“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.