Mike Carey was known for his tight grip on the reins of the WVU Women’s Basketball program he coached from 2001-22.
However, he sometimes sent player Lanay Montgomery (BA, ‘16) to handle his post-game interview obligations on the Mountaineer Sports Network. He explained the curious move like this: “I knew she would represent myself and WVU the right way. With her, it was always about the program, always about her teammates.
“I always trusted Lanay.”
Following a redshirt year while rehabbing a knee injury, Montgomery was a center on the team from 2012 -17. She was a defensive standout, known for her shot-blocking and rebounding.
All of this is hard to imagine when you learn “I never picked up a basketball until I was 13- or 14-years-old,” she divulged. By her sophomore year at Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland, she’d grown to 6’ 4”. College coaches began knocking on her door.
During a tournament game toward the end of her junior year, an opposing player knocked Montgomery’s legs out from under her while contesting a rebound. She heard a “pop,” and knew that her ACL had been torn. The subsequent surgery didn’t fully correct the problem, forcing a second operation eight months later.
Her senior season in high school was lost.
But college coaches kept calling, including Carey. “Even through my injuries, I was being highly recruited. It came down to Duke and West Virginia.”
The Mountaineers won this recruiting battle because of the sense of belonging Montgomery felt when she made numerous “unofficial” visits to Morgantown. “I come from a big family, and I’m very family-oriented. I selected West Virginia because I’d made a connection with the girls there on my unofficials. It just felt like home.
“That’s the best decision I’ve ever made because I gained a family. My teammates and fans became family, and the coaches became father figures.”
This was reinforced even before classes started her freshman year, when a close relative died due to domestic violence. “My teammates and the coaches and their wives took me in and made sure I was OK. That was a very big moment for me because it told me I was at the right place.”
Much of her freshman year was spent rehabbing her ailing knee, so she was redshirted.
Over the course of nine years — including Montgomery’s five years in Morgantown — Pat Biondo held a variety of positions with the women’s basketball program, including director of operations. He noticed that even when she wasn’t playing her first year, “everyone saw the amount of work she put in to come back from her injuries. Because of her work ethic and the effort she put in every day, she became the player that she was.”
“The highlight of my WVU basketball career was the (2017) Big 12 tournament,” Montgomery recalled. “We weren’t expected to win that, but we showed up and we came together and made it happen.”
WVU entered the tournament in Oklahoma City with a losing record (8-10) in the conference, but upset three ranked teams — Oklahoma, Texas and Baylor — in consecutive days to win the title. It’s the only Big 12 tournament championship won by either the Mountaineer men’s or women’s basketball teams.
“She did a great job defensively, rebounding and blocking shots, “ Carey said, noting that she contributed in all phases during that three-game run. “And she was very vocal on defense and offense.”
The WNBA noticed. With her WVU teammates surrounding her, Montgomery watched on TV as she was drafted by the Seattle Storm that April. “Being in that room with her was absolutely amazing because no one was more deserving,” Biondo said. “Despite the adversity she faced through her career, she never stopped working while also putting the team first. “
But all the accolades she received for her basketball achievements took a back seat to her development as a person. “I like to say that basketball is nice, but who you are as a person is what matters.” She proved this in the summer of 2016.
“I watched on the news when the floods happened (in southern West Virginia) and it made me really sad. I thought that even though we were just poor college students, we could still do something for the people affected.”
The disaster left 23 dead and more than 2,000 homes destroyed.
What started as a drive to collect supplies and donations developed into a trip spearheaded by Montgomery. She led her teammates to Rainelle, West Virginia to help two families whose houses had been severely damaged. “We gutted the homes and ripped out the drywall. It was hard work, harder than a practice,” she said.
“I just didn’t want those people to feel like nobody cared about them."
Biondo was on that trip, and he marveled at the way Montgomery rallied her teammates. “It was really a testament to Lanay’s leadership and her being so selfless.”
She encountered a different kind of “storm” in Seattle, when she joined the WNBA team. Following a season playing alongside Breanna Stewart for the Storm, Montgomery signed with a team in Belgium. Her chronically aching knee never allowed her to play in a game. “Doctors always told me I had a 70-year-old’s knee, and that I wouldn’t play basketball for long.”
They were right. That marked the end of her playing career.
Carey assisted her in landing a coaching job on the staff of the women’s team at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. After one season, she wanted to get into a career that was going to be more stable than coaching and so she moved back to Maryland where she became a diplomatic officer with the U.S. Department of State. While working full time, she was also a full-time student, gaining a master’s degree in forensic psychology from Liberty University in 2021.
As if she weren’t busy enough, she also satisfied the requirements of a security clearance with the U.S. Government and passed a certification for information technology. This permitted her to oversee the security aspects of the construction of buildings by government contractors. Earlier in 2024, she landed a position with ASM Research working 12-hour shifts as a cybersecurity analyst at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
“I developed a love for government security and protecting our nation,” she explained. She’d gone from being WVU’s top-tier rim protector to guarding the U.S. Army’s computer systems, admittedly a higher calling.
The 31-year-old feels strongly that none of this would be possible without her time at WVU. “I work around Army personnel now and I’m in meetings with generals. WVU prepared me for this because I was around so many different people from so many different walks of life. I got close to people who may not look like me, and now I’m comfortable and secure in the spaces I operate in.
“Going to WVU allows me to be confident in the workplace."
It should be no surprise that after just three months on the job, she was presented with a leadership award from her employer.
Carey still stays in touch with her. “She’s a great person (from) a great family. She sacrificed a lot and worked hard. She could call me today and I would help her. I could call her, and she would help me.”
Biondo feels that Montgomery’s leadership abilities “were a common theme of her career. She always wanted to help other people out somehow, some way. The trip (to Rainelle) was through Lanay’s leadership and shows what she means to not only the University and basketball program, but to the entire state of West Virginia.”
This story is part of a series of profiles of former WVU student-athletes written for WVU Magazine by Joe Mock, who graduated from WVU’s Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism (now part of the College of Creative Arts and Media) in 1980. He now writes regularly for USA TODAY publications. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @baseballparks.
