By Jennifer Rivera ‘17
Sophomore David Martinez is currently involved in the baseball team. Martinez has been in baseball since his freshman year.
Martinez started playing baseball since he was in kindergarten. He started playing tee-ball and then played house league baseball. At the age of nine, Martinez realized that he wanted to tryout for a traveling team. He made all of the ones that he tried out for.
Besides baseball, he has played soccer since he was seven years old. Martinez played at a house league at Olympia Park. He tried out for a travel team called the Celtics. After 4 years of playing on the tea, he played on a travel team in Park Ridge. In eighth grade, he got asthma. He realized that soccer was not going to be good for him anymore.
Besides baseball and soccer, he played football on a team called the Oriole Park Falcons. He began at the age of nine and played for two years. At the time, he decided to stop playing due to the fact that his body was not built for football. Martinez also played basketball in elementary school from fifth grade to eighth grade.
Martinez believes that baseball is enough for him and that school is more important. He thinks that he should focus on that above everything else. He finds interest in the sports Lacrosse and Ultimate Frisbee.
Martinez thinks that his interest in sports has a lot to do with his family. His grandpa always liked baseball and his father played baseball when he was younger. With that, he felt that h kind of grew into it. On his mother’s side, his grandpa played professional soccer. That influenced him to try it and end up enjoying it.
Martinez stated, “My brother Ben is my biggest inspiration. Mainly because he is my big brother and most of the time the younger siblings look up to and want to be like their older sibling(s), but also because he is very good at baseball, I want to be better than him, so I pushed myself a lot. I don’t know who’s better, but that doesn’t matter to me. We’re family.”
“My favorite sport is baseball because I love playing it, and I love the idea if the game. It’s a mental sport so it allows all of the players on the field to be involved in each and every play” explained Martinez.
