NEW MARKET — Southmont’s Collin Martin is a leader for the Mountie wrestling team. However during the fall while he was manning the offensive line for Southmont football, Martin suffered a scary injury that no athlete wants to go through.
Mid-way through the season Martin suffered a bruised spleen and also had internal bleeding. The injury cost him to miss significant time on the football field and even put some of his wrestling season in jeopardy. Martin simply took the ‘one day at a time approach’ and was able to make it back for the beginning of the wrestling season.
“I just want to thank everyone that helped me get through it,” Martin said. “It originally felt like I just ran into a brick wall and I didn’t know what had hit me. I knew that I just had to overcome it one day at a time and here I am today.”
Being an internal injury and with wrestling on the horizon, Martin knew that he would have to take things at a slow pace as he recovered. Mountie wrestling coach Jamie Welliever knew that as well and didn’t want to rush one of his senior captains back too quick.
“It was a pretty slow process,” Welliever said. “The pounding that you take from wrestling especially with him wrestling in a bigger weight class, it was challenge for him both mentally and physically. The mental confidence he had to build up of saying to himself, ‘it’s ok if I land on it’. There was a moment though about a week before we started that I knew he was back to being his old self and was ready to go.”
Martin who is a hard-nosed competitor in whatever he may doing had to take it easy in his recovery process which lasted about five to six weeks. He couldn’t lift more than 10 pounds, had to sit and watch in his two P.E classes which wasn’t an easy thing to do. The injury still lingers in the back of Martin’s mind while he’s out on the mat, but he’s doing his best to not think about it.
“I pretty much wasn’t allowed to do much of anything,” Martin said. “After I went back in for a checkup after the fifth week, they released me to be able to do some conditioning and agility work. While I’m out there I try not to think about it too much, but when I get taken down in practice by Dunn (Zayden Dunn), or Woodall (Wyatt Woodall) it’s in the back of my mind that if I land just wrong it could be a problem.”
Sometimes it’s tough to watch a person like Martin whose a leader for the Mounties, not be there to lead. Welliever talked about not having one of his leaders while Martin worked his way back to the team. “That was a real challenge for him and the team,” he said. “He wants to be out there setting the example and he couldn’t be out there to do that. Our other seniors did a good job of picking up his leadership, but it really was important for him to play that leader role since he’s paid his dues.”
Back on the mat this season, Southmont has been a force to reckoned with. The Mounties are 14-1 on the season and Martin has played a crucial role in that success. He wanted to get back out there as soon as possible and now that he is, his impact has been felt.
“As a senior captain I felt like I owed it to my team to be back out there,” Martin said. “It’s been fun so far this season. We have some important tournaments coming up, but my senior year has been pretty special so far.”
Welliever at the end of the day had the utmost confidence in Martin to bounce back from the injury. It was only a matter of when he’d be able to return and the fact that Martin missed no live wrestling action was a shot of adrenaline to the whole Mountie team.
“I was hoping that he’d be ready to go by Team State (this Saturday),” Welliever said. “To get back as quick as he did was just an added bonus. You don’t want to have high expectations for him in terms of coming back with an injury like that. I was confident in him because I knew he’d do the work and it’d be done in the right way.”
Martin and the Mounties will return to the mat tonight as they travel to take on McCutcheon before traveling to Martinsville to compete at Team State on Saturday.
