Pacheco senior misses out on chance to swim on big stage due to coronavirus pandemic
Senior Spotlight is a series of stories by the Merced Sun-Star highlighting the stories of high school senior athletes from the spring season who had their seasons cut short due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Pacheco High senior Bradley Martinez wanted to experience what it was like to compete at the Sac-Joaquin Section Swimming Championships.
Martinez wanted to showcase his skills in the pool on a big stage.
He came close as a junior last year, swimming in the 50 and 100-yard freestyle events.
“I was 1 second away,” Martinez said. “I was really close.”
Martinez and three of his Panthers teammates would have qualified for the section meet this year. In just their second swim meet of the season, Martinez teamed up with sophomore Dereck Rubio and juniors Izac Resendiz and Christian Soberanes to win a 200-freestyle relay event in in 1 minute and 32.04 seconds during a swim meet against Lathrop. The section qualifying mark for the 200 relay is 1:40.
If the season wasn’t canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, Martinez would have reached his goal of swimming against the top swimmers in the section. The boys trials for the section championships were scheduled for Friday and the finals set for Saturday at Tokay High in Lodi.
“It sucks, I’m not going to lie,” said Pacheco swimming coach Irene Duke. “It dampened all the kids’ moods when the season was canceled. He had finally made it. Our kids’ season was taken away, especially Bradley. He was the type of kid that was pushing everyone to get better. It was upsetting. All the kids wanted to go to sections.”
The sudden end to the season was a tough blow to the entire Pacheco swimming program. The Panthers boys team finished last year with a 1-6 record in the Western Athletic Conference and were off to a 2-0 start this season. The girls were also 2-0 in the WAC.
The Panthers coaches had named Martinez one of the captains of the team.
“He’s just the type of kid who makes everyone around him feel good,” Duke said. “That’s the type of kid he is. He makes everyone feel welcome and he helps everyone enjoy their time there. He’s always cheering on his teammates.”
Martinez took his younger relay teammates under his wing this year and really pushed them at practice.
Meanwhile, he was doing everything he could to improve himself. He usually stayed after practice to work on his technique, doing whatever he could do to help himself drop his times.
“Every day after practice, I’d stay 5 or 10 minutes extra to practice one thing I might be working on to get better that day. It might be my diving or flip turns.”
Martinez was busy year round, also playing football and wrestling all four years at Pacheco. It’s tough to find three other sports more demanding than football, wrestling and swimming.
“It was definitely time consuming,” he said. “I didn’t have a lot of free time to myself.”
Martinez says the three sports did teach him about the importance of family and team work. That’s why it was so rewarding when he and his relay team bested the section qualifying mark.
“It was such an unreal feeling,” Martinez said. “I can’t believe with the little experience we had that we really did it. I was proud of my boys. I kept asking my coach, ‘Did we really make sections?’ It was really overwhelming.”
Martinez can only imagine what it would have been like to compete at the section meet.
“It would have been nerve wracking,” he said. “It would have been my first time reaching sections. Being a senior, I would have been excited. I would be happy to be there.”
