“There is no player greater than the team.”
It is a maxim that experts quote like a habit in sports, especially team sports. This means that no matter how talented a player is, he or she cannot lead the team to victory on their own. In fact, the San Francisco Giants, which had Barry Bonds, who won the National League MVP for four consecutive years from 2001 to 2004, never won a World Series championship while Bonds was active. The Los Angeles Angels, which has the best monster, Shohei Ohtani, has a win rate of less than 50% this season.
The same goes for basketball. Chris Paul (Golden State Warriors), who reigned as the best point guard for a long time, and James Harden (Philadelphia 76ers), who was the top scorer for three consecutive seasons, failed to win the Finals in their prime. Hyun Joo-yeop, who created a new word called ‘point forward’ during his active career and enjoyed an era, also won only once at a basketball banquet during his days as a managing director, and never experienced a championship on the professional stage.
Volleyball is also a sport that values teamwork rather than individual skills, so it is difficult for teamwork to suddenly improve even with the addition of an outstanding player. However, in the women’s division of the V-League, these two players should be an exception. ‘Volleyball Empress’ Kim Yeon-kyung (Heungkuk Life Insurance Pink Spiders), who led Korea, which was ranked third in Asia, to the semifinals of the Olympics twice, and Madeleine, the V-League ‘best foreign player ever’, who led KGC Ginseng Corporation to win the championship twice. Montaño is the main character.
Kim Yeon-kyung, who joined Heungkuk Life Insurance with the first overall pick in the 2005-2006 rookie draft, was a model example of how ‘a well-chosen super rookie can change a team’. Combining excellent attack power, stable serve, and overflowing desire to win, Kim Yeon-kyung completely changed Heungkuk Life Insurance, which was at the bottom of the V-League in the first year. In fact, Heungkuk Life Insurance reigned as the best club in the early days of the V-League by winning the championship three times in four seasons after joining Kim Yeon-kyung.
However, after entering the V-League, the domestic stage was too narrow for Kim Yeon-kyung, who completely conquered the league by being selected as the MVP of the regular league three times and the MVP of the championship three times in four seasons. After the 2008-2009 season, Kim Yeon-kyung moved to JT Marvelous in Japan V. Premier League in the form of a loan, and Heungkuk Life Insurance, where Kim Yeon-kyung left, ranked 4th out of 5 clubs in the 2009-2010 season (8 wins and 20 losses). fell. And the team that took the place of Heungkuk Life Insurance was KT&G Arielz (currently KGC Ginseng Corporation) joined by Montaño.
KT&G, the first year champion of the V-League, advanced to spring volleyball three times in four seasons with an outstanding middle blocker named Kim Se-young during the ‘Kim Yeon-kyung period of power’. However, in the playoffs, he was frustrated at the threshold of the championship game because of his disappointing offensive power. This is because KT&G did not have a clear main striker like Kim Yeon-kyung of Heungkuk Life Insurance or Betty Dela Cruz of GS Caltex KIXX. Accordingly, KT&G recruited Colombian Apposite Spiker Montaño ahead of the 2009-2010 season.
In fact, Montaño was a lesser-known player compared to Kenny Moreno, a Colombian who was recruited from Hyundai E&C Hillstate in the same season. In fact, Kenny was a veteran who had accumulated rich experience in the Brazilian, Italian, and Japanese leagues from his early 20s, but Montaño played an active part in the Greek league, which was evaluated as low-level before joining KT&G. In fact, in the 2009-2010 season, Hyundai E&C recorded 23 wins and 5 losses in the regular league, beating KT&G with 19 wins and 9 losses, and went straight to the championship game.
However, Montaño’s true value was properly revealed in spring volleyball. Montaño, who led KT&G to victory by scoring 99 points in 3 playoff games against GS Caltex, also scored 200 points in 6 games in the championship match against Hyundai E&C, leading KT&G to win the second championship. Montaño, who attempted 390 attacks in six championship games, recorded an attack share of 51.18%. In the championship game, Montaño showed off ‘molbread volleyball’, which scored more than three times the score of Kim Se-young (57 points), who ranked second in the team.
As the dependence on foreign players in the women’s division intensified after Kim Yeon-kyung’s advance to Japan, the Korean Volleyball Federation came up with a new system for the 2010-2011 season. It is to restrict the participation of foreign players only in the third set. This was fatal for Ginseng Corporation, where the competitiveness of domestic players was relatively low. In the 2010-2011 season, Montaño became the top scorer in the regular league (591 points) even after playing 65 sets, far fewer than domestic players, but the ‘defending champion’ Ginseng Corporation fell to 4th place (8 wins and 16 losses).
In fact, the restriction on foreign players in the 3rd set, which was virtually the same as the ‘Montaño Ban Act’, disappeared in one season. And Montaño played 112 sets in 29 out of 30 games played by Ginseng Corporation in the 2011-2012 season, breaking through 1000 points for the first time in the women’s division (1076 points). Montaño recorded an unreasonable attack share of 53.78% in the regular season in the 2011-2012 season, and even after taking responsibility for so many attacks alone, he recorded a high success rate of 50.69%.
Thanks to Montaño’s one-man show, Ginseng Corporation ranked first in the regular league for the first time since the launch of the professional league and went directly to the championship match, and Montaño showed another terrifying performance in the championship match against Hyundai Engineering & Construction. Montaño, who scored 33 points from the first game, slowed down to 22 points in the second game, but scored 38 points in the third game, 24 points in the fourth game, and scored 40 points in the last five games. Montaño presented a ‘one-man show’ with an attack share of 50.09% and a success rate of 52.35% in 5 matches of the championship match.
Montaño, who played an active role in the V-League for three seasons and led Ginseng Corporation to win two championships, ended his Korean career by advancing to the Azerbaijan League in 2012. However, the traces left by the ‘monster foreign player’ named Montaño remain very strong in the V-League to this day. After Montaño, all clubs scrambled to recruit foreign players in the apogeetic spiker position who could be responsible for a lot of attack share, and this brought about a big change called ‘the decline of the native apogeetic spiker’.
Elisabeth Ine Barga, who attempted the most attacks in the women’s division in the 2022-2023 season and broke 1000 points in the regular league for the third time ever, had only (?) 41.30% of the attack share. This is the part where you can see how unrealistically many attacks Montaño tried in those days. The surprising fact is that Montaño showed off her stamina from the regular season to the championship game despite having such a huge share. This is why Montaño is called the best foreign player ever in the V-League.