Jeff Monteiro was on the coaching staff when Pioneer Valley High won its first football game in 2005, a year after the school opened its doors.
He attended the Santa Maria school’s first graduation in 2007, and was the athletic director when the program moved from the CIF Southern Section to the Central Section.
And he was in charge when the Panthers won a Central Section boys wrestling title last February.
Now, after 36 years with the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District, Monteiro has decided to retire.
“I’m retiring effective Dec. 31. Heck, you can even say, really, my last day is today,” he chuckled. “My 60-year old butt is done.”
Monteiro came to Pioneer Valley in 2004 after 20 years of teaching and coaching at Righetti High School in Orcutt.
He was one of the first football coaches at Pioneer Valley.
“Greg Dickinson, Bob Jimenez and I came over at the same time,” he recalled.
After a successful run at Righetti, Dickinson’s teams at Pioneer Valley became playoff regulars. Monteiro served as Dickinson’s assistant, and taught social science, and U.S. and world history until he became athletic director in 2018.
“It’s time,” Monteiro said of retirement. “I’m tired. A lot of thought went into this, and I talked to a lot of people. (The input) from my wife, Lita, was a big decision in my retiring. So was the talk with my doctor.”
Monteiro said hitting age 60 “was one of my benchmarks” when it came to retirement considerations.
“If you have been with the district 30 years, the best age to retire as a teacher is age 61. You can get a couple more (points toward a higher salary) if you wait until you’re 61, but I make enough money. What’s a couple more points? My health is what’s most important.”
Asked about the school district’s decision to have its athletic directors teach two classes in the fall 2020 semester, when school sports were sidelined because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Monteiro said it was not a factor in his decision to retire.
Nonetheless, he was sharply critical of the district’s move.
“I thought it was a big mistake,” said Monteiro. “They didn’t save any money because of the concept.”
He taught credit recovery at Pioneer Valley this fall.
The outgoing AD expressed his disappointment in what he saw as a change in the district’s outlook toward sports.
“Under the previous superintendent, Mark Richardson, sports were a priority,” Monteiro said. “Now, I don’t know.”
He was on the staff of the Pioneer Valley football team that won in its debut in 2005.
“We beat Palmdale Knight, another first-year team,” said Monteiro. “We had all sophomores and juniors that year.”
The Panthers went 7-3 as a freelance team that year, but did not make the playoffs. Dickinson’s 2006 team went 8-4 and made it to the postseason.
On Monteiro’s watch, Pioneer Valley joined most of the North County’s sports programs in a move to the Central Section in 2018.
Two years later, the Panthers earned their first sectional boys wrestling championship, claiming the Division 2 crown under coach Kent Olson.
Monteiro remembers the commencement ceremony for the class of 2007, Pioneer Valley’s first graduating class.
“It wasn’t emotional for me at first,” he said. “Then the students started making speeches about the role teachers played in their lives. I was mentioned in three of the speeches and, yeah, it got pretty emotional.”