On Mother’s Day, Kelsey Montano paid $18 to register for the Tucson 5000. She was given bib No. 220 and was soon lost in a crowd of about 1,000 runners at Reid Park.
There is no record of how many mothers ran in the 5K race that day, but 22-year-old Kelsey Montano was surely the only one who had been an All-American.
“It was kind of a secret little comeback,” Pima College track and cross country coach Greg Wenneborg remembers. “I told Kelsey, ‘If you break 20 minutes today, I’m going to put you back on scholarship and we’ll do this all over again.’”
Kelsey’s cheering section had grown since she finished fifth in the steeplechase at the 2012 NJCAA national championships in Levelland, Texas, although it’s more accurate to say that little Isabel was something of a witness to the Texas performance, too.
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Kelsey was five weeks pregnant with “Isa” that day in Levelland.
As hundreds of runners neared the finish line on Mother’s Day, Wenneborg and Montano made eye contact. She was back. Montano finished in 20 minutes 3 seconds, which was close enough to 20-flat. Good to his word, Wenneborg put Isa’s mom on scholarship and then the work really began.
Kelsey, who chose not to marry Isa’s father, kept her job at a day care center, working mostly 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. She took classes online and studied during her lunch hour and at night, after Isa went to bed. Running? Kelsey would sometimes run 6 or 8 miles in the morning in addition to her daily workouts with the PCC cross country team.
And it wasn’t just fun or a getaway with the girls. Wenneborg’s women’s cross country team is really good. They would finish sixth at the NJCAA finals last month. Their top finisher? Super Mom, Kelsey Montano, was 17th of 304 runners who qualified for the championship race.
“Kelsey’s always been an active girl, but we were shocked at how much she put into running this time around,” says her father, Richard Montano, a Pima College counselor. “She’d get up at 5 a.m. and go running around the neighborhood for an hour. She was determined to be more than just another runner.”
Two weeks after the NJCAA finals, on Thanksgiving morning, Kelsey was one of 864 women in the Cross Country Classic at Reid Park. She finished second. This time she shattered Wenneborg’s 20-minute barrier, finishing in 19:30.
It was her way of showing that her running career did not end in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
“It’s disappointing I don’t have another season at Pima because I wasn’t as serious as I could’ve been as a freshman (in 2011-12),” she says. “But when I got this second chance, I got in better shape than I’ve ever been in. Now that I know what my potential is, I’m going to make the best of it.”
Kelsey will return for PCC’s indoor and outdoor track seasons, and both her and Wenneborg are eager for another chance at the NJCAA steeplechase championships in May.
“I predict she’ll be in the lead pack with 600 meters to go at the nationals,” says Wenneborg. “Her heart is there. The commitment and talent is there. When you get to the nationals you just need to combine that with some good luck.”
Kelsey was forever a soccer player as a kid, sometimes playing for two or three club teams. But by the time she was a senior at Tucson High School (Class of 2011) she had discovered that she was a superior distance runner.
“She is gifted,” he father says.
Kelsey’s track scholarship is worth about $1,200 a semester (it covers tuition and fees) and it’s an example of why PCC’s athletic program is so important in Tucson. She wouldn’t have kept running competitively without a scholarship, and if she hadn’t been able to run for Pima, she might’ve left school altogether.
Like her parents, she hopes to get into counseling or working with children after she transfers to the UA and completes degree work.
“Kelsey fell back into our lap and that’s not unusual at a community college,” says Wenneborg, who is a full-time math teacher at Flowing Wells High School. “She is my third athlete who has come back (after having a baby). She has made the best of a good opportunity. That’s what Pima is all about.”
Although Kelsey Montano doesn’t plan to accept any out-of-town scholarships — a few four-year schools at the NJCAA finals spoke to her and Wenneborg about scholarship opportunities — her time at Pima changed everything.
“It’s funny, my co-workers would ask how I was able to find the time to run, and my teammates would ask how I found the time to work,” she says. “I would just tell them about Isa and say I would do anything for her.”
When Kelsey finished third overall in the region cross country finals in Casa Grande last month, she was invited to stand on a podium and receive a medal. Isa, who will turn 3 in January, climbed on the platform, too.
“A mom and her daughter at the trophy stand,” says Wenneborg. “How do you beat that?”
