SOFTBALL 2004: And Then There Were Four

Ten little softball players took to the field with glee.

Seven left the team for good and then there were three.

Make that four, with Monica Montijo ’03-’04, but after leaving the team twice before, her return this year was anything but certain.

The Class of 2004 began as a swell of 10, but gradually, injuries, pre-med aspirations, theses and burn-out took their tolls, thinning the senior ranks. Rachel Goldberg and co-captains Kara Brotemarkle and Sara Williamson were all that remained of the players of their graduating year until Montijo—who had been a catcher until starting in the outfield this season—rejoined the team.

After losing so many teammates, the seniors questioned the risk of letting the 23-year-old back onto the team when she already had two strikes against her.

“They’re concerned because Monica has such a big presence,” Harvard coach Jenny Allard said. “She’s very upbeat and very energetic—so to take that energy away, it’s a hard adjustment for the team. They didn’t know if it was in the best interest of the team to give her that chance.”

Monica had, however, taken her time off with the team in mind. After a family tragedy and injury stymied her focus, Monica felt that a respite was the appropriate course.

“The reason I didn’t play for two years is that I just have so much respect for [Allard] that if I wasn’t going to be there 110 percent, I wasn’t going to do it,” Montijo said. “I just felt like that wasn’t right.”

Although this is only her third spring playing softball for the Crimson, Montijo has played in five fall sessions—or tried to.

In November of 2001, what would have been Montijo’s junior year, Monica had surgery to treat shoulder subluxation. Although she had practiced with the team through the fall, Montijo decided to take the semester off from Harvard entirely, and then withdrew for the rest of the year.

The following fall, the returned junior found herself unable to throw the ball.

“I just wasn’t ready,” Montijo said. “So I just did what I thought was the best thing for the team.”

Montijo is no exception to the rule— Goldberg actually also left the team for a few days due to knee injury, but reversed her decision days later. Letting players back onto the team is not new, so when Monica wanted to join the team again this year, Allard allowed her back.

“If you leave the team in good standing—you don’t break any team rules, you don’t alienate anyone—you can come back to the team,” Allard said. “Monica hadn’t done anything wrong.” But the captains expressed concern about Montijo quitting. “The one thing she hadn’t done to them was establish that she was credible,” Allard added. “Sara and Kara didn’t want to be in the situation in two and a half months of her quitting.”

After having participated in two major road trips and a season of fall workouts, Monica is well on her way to validating Allard’s decision to her teammates.

“We talked to her about it and asked…we just wanted to be sure that she was serious,” Brotemarkle said. “She affirmed that she was and proved herself throughout the fall. Most people understood she had had a rough two years and that she really wanted to be on the team.”

It’s difficult to doubt Montijo’s passion for the game or for her team when she’s playing—she’s the talker you can hear cheering from across the field. And after all, if 300 stitches couldn’t keep her out of the game for longer than two and a half weeks, what would?

During Monica’s sophomore year, Harvard played Berkeley in the Crimson’s first tournament of the season. It was also the first—and only—time Montijo’s family saw her play.

“I get put in to catch,” Monica recounted. “Runner on third base, one out, ground ball to the third baseman, runner on third comes home. I have the ball, I’m waiting for this girl. She slides into me late because there was a bat right there.”

Montijo’s leg was split open, resulting in 300 stitches later at the hospital. Her family’s presence was actually fortuitous in that Monica’s mother is an emergency room nurse.

“It was actually very calming to have her there. She ran the show,” Montijo said.

Although that may have been her family’s only chance to see its eldest daughter in a Harvard uniform, it will certainly not be the last time they will see Montijo on the softball field.

After graduating this June, Monica will return to her home town of Tucson, Arizona, where she will teach math and coach softball at a local middle school—though not that of her siblings.

“I’m going to be in a low-end community,” Montijo said. “I’ll be on the south side where all the Mexicans are, we live more where the better neighborhoods, better schools are. Tucson’s very segregated like that.”

It is the beginning of Montijo’s 10-year plan of living with her mother, brother and sister while teaching. Home was also Monica’s destination when she took a year off from Harvard. She spent that time helping to coach her sister’s All-Star Bobby Sox team and sold vacuums for a few months before returning to Cambridge for the summer.

“I’ll live with my mom and help her—be second in command,” Montijo said. “I want them to be able to have all the opportunities I had. I’ll be another driver, give them money, so they can do what they need to do. They’re the greatest in the whole world.”

On her way to a coaching career of her own, Montijo has taken pleasure in learning from Allard and assistant coach Terri Teller. In addition to watching her coaches handle changes in momentum and getting players back on track, Monica has seen in her own experience that coaches can impart life lessons too.

“The thing I’ve really learned from [Allard]…you just have to be tough,” Montijo said. “Sometimes you aren’t going to be able to tell a player what they want to hear in every given situation, but it’s what they need to hear.”

Montijo has often sat in that hot seat with Allard, including times last fall when Allard intimated that she hadn’t thought that Monica would last past the fall, but that Montijo had to finish the season if she began it.

And, in spite of concerns and even some expectations, Montijo is still with the Crimson for her final spring.

She’s still the energized open player who asks people what they think and smiles when they tell her.

Before the team left for Florida, Montijo had been hitless in her seven at-bats in Illinois. She turned to Cecily Gordon and, as usual, asked her what she thought.

“She was like, ‘you lead with your hips,’” Montijo laughed. “Every since she said that I completely transformed myself. It helped me to center my energy and my focus in my hips. I was just like, ‘Cecile, you’re amazing.’”

Of the sparse seniors, Montijo has taken the most tortuous path, but she’s ended up in the same place as Goldberg, Brotemarkle and Williamson—excited about playing their last season.

“I think this is the best Harvard team I’ve ever played on,” Montijo said.

If this is the case, then maybe Montijo will make another appearance in the NCAA tournament like she did in 2000 on Harvard’s last Ivy Championship team.

Watching this year’s team on the field, it is evident they are having a good time. For Brotemarkle, it’s always been good enough to remain on the team while others withdrew along the way.

“It’s a sense of completing what we started,” she said.

It’s almost complete.

—Staff writer Jessica T. Lee can be reached at lee45@fas.harvard.edu.