Local wrestler meets challenges on the mat and in life

Kerwin Martinez is used to wrestling under pressure.
So much so that the bright lights and sheer mass of the Macon Coliseum, the historic home of wrestling that’s determined years of Georgia state champions with a reputation of swallowing wide-eyed first-timers, had almost no effect on the 126-pound phenom as he battled to a 2021 state finals appearance as a freshman, putting him on pace to potentially be the most successful wrestler in Lumpkin County’s storied wrestling history.
In hindsight, Martinez will likely never wrestle in a match with more pressure than his first, which was supposed to end his wrestling career before it ever started.
“I told my Dad, because he likes soccer, there’s a game at this place, do you want to go with me? And he said I could go and he would see me there,” Martinez said about his first time wrestling. “When we got there, we were doing rolls and warming up and stuff and my Dad got there and said ‘What are you doing here? This is not football.’”
After realizing he had been tricked, his dad allowed him to stay, on one condition.
“He went to the coach and said ‘Coach, I need Kerwin to wrestle someone and if I see that he beats the kid, I will let him wrestle, but if not, he’s out,’” Martinez said. “… I’m sitting there like what am I supposed to do? I’d never wrestled and [the coach] said ‘Just get the legs.’”
From there, Martinez showed he had potential, which intrigued the coach.
“I was seven years old and I wrestled some other kid…I got the legs of the kid and threw him to the ground. We were wrestling there and the coach stopped us and then went with my dad and said ‘Let him stay here, I will get him ready. I will form him and he’ll get better.’”
The victory birthed a love for the sport of wrestling that even the toughest of times couldn’t quench.

BIGGER BATTLES

Martinez was born in Lumpkin County, but he and his family moved back to Mexico when he was young. There he was introduced to wrestling by his childhood best friend.
“My friend had a year of wrestling already, but he never told me,” Martinez said. “Then he invited me one day, he said ‘Do you want to go throw some people?’ And I said yeah, let's go.”
After winning his first match just to be allowed to continue wrestling, Martinez was signed into his first tournament just four days later.
After a personal tragedy his parents made the tough decision to send Martinez the lone U.S. citizen in his immediate family, back to the states to live with his uncle and aunt in Lumpkin County, where they deemed he would be more safe.
During what Martinez refers to as “the bad times,” he nearly quit wrestling all together.
“I was thinking about it and I saw videos of people wrestling and I was like ‘This is actually what I love to do. This is my life.’ And I got back in and started winning matches.”
When he arrived in Lumpkin County in the fall of 2020, Martinez decided to join the wrestling team. But with the transition also came hesitancy, causing him to lie, through the translation of teammate Emmanuel Nieto, about how long he’d been wrestling.  
“He told me to lie for him, he said ‘Just tell them I have like two or three years experience,’” Nieto, now a senior, said.
“I didn’t know if they were going to be good,” Martinez said. “If they were good I would have an excuse, ‘I just have two years.’ But when I got here, I beat everyone.”

NEW MOVES

With the move came adjustments, both on and off the mat, as Martinez had to relearn English while also learning a new style of wrestling.
“He’s a Freestyle/Greco guy, which is kind of like comparing football to rugby,” head coach Sean Hage said. “They’re very similar but the scoring is different. His way of competing and how he attacked was a whole lot different….It was tough to kind of get him to switch over and by the end of the season he was really understanding things and of course he made it to the state finals.”
Bringing his years of experience from wrestling Freestyle/Greco in Mexico has added a different dimension to his wrestling here, which has given him a bit of an advantage, Hage said.
“When you have to switch styles like that, you’re having to understand the different scoring, your thought, your process and how you’re attacking is different and then you have to start thinking tactically, which Kerwin does very well,” Hage said. “Freestyle is a much faster style of wrestling….So he’s used to keeping a heavier pace going. There’s a lot of different gifts he’s getting for having that freestyle experience as much as he has.”
But while he brought a different dynamic to the team as a new freshman, this year, now more comfortable speaking in English, Martinez became one of the main leaders on the team. Part of this came through sharing his story with his teammates and coaches. Hage said this was a powerful moment that might’ve helped save the season.
“It’s very emotional. He shared that part of his story about three-quarters of the way through the season,” Hage said. “That’s about the time you get to that point where you’re exhausted, you’re going to have injuries, you’re going to be sick and you’re still dealing with school. There’s so many different things that are breaking you down besides what’s happening on the mat and when you get to that point, if you’re training correctly, everybody thinks about quitting.”
Martinez was able to put things in perspective for his teammates.
“When he comes in and tells them about himself and what’s driving him, it’s kind of like the stress and pressure of having had lost his best friend and thinking about wrestling for him, it puts your stuff in perspective and then you think, ‘maybe my stuff’s not so bad,’” said Hage. “They see all that he’s been through and he still has a great attitude and works hard, it’s hard to complain.”

UNDER PRESSURE

Now, after going to the state finals as a freshman, Martinez is in position to make a similar run when the GHSA AAA State Tournament starts on Thursday. And once again, the young wrestler is not worried about the pressure.
“You’re always going to have that pressure,” he said. “In the finals, you’re always wrestling the best kid. You’re not wrestling a bad kid, so you’re always going to have that pressure, but you have to work from that pressure. You have to know how to get through it.”
In the minutes before a match Martinez handles this pressure by getting in the right mindset, pacing around in quick, short strides while listening to music. In his mind, he goes into the darkness to remind himself who he wrestles for.
“What’s going on in my head is just my family, the stuff I got through, my parents, my family here, just everything,” he said.
This sometimes causes a flurry of emotions to come out when he ends a match victoriously, like during Saturday’s semifinal match at the Sectional Tournament when Martinez pinned his opponent with only six seconds left after trailing the entire match.  
“After I wrestle, whenever I win, I do this celebration, like ‘This is for my family, for everyone. For my best friend, for everyone.’ It’s something special that you do, like for your people,” he said.
When it comes to Martinez’s people, he puts his parents, as well as his Uncle Javier Martinez and Aunt Erika Carrizalez at the top of that list.
“My dad, he will always support me, my mom too and the same for my uncle and my aunt,” he said. “They got me here….They are actually the heroes of the story. That’s why I wrestle, because I know they support me, everyone supports me and loves me. I know everyone has hope in me that I can win State.”
His coach sees Kerwin’s potential far beyond simply winning state.
“He’s on pace to be the greatest Lumpkin wrestler ever after being a state finalist as a freshman,” Hage said. “Not to put any pressure on him, but he’s very capable of being a four-time state finalist.”
Oddly enough, Kerwin’s path to becoming a four-time finalist has already been proven possible, by his opponent from last year’s State finals matchup, Jacob Pedraza of North Hall High School.
“The kid he wrestled his freshman year was Pedraza from North Hall, who is from the same town in Mexico that he’s from,” Hage said. “They wrestled each other when they were kids. Pedraza was a freshman finalist and lost and then he was a state finalist for the next three years. Pedraza’s one of the greatest wrestlers to come out of AAA and now Kerwin is on that same path.”
While Kerwin can’t say for sure how this tournament will play out, everyone around him knows one thing for sure, he’ll go at it full speed.
“I’m going to go with all the energy like I always do. If I win, I win. If I lose, I’ll lose with honor,” he said. “I’m going to give everything and whatever happens, happens. I’m not going to tell you I’ll win, but I’m not going to tell you I’ll lose. I’m going to give everything and let that be the answer. I’m not the type of kid that talks. I do.”