SOUTH ROYALTON — Alex Montaño never expected to fall in love with Vermont. But as soon as he left the state for the first time, Montaño knew he would do anything in his power to return.
Now in his ninth year coaching boys soccer in South Royalton and the fifth since the creation of the White River Valley School, Montaño spent the first 13 years of his life in two countries that live and breathe soccer, albeit countries with climates that could not be more different from that of northern New England.
“I love the snow,” Montaño said. “I enjoy the weather, but more than anything, just the state, the people, the beauty of it.”
Born in Mexico City, Montaño moved with his family to San Salvador, El Salvador for two years before returning to the Mexican capital, then to Ventura, Calif., at age 13. He saw snow for the first time after enrolling at Purdue University in Indiana, where he majored in journalism and communications, then made his way across the country looking for jobs in television news.
Montaño only spent a year in his first job, at a now-abandoned station in Killington, Vt., but it was enough for the Green Mountain State to make its way into his heart.
“I’ve never lived in a place like this,” Montaño said. “I brought my wife over, we traveled around and she loved it as well, and that’s when we decided to make the move. You can’t ask for anything better. I tell (my players), ‘You realize this is not normal, our setting. Appreciate it, because it’s a unique place.’ ”
Coaching at a small school was quite the change of pace for Montaño, who had most recently lived in Ann Arbor, Mich. He said his son’s high school in Ann Arbor had around 5,000 students, and many began specializing in a single sport as early as age 8. Even after the 2018 merger of the South Royalton and Bethel school districts, White River Valley has roughly 200, with three-sport athletes aplenty.
Baseball has been WRV’s most successful boys sport, with VPA state titles in 2019, 2021 and 2022. Basketball, which lost the Division IV championship game last winter on a buzzer-beater, is not far behind. But with many of the same players, Montaño is helping put Wildcat soccer on the map at a school where very few of his athletes are playing the sport year-round.
“When I got here initially, I didn’t think we were going to have enough players,” Montaño said. “This is still a baseball-first school, but the kids are learning to love (soccer), and I try to make it as much fun as I can for them.”
After making a surprise run to the semifinals in 2020 as a No. 14 seed, WRV upset rival Sharon in the quarterfinals last year to return to the semis, where the Wildcats lost to Rivendell. They graduated Dominic Craven, far and away their leading scorer in 2021 with 21 goals, but despite moving up to Division III this fall, WRV is exceeding even Montaño’s expectations.
Montaño attributed the Wildcats’ slow start to his athletes not playing competitively over the summer — WRV won just one of its first five games. Since then, the Wildcats have taken five of their last six, including four straight, to improve to 6-4-1 with three regular-season contests remaining. They’ve done so with nine freshman on their roster, compared to five each in the other three classes.
For Montaño, though, winning is secondary to creating enthusiasm for a sport that may not have been most of his players’ favorites coming in.
“I love hearing back from kids I’ve coached years ago,” Montaño said. “To hear from parents, ‘I haven’t seen my son with this much confidence in something,’ or have a kid come back from college and stop by to say hello, that just means the world. I’ll trade any win for making a difference, however slight, in some of these guys.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.