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Montay McDaniel II was born and raised in Sacramento, California. McDaniel took his first college class in the sixth grade. It was an introductory math class.

With the advising of his mom, McDaniel then started to take more college classes in the eighth grade through Sacramento City College, where his mom was a college counselor. McDaniel’s mom already knew the path to lead her son down for him to be successful. She had previously led her daughter down the same path.

McDaniel’s sister, now 26 years old, graduated high school with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree when she was 18. She earned her associate’s degree through Sacramento City College. She was the first one in the McDaniel family to earn such honors. With McDaniel growing up watching his sister’s every move, he decided he wanted to do something even bigger.

But he got off to a rough start at Met Sacramento Charter high school.

“It was a small school with grades 9-12,” McDaniel said.” We only had 300 students. We would only go to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

McDaniel’s high school did not have PE class. Instead, he had to do PE at home and then write into a logbook and have his parents sign off that he was doing physical activity for the class. McDaniel did not do any of the workouts or get the signatures needed from his parents and ended up failing the PE class.

“It pretty much took me getting an F in PE to motivate me (to do better in classes),” McDaniel said.

McDaniel took that motivation and continued classes through Sacramento City College during high school by taking two college classes a semester with an associate’s degree in mind. Finding himself with time on his hands, McDaniel applied to Sacramento State’s ACE (Accelerated College Entrance) program, where he had to go through an application and interview process with the director of the program. He got accepted and had to take up to four classes through the ACE program and complete the assignments to stay within the program. This allowed McDaniel to earn his bachelor’s degree.

Junior year of high school, McDaniel found himself taking three to four community college classes for his associate’s, four classes for his bachelor’s degree, and then a couple of prerequisite classes to enter a master’s program. Altogether, McDaniel was taking eight college-credit classes on top of his high school classes each semester.

McDaniel ended up finishing and earning his associate’s degree in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in social science and his bachelor’s degree in communication studies with a concentration in behavioral science all before he graduated high school. At the beginning of his journey, he did not know what to get a degree in, so he went into generic majors that were versatile. It wasn’t until his junior and senior year when he found his passion for athletic training.

McDaniel worked as an athletic training intern at American River College in Sacramento for two years. It was too late for him to change his college classes he was taking in high school and go the athletic training route, but he was determined to attend a master’s program for athletic training.

McDaniel applied to his dream graduate school at Azusa Pacific University located in Azusa, California, about six and a half hours away from his home in Sacramento.

“(It) literally was the most perfect school,” McDaniel said. “A lot of my friends went there, and I was just like ‘If I don’t go to this school, I don’t know what I am going to do.’ It was a fairly new program, and there were only two prerequisites needed for the program. The party scene is nice, the food in SoCal (Southern California) is always slammin.”

McDaniel applied and interviewed but did not get in.

“I was pretty heartbroken, and that is when I went to work and started looking at different schools, and Grand View University was the cheapest and somewhat close to home,” McDaniel said.

McDaniel applied to GV’s new athletic training master’s program, taking a leap of faith.

Christopher Viesselman, program director of the Master’s of Science and Athletic Training and an associate professor of athletic training at GV, said: “What obviously took me by surprise was that he was still 17 years old at that point, and when we’re doing the interview he had not finished high school but was in the process. He also had not graduated from his associate’s yet. So, he’s finishing his associate’s, and he was finishing his undergraduate degree all at the same time. It was just an interesting process to try and see that somebody had so many things going on and was going to finish it all at the same time.”

McDaniel was accepted into the program, but he had one thing to finish up, one of his last prerequisites before he could officially get into the master’s program at GV. It was exercise physiology class which he was taking through BYU. McDaniel had to finish with a B or higher to start the master’s program at GV.

With one week before the master’s program started, “(I) flew over here with that class to finish,” McDaniel said. “I am in Langrock Suites on the verge of a B and a C and this was my last exam, and I pretty much let go and let God.”

McDaniel passed the class and was able to continue on to the master’s program. McDaniel has been in the program for four months now and has already made an impact.

“He’s really excited about the profession of athletic training, and a lot of times he’s really engaged with learning the material and trying to put it into practice. It brings a lot of enthusiasm to the program,” Viesselman said. “The big thing (we look for is) what are you coming in with? Are you hard-working? Do you have the passion for athletic training? And you know Montay ticks those boxes.”

In typical McDaniel fashion, he has already started to think about where life will take him next year and how far he can push himself. McDaniel plans on completing his externship in his second year of the master’s program at Stanford University for either men’s basketball or baseball. He has backup plans of working with the Sacramento Kings basketball G-League team or with the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team.

“My advice (for McDaniel) is just go for it.,” Viesselman said. “You’re always going to have a bigger limitation for yourself than what others do on what you can or can’t do. You got to follow your passion and reach.”