{"id":8082,"date":"2020-06-27T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-27T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maderatribustg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=8082"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:27:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:27:18","slug":"former-stallion-graduates-with-honors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/former-stallion-graduates-with-honors\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Stallion graduates with honors"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Madera South Stallions cross country and track standout Jonnie Montano continued to uphold the recruiting line to Fresno Pacific University and gradauted from the college this year.<\/p>

Montano, who was a four-year CIF State Championship Cross Country participant and 2016 graduate, ran for two years at Fresno Pacific before hanging up her spikes to pursue her education.<\/p>

By being able to pack more than 20 units a semester, Montano achieved her goal of graduating from FPU in four years. Not only that, Montano graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in liberal studies with an emphasis in conflict and peacemaking.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m really excited about that,\u201d she said. \u201cMy goal is to go into administration. I thought emphasizing in something like that would benefit me more than math or literature. It\u2019s not a typical emphasis to do. I had to take a few courses and I\u2019m a certified mediator.\u201d<\/p>

With the social injustice platform in today\u2019s environment, it plays right into what Montano was going to school for.<\/p>

\u201cI feel like some of the things going on is right up my alley,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re trained in a specific study. You learn about specific struggles. I had to take a cultural studies class and mediation class to work with individuals. I focused on restorative justice. Instead of getting inmates into the system, you work on finding ways to mediate between the victim and criminal. You settle conflicts and it\u2019s relevant to what is going on right now.\u201d<\/p>

Montano wants to begin teaching elementary school before heading to administration. While teaching, she said she will also volunteer to help start Matilda Torres High School\u2019s cross country team with a former teammate.<\/p>

\u201cI want to go into teaching elementary school,\u201d she said. \u201cSince I wasn\u2019t able to take the CSET and CBEST, all my credentials are conditional. I am applying in the spring to Fresno State and I want to do my credential program there. I\u2019m planning to attend in spring. I want to teach for a couple of years. One of my Fresno Pacific teammates is coaching at Matilda Torres so I plan on helping him there.\u201d<\/p>

New Torres head coach Connor Nolan reached out to Montano to see if she had any interest in helping out.<\/p>

\u201cHe ran at Clovis North and ran at Fresno Pacific,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was my captain when I was at Fresno Pacific. He reached out to me because I had a lot of ties. I was happy to help out. I\u2019m subbing and working two jobs so I can\u2019t commit to be an official coach, but I\u2019ll be out there volunteering whenever I can. Eventually, this opportunity with Torres, I feel I have been called to be a coach. I had my time as an athlete.\u201d<\/p>

While graduated, Montano still doesn\u2019t have the graduated \u2018feeling,\u2019 although she is way less busy than she was while going to school.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s a big adjustment to being so busy to now I feel like I have so much free time,\u201d he said. \u201cThings are going good. Because of the COVID-stuff, we\u2019re not having a ceremony until December. It feels like I\u2019m done, but not really done. Once the ceremony happens, I think I\u2019ll feel like I\u2019m done. Even my diploma hasn\u2019t come in yet, so it doesn\u2019t feel like a reality, yet.\u201d<\/p>

Montano, a 2016 graduate from Madera South, couldn\u2019t think of where she would be without cross country and track.<\/p>

\u201cI was always academically involved in the school,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt sports was the backbone of the opportunities I got. I\u2019m also a first generation college grad. I feel like I would have struggled a lot more if I didn\u2019t have that athletic background. Definitely, sports has brought me to my success.<\/p>

\u201cIt also gave me a lot of skills I wouldn\u2019t have had. Just the discipline of showing up to practice, being at races all day long and make a lot of sacrifices along the way. I feel like a lot of the leadership skills I gained while I was running is coming back now that I am going into teach. It\u2019s skills I learned while I was on the team.\u201d<\/p>

Montano says she can point to almost the exact time where her life changed from one track to another and it happened during her freshman year.<\/p>

\u201cI was just this freshman girl that had a friend try out for the cross country team and I went with her,\u201d she said. \u201cCoach (Rich) Parris said I had a talent for this. I was a cheerleader my freshman year. Parris said I was going to do big things. I made the varsity team after my first race. He took me to an overnight race, the Woodbridge. Me and Cristal (Rivera) ended up making it to state my freshman year so I was there with my senior captain. I thought, okay, I am going to pursue this. It\u2019s crazy that it was something to do as fun, it turns out to be a four-year state qualifier, earning a scholarship and becoming a first generation college graduate. I know all of that was because of that freshman decision to join the team. It\u2019s really amazing to look at that. It changed my whole life.\u201d<\/p>

After Madera South, Montano signed a National Letter of Intent to Fresno Pacific University to continue the pipeline of Madera South runners to the school, which included Benny Madrigal before her and Seth Garcia and Veronica Ortega most recently.<\/p>

\u201cI knew there was a lot of Madera kids that went there,\u201d she said. \u201cThere was a personal thing I felt that I wanted to represent Madera the way I wanted to. It wasn\u2019t just athletically. My coach told me that the athletes he gets from Madera are leaders, hard working and fulfill those leadership roles even though they weren\u2019t named captain. Immediately, when I came in as a freshman, he put me in some of those leadership roles like being in charge of tutoring, in charge of making sure the freshmen made it to practice on time. He did that because he knew the type of athlete he got from Madera from people he had from the past.\u201d<\/p>

That run of Madera South runners continued this year with the commitment from Luis Ortega, Veronica Ortega\u2019s brother.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty awesome to continue that tradition,\u201d she said. \u201cI was really excited Veronica Ortega wanted to go there. She is a huge inspiration to me even though she was younger than me. I\u2019ve always looked up to her because she\u2019s a hard worker. Her brother is going there, too. That is so exciting. I plan to go and be involved. It really is a Madera pride to see those athletes going there.\u201d<\/p>

Initially Montano went to FPU to become a pharmacist. However, she didn\u2019t feel like that\u2019s what she wanted during her sophomore year.<\/p>

\u201cI was going into my upper-division classes and I felt like this wasn\u2019t what I wanted to do,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like it was calling me. I had taken an intro to liberal studies class and I immediately fell in love with it. So, it was junior year to change to liberal studies. It was so hard because I was so behind. I was taking 24 units and 21 units because I was set on graduating in 2020. I was glad to say I graduated on time even though I switched my major.\u201d<\/p>

Montano hung up her spikes after her junior cross country season to concentrate on her academics.<\/p>

\u201cI wasn\u2019t in love with it the way I used to be,\u201d she said. \u201cIt felt more like a chore. I love my teammates and I felt like I was put into position to where I wasn\u2019t into the positive leadership role I wanted to be. I switched my major and set on graduating on time. I also started working and taking on a lot of different things like joining an honor society. I was doing a lot of workshops for students and different things on campus. I felt like that\u2019s where I was called to be. I also started to be a volunteer for Madera Unified. I was working with kindergarten class and felt like this was where I wanted to be.\u201d<\/p>

Montano doesn\u2019t regret her decisions. She was still close friends to a number of girls on the team and even lived in a house with a few of them.<\/p>

\u201cEven though I wasn\u2019t on the team, I still had that connection,\u201d she said. \u201cI saw it from a different perspective like on their senior night. It was sad to see I wasn\u2019t there with them on the track or on the course. I felt I made the right decision for me.\u201d<\/p>

Now, Montano said, it\u2019s time for her to give back to the community that has supported her throughout her athletics career at Madera South and at Fresno Pacific.<\/p>

\u201cIt was time for me to move on and impact other peoples\u2019 lives,\u201d she said. \u201cI learned all these skills and got these opportunities. I will always be grateful for them. I had a serious talk with my coach and told him my heart wasn\u2019t in it. I was one of the higher scholarship recipients on the team and I felt selfish for not utilizing it. I felt he could have used it to bring in someone that would have been more focused. He said he was sad and I was going to be captain next year. He said he was glad I was honest. He contacted me to help out with track and cross country races. We still have that relationship. He said I will always be a Sunbird. It was a positive thing. I\u2019ve always been someone that finishes what I start. But, I felt it was just time for me to move on.<\/p>

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have any of the opportunities I had if it wasn\u2019t for running and Madera,\u201d she said.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Madera South Stallions cross country and track standout Jonnie Montano continued to uphold the recruiting line to Fresno Pacific University and gradauted from the college this year. Montano, who was a four-year CIF State Championship Cross Country participant and 2016 graduate, ran for two years at Fresno Pacific before hanging up her spikes to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":28582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-8082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-schools"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maderatribune.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}