BY JON R. LaFOLLETTE | STAFF WRITER
Jocelyn Martinez understood what was asked of her, but was dubious as to whether or not she could accomplish the task at hand.
The junior member of the Roma Gladiators swim team stood on a diving block at the Pharr Aquatics Center during the District 32-5A Swimming and Diving Championships. Martinez watched helplessly as the Sharyland High Rattlers relay team amassed a five second lead over Roma in the girls 400-yard freestyle relay. Martinez, the anchor, would be the last Gladiator to enter the water — the desperate team’s last hope for a gold medal.
With her goggles and cap tightly bound to her head, Martinez darted into the water with a mixture of grace and fortitude. She had only 100 yards to catch Sharyland’s Andrea Valdez.
“Oh no,” a Sharyland assistant coach moaned. “We don’t have a big enough lead.”
In methodical fashion, Martinez efficiently and ruthlessly tore through the pool with a level of exactness so remarkable it caused the Rattlers coaching staff to surrender the relay while they still held the top spot.
With 50 yards remaining, Martinez pulled even with Valdez before swimming away at the relay’s conclusion to hand Roma a first place finish with a time of 4 minutes, 4.24 seconds, good enough to beat Sharyland by a 1.26 second margin.
“It was really hard,” Martinez said. “At 50 (yards), I saw I was catching up to (Valdez). I told myself, ‘Let’s just do it.’”
Martinez’s performance in the 400 freestyle relay helped earn the 17-year-old the Female Athlete of the Meet honors. She won first place in every event in which she competed, including the 100 and 200 freestyle. Her perfect day in the pool propelled her to this week’s regional competition in Corpus Christi.
Not bad for a rookie.
Though Martinez is competing in her first year on the varsity team, she is far from a novice. In fact, the native of Monterrey, Mexico has arguably the most extensive background of any swimmer in the Valley.
Martinez began swimming when she was 7 years of age after her father, who can’t swim, encouraged her to learn. She also participated in diving and gymnastics, but says she stuck with the pool because of “adrenaline.”
“I like getting first place,” Martinez said. “I like that feeling of everything I work for showing.”
Though she learned to love the pool in landlocked Monterrey, Martinez undertook a more adventurous aquatic endeavor in the form of open water swimming, competing in the ocean waters of Cancun and Acapulco.
“I like swimming in the ocean,” she said. “You swim and you don’t see anything. It’s not like here where you swim back-and-forth four times. There’s no line. You make your own path.”
Martinez was 13 when she first swam in the ocean for a meet and was rudely introduced to the highly competitive, and highly confrontational, world of open water competition.
“It’s hard because everyone is pushing you and they push your head,” Martinez said. “It was only a 100-meter race, and I started crying because girls pushed my head under water. These girls had swam in the ocean for three years and they were on the same team. One girl was on my left and the other was on my right, and they just came after me. I was just like, ‘No don’t. Please just pass me. I don’t want to win. I just want to finish.’”
Finish she did, dejected and dour. But her desire remained despite it all.
“It’s really hard to swim in the ocean. But if you like swimming, you’re going to do it no matter what,” Martinez said. “I wanted to do it, so I wanted to train for it.”
Martinez moved to Roma this year, but was already familiar with the school’s swim program and its coach, Calvin Snyder. Snyder came to know of Jocelyn through her older sister Pamela, who was a member of the Gladiators swim team.
Martinez brings with her not just the experience of a childhood spent in the water, but a firm sense of determination to win. For her, swimming is more than an extracurricular activity, it’s a means by which she defines herself.
“I feel like for some kids in the Valley, it’s not a sport. It’s just a class they have to pass,” she said. “(Schools) need to motivate them more. They don’t care. They’ll miss a practice and act like it’s no big deal.”
It’s that very all-or-nothing attitude which endears Martinez to her coaches, who at times have to rein in her spirited ambition.
“She always says, ‘Coach I want to break my record,’ I tell her everything else comes with the training,” Roma assistant coach Omar Mireles said. “If you train hard and you work hard then you’ll get one.”
At the district championships in Pharr, Martinez eyed a pool record of under 2:00.0 in the 200 freestyle. Though she won gold in the event by more than 10 seconds, her final time was 2:00.07.
“She told me, ‘Coach, I swam ugly today,’ That’s just the way she thinks.” Mireles said. “I told her she didn’t, that she had another shot and to just relax.”
Though Martinez is comfortable with long-distance swimming, and has swum the 5K in Mexico as well as the 500-yard freestyle for Roma, Snyder deliberately placed her in shorter events with an eye towards getting his fastest swimmer to state competition.
This weekend, Martinez will once again swim with a sense of urgency, as if the weight of the entire ocean were on her back. All the while however, she’ll look to do what she did in Pharr – dominate while making the whole thing look easy.