Nico Montañez walks through the courtyard at St. Augustine High School slowly making his way to Wing3.
He sits down in his dark khaki pants, white dress shirt and red sweater vest and smiles as he tries to think about the last time he got in trouble - for anything.
"The last time I got in trouble? I can't think of anything," he said.
How good does that feel?
"It's pretty sweet," Montañez says laughing. "I sometimes think what would have happened if I would have gone to a public school. Would I have made the same mistakes I was making? Or would I be a better person?
"I don't know. I can't tell. But, I think this was my best choice coming here."
A life-changer
When Montañez, now an 18-year-old senior at St. Augustine, enrolled as a freshman, he was "an angry kid with all these bottled up emotions."
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His mom, Katherine, had just gone through a divorce with Nico's stepfather, and Nico was having a hard time staying out of trouble.
"I just knew he was not going in the right direction," Katherine said. "I could sense something was wrong. I didn't know exactly what he was doing, but he wasn't making good choices."
Montañez showed up for his first day of school with the plan of playing football, a sport he had already been playing for four years.
Instead, cross country coach Al Buhl got a hold of Montañez before the first football practice and convinced him to come out for cross country instead.
"I didn't even know cross country existed," Montañez said.
But he gave it a shot.
Buhl's main message was the cross country team was the school's most competitive sport, and if Montañez wanted to win, cross country was the sport for him.
His freshman year, he followed the lead of two seniors, Matt Buhl and Joe Harro. He bugged his coach every day to let him run with the seniors and told him he didn't care if it killed him.
If he was going to run, he wanted to be the best.
"I bought into the program," Montañez said. "I don't know what it was. I don't know what happened. (Running) just changed my life.
"I saw the person I am then and the person I am now, and I've come so far. The biggest change is the people I've surrounded myself around."
Determined to succeed
Montañez has been a standout for St. Augustine both at cross country and track. As a freshman, he anchored the 3,200-meter relay team that won a state championship.
On the cross country trail, he won a sectional championship last season as a junior, and this year is eyeing a Division IV state title after finishing 15th last year.
He'll also try to win Saturday's Los Mezquites Invitational at Kennedy Park. He took sixth last year, and the senior has proven he can compete against the top competition, finishing second at this year's Sue Fletcher Invitational at Sierra Vista Buena. It was a race that featured runners from Canyon del Oro, Buena, Cienega and Sabino, among other big schools.
He runs seven days a week, including a 10- to 15-mile run every Sunday on what's supposed to be his day off, and he dreams of running in college for either Boise State or NAU.
"The sport has changed my life, and I want to keep running for as long as I can," Montañez said.
Man of the house
Montañez commutes more than an hour and a half to get to school every day.
He lives in Rio Rico with his mom and two younger brothers, Rene, 14, and Ricky, 11. His stepfather lives in Queen Creek and his biological father lives in Oregon.
His reason for going back and forth to Rio Rico every day rather than staying with his grandma in Tucson is simple.
"He wants to be there for his little brothers," Katherine said. "They really look up to him. They admire him. They wish they could be like him.
"He takes control of the household and takes control of them."
If you go
• What: 21st annual Los Mezquites Cross Country Invitational
• Who: 20 teams from across the state
• When: Saturday, varsity girls at 9:15 a.m.; varsity boys at 10 a.m.
• Where: Kennedy Park
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