Coral Gables High senior Valerie Montesino won a Posse Scholarship and will be attending Mount Holyoke College next fall, majoring in finance.
The Posse Scholarships are given to outstanding students who might be overlooked by the traditional college selection process. The scholarship winners go with a team of 10 students that become their “posse” and they help each other so they don’t drop out. Posse students are given full tuition scholarships for all four years.
Montesino is the student council president, business manager for the year book and the former treasurer for her freshman and sophomore class and secretary of fundraising for the student government her junior year.
As student council president, Montesino is working on the middle school recruitment tours. The tours bring 100- 200 students from the feeder schools to see what high school life is like.
She also oversees the Pro Chat, a program that brings in alumni to talk about their professions.
“They come in during the lunch period and speak to the students,” she said.
They have brought in Mike Lowell, who used to play for the Miami Marlins.
“Mike Lowell, he gave us the story about the different challenges he’s gone through through the years,” Montesino said.
This is her third year as the yearbook business manager. Yearbook was the first organization she became involved with at Gables. She started as a writer and became friends with the business manager, who taught her the ropes.
“I deal with sales, the selling of the book, getting ready for the auditor,” she said. “You work one on one with the advisor.”
However, she still keeps her hand in writing for the book.
“I do the baseball spreads, junior varsity and varsity,” she said. “I like baseball. It’s how my grandfather and I connected. My grandpa passed away when I was in fifth grade. He played in Cuba. When we would see each other, it was pretty much at a baseball game.”
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
