GREG LUCA | STAFF WRITER
EDCOUCH — When Edcouch-Elsa senior Cassidy Martinez played volleyball during eighth grade, she couldn’t get any higher than the ‘C’ team.
One year later, she was a freshman playing a significant role on varsity. And as a junior, she was the District 32-5A Offensive Player of the Year.
So far as a senior, Martinez has looked better than ever, ranking among the YellowJackets leaders in kills. She hopes to culminate her impressive rise to the top with an outright district championship.
“I’m so happy and so proud of her,” coach Ofelia Griffith said. “She’s worked and earned her way. That’s the kind of player I use not only because of her strong work ethic and great attitude, but because of where she started off.”
Martinez remembers knowing only the basics of volleyball during her middle school days. She could bump and she could spike, but that was about the extent of it.
Griffith, however, immediately saw potential because of Martinez’s impressive vertical and powerful hitting during summer open-gym sessions.
“Once that catches your attention, then you start looking, and you can see potential,” Griffith said. “You have all of those things in place: You have that natural skill and ability, you have that attitude and work ethic, and then when the coaches come in, we’ll put all of that together and we can make something happen.”
Martinez said she always enjoyed volleyball but just didn’t have the same knowledge as a lot of the other players. Being put on the varsity roster from the start of her high-school career, Martinez got to go through more rigorous drills that she said improved her vertical and upped her hitting power.
She was also inspired by one of the YellowJackets seniors at the time, Arianna Tanguma.
“I loved the way she played volleyball, so I wanted to try to be exactly like her,” Martinez said. “It was just the drive to become good. … I went from not knowing anything about volleyball to trying to know everything in that one year.”
All along, Martinez’s primary focuses were adding strength and leaping ability. Without much of a club volleyball scene in the Edcouch-Elsa system, Martinez did it the old-fashioned way, Griffith said: with workouts and drills during the YellowJackets open gym periods.
After starting out as a middle blocker, Martinez graduated into an outside hitting position. She thrived in the new role, earning Offensive Player of the Year honors last season.
“I felt like I did good, but I didn’t do my complete best,” Martinez said. “It was an improvement, but now it’s just a bigger improvement.”
This season, Martinez said she’s more confident, knowing she’s put in the work to add strength each year she’s been in the program.
She’s also taken major steps forward as an attacker by developing her accuracy and placement.
“She’s able to shift her hips a lot,” setter Samantha Martinez said. “She knows how to hit line, she knows how to hit cross angle, and she knows how to hit everything. Depending on how I’m going to give her the set, she’ll do what she needs to do to get the point.”
Cassidy and Samantha are the only two seniors on a roster with two freshmen and four sophomores playing significant time. The older players have taken to showing the younger girls the ropes, sometimes reminding them of little things like what Griffith means when she says to keep the ball low and deep.
Cassidy said the biggest message she’s tried to pass along is to consistently play hard and keep trying to improve — just like Cassidy did when she was coming up.
“She is where she’s at because she’s earned it and she held onto it,” Griffith said. “I have her to the point where she’ll be our go-to person to come in and finish it off for us.”