All-American Flashback: Kelley Montalvo (2006-09)
12/18/2015 12:00:00 AM | Softball
In honor of Alabama softball's 20th anniversary, rolltide.com will be catching up with our 20 former All-Americans in a series of feature interviews. Our 12th feature is with Kelley Montalvo (2006-09), a stellar defensive third baseman from Miami who earned All-America honors as a junior in 2008.
It would be unwise to judge Kelley Montalvo based on first impressions. Standing at just under 5 feet tall, many coaches made the choice to pass on the diminutive third baseman from Miami. With a heart twice that size and the confidence to match, Montalvo proved that big things can indeed come in small packages and, were it not for convenient timing, Alabama may have missed out.
"The funny thing is, Alabama was the last one to get on the list," Montalvo said with a laugh. "I didn't expect that. Just getting a college scholarship to anywhere to help my family out and pay for school would have been a blessing. As soon as I started getting older, around freshman and sophomore year of high school, I started hearing from places like Virginia Tech or North Carolina and it was cool seeing that I could go out of state. That really opened my eyes.
"[Former assistant coach] Vann Studemann was the first one from Alabama who came to my games. She made a phone call to Aly [Habetz] and told her to come watch. I didn't have a lot of coaches knocking on the door. A 4-foot-11 girl probably wasn't the best look for them. At that point, I was playing every game like it was my last. I was already narrowing it down to about five schools and, I'll never forget it, Alabama was last one on board and they just jumped on the list. I thought, 'OK, I'll check out this little Alabama school.' I didn't even know where the state was located! They just happened to come in and show interest at the right time."
Even in high school, Montalvo's height stood out among her peers and made plenty of coaches wary of taking a chance on her. What started as a point of contention soon became fuel for Montalvo.
"I do a lot of motivational speaking now and I know there are groups out there that ask me to speak just because of my height," Montalvo said. "It has not only been a blessing but it's been something I've embraced in my life now. For such a long time, I was so against it. I never pitied myself but it was motivation to work a little bit harder. You don't want me at this size? OK, then you're not going to get the size of my heart, because that's what really matters in this game. It has honestly made my career. Now, they look past the height because they see my heart and passion for the game. I can't tell you how many coaches have told me to my face that I was too short. When has softball ever been a size thing? I'm not playing volleyball or basketball! I kept using it as fuel. It has helped all my life."
With Alabama as one of Montalvo's five official visits, head coach Pat Murphy and his staff knew it would be important to make a quality first impression in order to sway Montalvo to Tuscaloosa.
"It was funny because I had a visit to Auburn planned out and then Alabama came in and scheduled theirs the week before," Montalvo said. "They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew as soon as I got to that campus, they knew I was going to fall in love. Who wouldn't? With the people and the family atmosphere, I totally did fall in love. That was my first visit and I told my dad this was it. He felt it too. I committed the second I got home. It was early September. My mom was freaking out about me going that far from home but I sat her down and told her, 'this is what we've got to do and I'm going.' It was that night I got home that I committed."
If there was a softball equivalent to the Golden Glove award, Montalvo certainly would have been a frontrunner during her four years manning the hot corner. With a defensive skillset that made it look easy, Montalvo finished her career with a .971 fielding percentage, earning SEC All-Defensive Team honors as a junior and senior.
"Even now still playing at the professional level, it's what I live for," Montalvo said. "Especially at third base, to be able to react like that when you have a 6-foot batter ripping a line drive down your throat, that's intense. I love that position because of that. You can't lose track. I'm always all over the place but, when I'm at third base, that's where I feel the most focused. I take pride in defense. Whenever my pitchers would strike out the side, everyone would be happy but I would be bored! I was over strikeouts. I always wanted dropball and changeup pitchers so I could at least get a ground ball."
Montalvo was able to show her defensive prowess on the biggest stage in three of her four years at Alabama, as the team made the Women's College World Series in 2006, 2008 and 2009.
"My freshman year I was overwhelmed," Montalvo said. "I didn't really absorb it like I did my senior year. I wish it would have had an effect on me when I got there. As a freshman, you think you have so much time left but you really don't. When the impact really hit me was the one year we didn't go: my sophomore year in 2007."
Alabama has only lost three of the 11 Super Regional series it has played in, and the 2007 series at Washington was the first of those three. Facing the Huskies and their sophomore ace Danielle Lawrie, the Tide lost the opening game, 4-3, and lost the second the next day, 7-5, after Washington broke a 5-5 tie in the top of the seventh inning. Montalvo went 0-6 with six strikeouts in the series.
"That crowd was brutal," Montalvo said. "The loss was hard. I came back in 2008 in the best shape of my life, ready to go. That was the year that things really turned around."
Montalvo would earn First Team All-America honors in 2008, posting a career-best .373 batting average, 63 hits and 54 RBIs. In total, three other Tide players were named All-Americans that season, tying the school record for the most in a single season. Alabama would return to the World Series that year as the No. 3 seed, winning two games for the first time in program history before falling in the semifinals to eventual national champion Arizona State.
Alabama would win two games in Oklahoma City again Montalvo's senior year as the No. 4 seed but eventually fell in the semifinals to Florida. Montalvo played every game with a chip on her shoulder but that proved most evident every time she would play the Gators.
"The biggest rivalry for me personally had to be Florida," Montalvo said. "That was my home state and the Gators are all we know here in Florida. When we played against them, I was playing against the home state school that didn't want me. I'm representing another state and it was for pride. That was always an intense game. They were always so good. There was never an easy weekend against them."
An inherent competitive nature during games didn't always translate to a similar demeanor in practice early in Montalvo's career. By her own admission, she needed to learn to set the proper example and that lesson was hammered home during an exchange with Alyson Habetz during practice.
"What really did it for me was talking with Aly one day at practice," Montalvo said. "I was goofing off or being lazy, typical, and Aly starts sprinting out to the outfield. I'm thinking 'Is she coming for me?' and we meet halfway. She pointed at me and asked me, 'do you want to be good? Then show everybody you want to be good.' I knew it was serious because she doesn't do that a lot. Ever since then I knew I had to step it up and stop messing around."
While she learned to be more serious on the field, Montalvo remained the team's class clown off the field. Being the center of attention did come at a price however.
"The fun stuff always ended up with me getting in trouble," Montalvo said with a laugh. "It was fun at the time but then I got in trouble so that's what made it extra funny for everyone else. That's what everyone doesn't say when they talk about all these fun times. They wanted me to do all the funny stuff but then I got in trouble for it!"
Plenty of her teammates' favorite off-the-field memories revolve around Montalvo, though when asked she took the chance to defer to All-SEC catcher Ashley Holcombe with one of her own.
"I'm going to peg Ashley Holcombe on this one," Montalvo said. "She did a karaoke thing on the bus one time where she had headphones on and we told her to sing Sugerland. She sang and it was terrible. She thought she was Sugerland. Everyone was cheering her on but it was awful."
However, an early individual meeting with Patrick Murphy did show her that, even off the field, there comes a time where the humor needs to take a back seat.
"I had an individual meeting with him one time and I had a t-shirt on that had something terrible written on it," Montalvo said. "I sat down in the meeting and he just looks at me and says, 'did you go to class with that shirt on?' I told him yes and he made me go in the hallway, reverse it and come back in for the meeting. He said 'how dare you come into your coach's office with that shirt on'. I still tell stories like that when I speak to kids because they're so important. I didn't think there was anything wrong with it at the time. When I got there as an 18-year-old freshman, I didn't understand that. I was a punk kid from Miami who just wanted to play ball. I didn't care.
"I speak to a lot of groups about leadership and being a good teammate. Everything that I do in my life, it's always because of what I learned with Alabama softball. It's engrained in my life. All of us former players will tell you the same thing though. We are better people because of Alabama."
Now, living back home in Miami, softball is still a crucial part of her life.
"I was an assistant coach at Middle Tennessee State for three years but I just left in May," Montalvo said. "I still play professionally with the Arkon Racers. This year will be my seventh with the league. I'm back home with my family in Miami right now. I travel everywhere and speak for different groups and give a lot of camps and clinics. Softball is my profession right now."
Montalvo's journey has the chance to come full circle this summer. The 2016 National Pro Fastpitch Championship in August will be played at Rhoads Stadium, giving her the opportunity to possibly play in front of a familiar Tuscaloosa crowd one more time.
"As soon as I saw the announcement on Twitter, I texted Murph about how awesome that was," Montalvo said. "He texted back and said, 'you get to play at home again.' I got chills, I was so fired up! When we graduate, who in their right mind thinks they're going to play there again? The fact that I get to be on that corner again with the dirt, right next to the dugout with the same fans right there; It's just awesome.
"I may have never won a World Series at Alabama, but now I get the chance to bring a championship back with my professional team at Alabama."
