Lemont HS | Class of 2029 | Lemont, Illinois

Josh “Juice” Montell walked onto a varsity field for the first time and found himself looking up. Way up. Libertyville was across from him, and Libertyville was enormous — the kind of size that makes a first-year high school quarterback’s stomach do a full 🦋 routine before the opening snap. Josh will tell you the whole sideline felt it. Then the game started, and everybody found out who Juice was. He finished with 368 passing yards and four passing touchdowns, added 152 yards on the ground and another score, and spent the ride home doing the math on a stat line he admits shocked him. That’s a rare bit of honesty from a quarterback. Most of them have the answer rehearsed. He didn’t.

That afternoon is the cleanest snapshot of what Lemont has on its hands, but it isn’t where the story begins. It begins about a decade earlier, and it begins with his brother. Chris “Money” Montell was a top state and nationally rated quarterback at Lemont after transferring in from Marist, and he went on to play in college. He’s also, by Josh’s account, the single most important figure in his football life — not a mentor in the abstract sense, but a trainer, every day, for as long as Josh can remember. “He’s been my trainer my entire life,” Josh says. Ask him who’s had the biggest impact on him and he doesn’t hesitate or diplomatically spread the credit around. It’s Chris — the hype man, the coach, the one who takes the college contacts and platforms that used to be evaluating him and points them at his little brother instead. That’s a specific kind of generosity, and it’s not the norm. Plenty of older brothers who were the guy would rather stay the guy. Josh grew up in the wake of that career and decided he wanted one of his own, and nearly ten years in, the man running his workouts hasn’t changed.

There’s another detail, though, and it’s the one that actually explains him. Josh had what he calls a weird birthday, and in youth ball that meant he was never lined up with kids his own grade. Every season, he got assigned to the team a year older. Every season, he was the smaller one. That went on until he reached high school. Most kids get chewed up by an arrangement like that. Josh decided to lean into it. “I ended up using that to my advantage and continuing to train, grow, and play as if I was a year older,” he says. By the time the age brackets finally caught up to him, the adjustment period everyone else was going through had already happened to him years earlier — which is why the Libertyville game reads a lot less like a fluke once you know the context. Size never rattled him, because size was the entire environment he learned the position in.

The playing style follows directly from that upbringing. Josh isn’t a quarterback who needs the play to work as drawn; he’s most alive when it doesn’t. “I just love to make plays happen,” he says. “I love using my legs, making people miss, and hauling the ball downfield.” Which brings up the comparison he’s heard and is happy to own — Johnny Manziel, similar frame, similar play style, similar refusal to let a broken pocket end a down. There’s a Prep Redzone piece drawing the line between the two of them. Josh grew up watching that tape and doesn’t pretend otherwise. Alongside it he’s been building a camp résumé, with Prep Redzone events and the UA All-American Camp on the calendar and Chris handling the day-to-day development in between.

We ask every athlete what leadership means to them, and the answers are usually some version of leading by example. Josh’s was sharper. “Knowing how to yell with your team and not at your team,” he says. “That’s what separates true leaders from want-to-bes. Some people try to lead, others were born to.” There’s a real distinction buried in there, and it’s one plenty of grown men in coaching still haven’t worked out. Volume aimed at a teammate is a verdict. Volume aimed alongside a teammate is fuel. A sophomore knowing the difference tells you something about the huddle he’s going to run when he gets it.

Word has already started moving on him, with interest circulating from Michigan State, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Illinois State and Toledo, and rankings placing him among the top 20 quarterbacks nationally in the 2029 class and as the 14th-ranked overall player in Illinois. That’s a lot of eyes for a quarterback who hasn’t taken the varsity job yet — which happens to be exactly what he’s after. Short term, he wants that job. Long term, he wants to climb from 12th to top three in his class. And underneath both of those sits the one he keeps returning to: Josh wants to be the first quarterback to win Lemont a state title. Not a quarterback who wins one. The first. His brother’s name is already on that building, and Josh has gone and picked out something that isn’t there yet. He’s a sophomore. He has three seasons to go get it.

X: @juice_montell5 · IG: @juicemontell · Profile: quarterbackmagazine.com/profile-about/josh-juice-montell

With the fall season underway, Josh’s QB Magazine profile is where the 2029 record starts collecting in one place — film, updates and features together as the year develops. An upgraded membership adds more to that page: expanded film placement, priority feature distribution across our Instagram and X channels, and season-long profile updates as the fall unfolds. For a quarterback with three seasons still ahead of him, it’s a straightforward way to keep the résumé organized and in front of people while the games do the talking. Details on upgrade tiers are available through the Quarterback Magazine membership page.