‘A BIG DEAL’
Hard work takes La Plaza Little League All-Stars to regional tournament
In 2015, all Martisa Montoya could do was watch as her team slowly faded from contention in the Senior League Southwest Regional Tournament. She hopes it’s different this time around when Montoya and her La Plaza Little League All-Star teammates from Las Vegas, N.M., head to Vidalia, La., for the regional tournament that starts Saturday.
The La Plaza squad — including many players from the West Las Vegas High School team — opens against Colorado. The tournament also has teams from east and west Texas, and Mississippi, as well as host Louisiana.
Shackled with a cast on an ankle that she had broken a few weeks earlier, Montoya could only root for her buddies three years ago.
“I was on crutches,” she said. “In the first practice for district, I slid into third base and broke my tibia and fibia. Just watching was actually very nervous for me. You see the girls and they’re not working as a team, then seeing them picking it up and working as a family. Just seeing the ups and downs we had was hard.”
A centerfielder and sometime pitcher, Montoya still bears the marks of her injury.
“I’m playing in a brace and I need surgery, but I’m not going to get it,” she said. “If we get farther than regionals, I’ll wait. If we happen to fail in the regionals, I will get it then.”
For now, Montoya’s ankle is encased in plastic “so it protects my ankle,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”
Montoya is one of four players from