Talented family toughened Penns Valley’s Hannah Montminy

Hannah Montminy won’t back down from a tough opponent.

She’s already taken on some pretty tough competition in the front yard and driveway of her own home.

“Our family is definitely competitive, so that competitive part of me is always trying to one-up them,” said the Penns Valley sophomore, a forward for the Lady Rams soccer team this fall and figures to be a member of the basketball team this winter.

Montminy is the fourth member of her family to traverse the halls of Penns Valley Area High School and hit the fields with Rams athletic programs — even if a large age gap leaves some surprised that she had standout older siblings.

Jen played soccer and ran on the track and field team, graduating in 2006; Sarah followed two years later with the same teams; and Kevin graduated in 2011 after logging plenty of highlights on the basketball court. Among the standards they set, Sarah was a medalist in the 800-meter run at the state track championships and collected 61 points during her sophomore season in soccer, eventually picking up all-state accolades. Kevin holds Penns Valley’s career scoring record with 1,498 points in basketball, walked on at Penn State and eventually was named co-captain and earned a scholarship with the Nittany Lions. All three older Montminys also concluded their high school careers as the CDT’s James Snyder Award-winners for their combined work in the classroom and community along with their athletic abilities.

Hannah was undeterred by the high standards.

“They’ve also created the environment where they support me,” she said. “I’ve never felt any added pressure to live up to what they’ve done.”

While they might have been supportive, they also didn’t give the little sister a free ride, even if there was a nine-year age gap from Hannah to Kevin. Whether it was in soccer, basketball or any other sport they played — or even invented while on some beach during a vacation — the elder siblings played all-out.

“It definitely made me a lot of the player that I am today,” Hannah said. “They never took it easy on me. They were obviously a lot bigger, faster, stronger, much more physical, so they really toughened me up at a young age.”

Their father, Peter, a child psychologist in State College and a teacher at Penn State, said it was rare he had to ask the kids to dial back the competitiveness. Sometimes they might be playing on their knees to accommodate Hannah when she was around 5 or 6 years old, but they still would push things.

“She would always get right in the thick of it,” Peter said. “We always had fun, she always had fun, playing right along with them. They would be careful, but we would say, ‘Hey, go all-out and see what you can do.’”

Hannah acknowledged it made her tougher and more determined — and helped give her a little higher arc on her basketball jump shot thanks to Kevin’s long arms. Even when things were tough, there wasn’t a lot of whining from Hannah to Peter or their mother, Mary.

“She always wanted to just try harder and do what she could,” Peter said. “She loves playing up and rising to a challenge. … It really just made her more determined, and she really would just want to go at it again and again.”

Andrew Beverly is in his first season as the Lady Rams’ soccer coach, but he was already very familiar with Hannah and the entire family. Beverly has coached the Penn United club program for years, for which Hannah plays in the spring. Beverly also was once on the staff at Central Mountain, coaching against Sarah and the Lady Rams.

When he first saw the under-12 team roster years ago, he wondered if Hannah was related to the other Montminys of the past. As soon as he saw her play, he knew it was the same family, even if Hannah is more of an attacker with flair than Sarah, a central-midfielder.

“She has that innate ability to take people on and get past them,” Beverly said. “Some people can pick up moves to try and help, and get better at that, and some people just have that natural instinct to have a big touch and get past.”

Hannah has dreams of playing her favorite sport beyond high school, much like Kevin, and Sarah did at Dickinson for two years. Kevin is now an auditor at KPMG in Philadelphia, and Sarah works for an educational non-profit organization in Boston. Hannah would love for her soccer road to take her to Penn State, though she understands the reality and difficulty of that aspiration.

There is little doubt, however, she will be deterred by the difficulty of chasing that dream.

“Learning the hard way is probably the best way to get things done and to learn,” Beverly said. “If you have the right attitude about it, which I’m sure she did, you end up growing in leaps and bounds.”

This story was originally published September 18, 2017 at 11:06 PM with the headline "Talented family toughened Penns Valley’s Hannah Montminy."