February 21, 2010

     A visit with former Ellington High standout Jenn Monti
     Jennifer Monti doesn’t play much basketball these days.
     Maybe a pickup game every once in a while or few shots on an outdoor hoop. But nothing like the long hours she use to log as a student athlete at Ellington High School and Harvard University.
     She’s got more important things to do.
     Monti, one of the best basketball players in Ellington history, is two months away from finishing medical school and finding out where she will spend her residence. She is currently completing her studying at the Lerner College of Medicine at Case Western in Cleveland. Monti will graduate from medical school on May 15 with an MB and a master’s in public health.
     “Jenn is the type of person who says she is going to do something and she does it,” Monti’s mother Audrey said. “To see your children achieve their goals is tremendous and [Jenn] achieves every goal.”
     Monti doesn’t just cross off goals, she beats them into submission.
     In high school, Monti help lead Ellington to the Class M championship with a 55-51 triple overtime victory over Northwest Catholic as a senior. She was an All State soccer goalie and point guard, and left Ellington having scored more than 2,000 points.
     “She was just a special type of person,” former Ellington coach Bill Fortin said. “She could pass the ball well and shoot with either hand. She has pretty much done whatever her goals were.”
     “She knew what she wanted and how to do it.”
     Monti, who was recruited by a number of Division I schools including Connecticut, went on to play at Harvard where she was a three-time selection to the All-Ivy second team. By the time Monti left Cambridge, she was the all-time assists leader in Ivy league history for both men’s and women’s basketball. During her senior year, Monti was at one point fifth in the nation in assists.
     “She has always worked hard to succeed at things,” Jenn’s father Bob Monti said. “The glory is there but she doesn’t really care about that.”
     Despite her aversion to the limelight, Monti has always managed to find herself right in the center of it.
     “We’ve had some good players [at Ellington] but I can say Jenn was one right near the top,” Fortin, who coached the varsity team for 13 years, said. “She could do it all. She was the most talented player I ever coached.”
     Both Fortin and her parents point to Monti’s determination and focus as one of the biggest parts of her success.
     “The day of a game she would come in early and just shoot,” Fortin said. “She was really intense and really focused on what she needed to do."
     Bob Monti can remember coming home once after a loss in middle school and seeing that passion.
     “She missed two foul shots in junior high and she came home and shot out on the hoop over the garage,” Bob Monti said. “She knocked down 40 free throws in a row.”
     That focus and drive only became more intense as a junior in high school when Monti lost her sister, Lisa, who died suddenly of complications with pneumonia.
     “She was 14 months older than me and we did everything together,” Monti said. “We played sports together, we shared a room. One day things are fine and the next she is sick. It was like your arm being cut off. It was very rapid.”
     The Monti family, who have two other daughters and a son, saw Lisa pass away only 36 hours after she was initially brought into the hospital.
     Monti believes the tragedy made her grow up fast.
     “You start to realize people deal with an incredible amount every day,” Monti said.
     At the time of Lisa’s death, Fortin says you could see that maturity in Monti.
     “Jenn knew right away that something was up,” Fortin said. “But she kept her composure. I remember her saying ‘I can’t believe I’m not crying.’ I think she was in shock but she held herself together.”
     Monti did have her moments dealing with the death but Bob Monti credits the town as helping with the healing process.
     “The town really did a tremendous job of making us feel better,” Bob Monti said. “I know we had we had about six months of meals planned after my daughter died. The town literally built a softball field and named it after her; they developed a scholarship under her name. We were totally blown away.”
     And when Jenn returns home she doesn’t need to go to the field to let the memories of Lisa soak in.
     “That (field) doesn’t do it for me, Monti said. “I remember our drives home from high school. The four miles or so. Driving by the center of town and the Chuck Wagon and singing off our butts to country music on a nice fall afternoon. That was my favorite part of the day.”
     With medical school almost in the rear view mirror, Monti is beginning to look more and more to her future. She says she wants to work in some component of international health but she also would like to teach students how to care for patients.
     This interest comes from what she experienced with her sister.
     “It teaches you how important it is to go one level deeper,” Monti said. “You have to think — what can I do communicate more clearly in that situation? I don’t think you can be taught that stuff unless something happens in your own life.”
     Whatever she ends up doing, Monti feels like she is right where she wants to be — helping others.
     “This is the sweet spot,” Monti said. “I believe this is the work I want to be doing.”