you're trying to avoid a DB or finish the top of your route," Idzik said. "It's really cool to see. He's compact. Everybody gives the Mike Evans comparison, when you watch the foot quickness that Mike had as a basketball player, but those similar features of like being able to control your body at length, and then applying to the football field, I don't think everybody does it they do. They're special that way."

But in addition to the physical challenges, there's also the sheer element of competition. A new sport is a new challenge. And there's a postseason for the best teams in each season, so more chances to experience playoff pressure.

And in an era when the best young players are often funneled into doing just one thing, whether it's 7-on-7 football in the spring, travel baseball in the fall, or AAU basketball year-round, the ability to do a little bit of everything can be rare.

"I think playing multiple sports is something that's being undervalued," his high school volleyball coach said. "And I know from him and his family they really valued it and saw both physical benefits from it, of the cross training and doing different things, but also the mental, right?

"It allowed him to compete in different ways and get different experiences. I think, overall, that's made him the athlete he is today. Unfortunately, there's pressure from others to specialize so soon. But he was talented enough to not succumb to those pressures because he loved competing. He loved playing different sports and getting those experiences."

It also helped that McMillan was so good at most of them. Marrujo laughed and said that his former player was also an excellent singer, which he remembered when he was in Hawaii after the draft for the McMillan family thank-you party.

"Of course, he has a great voice, too; we were joking about that. The kid's just good at everything," Marrujo said. "When he was a freshman, we did a team retreat, we took all the guys bowling, and he's sitting there bowling like a 160, 170. And you have all these senior kids who are just meeting him for the first time, going, 'Who the hell is this kid?'

"But the thing that makes him so cool to me is his humility, right? He definitely is gifted, he's definitely talented, but he's so humble, he's so kind, and unless you're competing against him, he's very go-with-the-flow. And that humility just shows. So, I haven't found what he's not good at yet, but, you know, I'm sure there's something."

McMillan laughed when asked for examples. There's a lot of stuff he's not good at, he said (there's that humility). But when asked to identify a few examples, it took a minute.

"Roller skating, maybe?" he began. "No, actually, I'm OK at that. Ice skating, I'm actually bad at that. I can roller skate, but ice skating, no, sir. First time I went, I fell one time, hit my chin, got a scar, from here to there.

"That's one sport I feel like I cannot play, is ice hockey."

The good news is, there wasn't a lot of demand for it in Southern California, and he's found another warm-weather home where it's less likely to come up.

But if you believe the people who've watched him the longest, it would only be a matter of time, practice, and the chance to compete.