Hansen’s Sunday Notebook: Former St. Augustine High School star will run Sunday for spot in Summer Games – Arizona Daily Star

Nico Montanez won nine state running championships while at Tucson’s St. Augustine Catholic High School and then enrolled at BYU, where he finished ninth in the NCAA Cross Country finals.

Since then, Montanez was recruited to join the Mammoth Track Club of California, working toward the ultimate goal of a distance runner — the Summer Olympics.

Montanez, 26, will be at the starting line of the USA Olympic Marathon Trials on Saturday in Atlanta. He’ll be joined by Tucson’s four-time Olympic distance runners Abdi Abdirahman and Bernard Lagat, all of them bent on finishing in the top three and punching a ticket to the Tokyo Olympics.

“I ran my first marathon in 2017,” says Montanez, who won state championships in the 800, 1,000 and 3,200 for St. Augustine in 2012. “My coach at BYU, Ed Eyestone, kept feeding me the line that I could excel at the marathon, but, honestly, my first thoughts were that I didn’t want to run 26 miles.”

Now it is his future.

Montanez was the first American finisher in the Houston half-marathon about six weeks ago. He has won similar races in San Diego and Sacramento and has clearly moved into the consciousness of distance-running experts. It would be significant upset if Montanez can finish in front of USA favorites Galen Rupp and Leonard Korir, but over 26 miles anything is possible.

Nor would it be a shock if Abdirahman or Lagat, both in their 40s, finish near the top.

As a distance runner, Montanez has raced everywhere from Switzerland — home of his shoe sponsor, ON — to Minneapolis, Houston and Chicago. He and his coach, Deena Kastor — a 2004 Athens Olympics bronze medal winner in the marathon — recently flew to Atlanta to scout the course he will run.

Montanez was a soccer player as a kid. He ultimately joined two of his friends on the St. Augustine cross country team, where his life changed and took an unexpected course.

“My coach at St. Augustine, Tim Bentley, transformed my life,” says Montanez. “At first I didn’t trust him, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. He helped me flourish. I got in a little bit of trouble when I was younger — hanging with the wrong crowd — but getting into track and cross country put me on a better path.”

This is likely just the beginning of Montanez’s quest to make the USA Olympic team. He plans to train for the 2024 and 2028 Olympics. He believes his prime running years are yet to come.

“I’ve seen Abdi and Lagat flourish in their 30s and I think I can do that, too,” says Montanez. “I could have never dreamed I’d be running for a spot in the Olympics. Whatever happens, it will be a great experience for me.”

In what is likely her final of 28 PGA Tour-affiliated tournaments as executive director of the Tucson Conquistadores, Judy McDermott put her experience to work to put into place the best field possible for this week’s PGA Tour Champions Cologuard Classic.

She was steadfast in her desire to get the biggest names — Ernie Els, Steve Stricker, Fred Couples and Jose Maria Olazabal — in this year’s field.

Finally, last week, all of them committed to play here.

It’s not often possible to get a field like the one McDermott and the Conquistadores have assembled for the fifth Champions Tour event in Tucson. Among those who’ll play: Els, Stricker, Couples, Olazabal, Tom Kite, Davis Love III, John Daly, Bernhard Langer, Retief Goosen, Colin Montgomerie, Tom Lehman, defending champion Mark O’Meara, Jerry Kelly, John Cook, Rocco Mediate, Lee Janzen, former champion Woody Austin and Mark Calcavecchia.

And on Friday, the Conquistadores awarded the final spot in the field to former Sabino High School state champion Willie Wood, whose compelling effort last year — the 58-year-old Wood finished tied for second — was one of the top stories of the week.

McDermott, who is soon leaving her post with the Conquistadores to become executive director of the First Tee of Tucson, can still add more identifiable names to the tee sheet.

On Monday, five spots in the tournament will be awarded to the top finishers at the qualifier at the Oro Valley Country Club. Among those in the field are former teammates on Arizona’s 1992 NCAA championship team, David Berganio and Harry Rudolph. Also in the field are former Tucson Open champions Jim Carter and Frank Lickliter, as well as PGA Tour winners Tommy Armour, Tom Purtzer and Keith Clearwater.

When Tucson High School went undefeated, 10-0, to win the 1952 state football championship, running back/linebacker Joel Favara was so dominant that the Star wrote: “He goes down as perhaps the hardest hitting performer in the entire history of Tucson prep football.”

At the time, Tucson High itself had won eight state championships. It says a lot about Favara, known as “the Tucson Terror,” who went on to a productive college career at Oklahoma State.

Sadly, Favara died last week in Tucson. He was 85. A memorial service is being planned.

Favara’s impact in Tucson went far beyond the 1952 football season. He returned from Oklahoma to earn a masters degree at Arizona, become the head football coach at Sunnyside High School and ultimately an administrator in the Sunnyside district. Before that, he coached Safford High School to the 1962 state title and an 11-0 record.

I had the good fortune to meet Favara and talk to him several times, especially at the 50th reunion of the ’52 Badgers in 2002. What struck me most was his kind nature and gentle spirit. The “Tucson Terror” thing made a good football story, but it was the opposite of how he lived his life.

Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke, who was a schoolboy baseball standout in Michigan and at Albion College, a former catcher for Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz, will likely be spending a lot of time at Hi Corbett Field this week. His son, Central Michigan third baseman Zach Heeke, is the leadoff batter for the Chippewas, who will play Arizona Wednesday night and Friday nigh as part of a three-day event that includes Rhode Island. Zach Heeke hit .311 last season and was CMU’s team MVP a year earlier, hitting .346. Career moment? He went 3 for 5 in the NCAA Tournament last year against the Miami Hurricanes. Heeke isn’t the first Arizona athletic director with a ballplaying son: Monte Clausen, son of Arizona AD Dick Clausen, played basketball for the Wildcats in the early 1960s, and David Strack Jr. was on the varsity basketball team of the Ohio Bobcats before becoming the head men’s basketball coach at Cochise College in the ’70s. …

Cienega High School grad Nick Gonzales, a 2019 first-team All-American second baseman at New Mexico State, gets his first major exposure this season when the Aggies play at No. 13 Arizona State on Tuesday. Gonzales hasn’t disappointed so far this year; he is hitting .556 through five games, leading the NCAA in home runs (5) and RBIs (18). Gonzales will play against Arizona at Hi Corbett Field on March 24. …

It’s a shame that softball won’t be part of the 2024 Paris Olympics. That would be the right timing for Arizona senior shortstop Jessie Harper to make Team USA and play for a gold medal. But French Olympic organizers have chosen not to include softball in the games. Harper will be close to 30 by the time softball reappears for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Harper’s two home runs against Team USA last week at Hillenbrand Stadium were continued evidence that she has a chance to be the 2020 NCAA Player of the Year. Harper has five home runs — her Olympic homers don’t count toward NCAA statistics — through Saturday, giving her 71 as a Wildcat. She has a chance to break the school record of 92, set by Katiyana Mauga. Mauga played at the UA from 2014-17. …

Arizona’s two-time NCAA championship swimming coach Frank Busch went back to his home turf last week to be inducted into the Loyola of Chicago Sports Hall of Fame. Busch, who retired as director of the USA Swimming national teams two years ago, is living in Tucson as his son, Augie, coaches Arizona toward next month’s NCAA tournaments. Busch was part of a three-member Hall of Fame Class of 2020 at Loyola; he was introduced to 5,000 fans at halftime of the Loyola-Northern Iowa basketball game, wearing his old letterman’s jacket from 1972, when he helped the Ramblers become one of the nation’s premier water polo teams. …

Sabino High School grad Maddie Mariani, a sophomore gymnast at Michigan, won her first career event for the No. 7 Wolverines last week in a dual meet against Iowa. Mariani scored a near-perfect 9.9 in the balance beam. Mariani now has scored 9.9s in three events, including the high bar, the vault and the balance beam. …

UA women’s golf signee Maya Benita, the 2019 state champion from Catalina Foothills High School, won the prestigious Ping Junior Masters championship last weekend at the Long Bow Golf Course in Phoenix. Benita shot rounds of 73-69 to prevail in a field of 30 top girls junior players from Arizona. Benita signed with Arizona coach Laura Ianello and will be a freshman in August.…

Ben Davis became an All-Pac-10 center/power forward for Arizona in 1996 before beginning a decade-long run in pro basketball. Last week, he returned to Hutchinson Community College in Kansas to be inducted into the school’s Sports Hall of Fame. Davis led “Hutch” to the 1994 NJCAA national title and is surely one of the five leading JC transfers in Arizona basketball history, joining Pete Williams, Bennett Davison, Kadeem Allen — who was also a Hutchinson CC player — and Eddie Smith, part of Lute Olson’s first recruiting class. …

Tucsonan Delaney Schnell‘s move toward making the USA 2020 Olympics team gathered more steam last week when she was just one of five women selected to USA Diving’s team for the FINA World Series that begins next weekend in Montreal. Schnell is the lone American female diver entered in the 10-meter platform event. Schnell will then travel to Kazan, Russia, with Team USA March 20-22 and to London March 27-29 for the final events in the FINA World Series of diving. …

Feel-good story of the week: Will Parks was never an All-Pac-12 first team defensive player at Arizona, but he has gone on to become a productive player for the Denver Broncos and is in demand during the NFL’s ongoing free agency period. Parks was Mr. Personality off the field during his Arizona days. His same outgoing nature has made him popular in Denver. Off the field, he’s been one of the Broncos’ most reliable ambassadors; since 2016, Parks has attended 108 charitable events. Last season alone, he was a part of 30 outings. He was paid $2.1 million by the Broncos last year and is in line to make as much as $10 million next season. “My heart lies here in Denver, so if they’re one of the first teams to call me and offer me and it’s something I like, I’ll stick around,” Parks told Denver reporters. ….

When I walked into the media trailer at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds last week, the first thing I noticed was that Joan Liess was not in her customary seat. It will be the same thing this week at the Cologuard Classic at Tucson National. Liess won’t be there. For the last 25 years, Liess has been on duty, a media liaison at the rodeo finals and the golf tournament, a happy face who helped to assist reporters, arranging interviews and disseminating the news. She was a pro’s pro. Liess quietly retired a month or so ago, moving to Las Vegas to be with her family. She moved to Tucson in 1981, a one-time aspiring sportswriter from St. Louis who went on to become the general manager of Old Tucson and create her own PR firm, Liess and Associates. To say that Joan will be missed is fully inadequate.

After the Golden State Warriors played in Phoenix against the Suns on Feb. 12, Warriors coach Steve Kerr rented a car and drove to Tucson with assistant coach Bruce Fraser, also a former Arizona point guard.

They made the trip entirely to visit Lute Olson in his foothills home.

It was what you’d expect from Kerr, one of sports’ great people: When he learned his college coach was having health issues, he showed up to see if there was anything he could do.

Olson, 85, has not been in his familiar seat at McKale Center this season. Of all the loud and emotional ovations Olson has experienced at McKale since 1983, few will compare to the next time the Hall of Fame coach walks through the tunnel and onto Lute and Bobbi Olson Court.