Martinez leads upstart Regis Jesuit bid
AUROR A » Valor Christian, Class 5A state football champion four of the past six seasons, is again seeded No. 1 in the playoffs and sits in the driver’s seat heading into its second-round home game Friday.
But to advance to the quarterfinals, Valor (10-0) will have to fend off up-and-coming No. 16 Regis Jesuit (7-4), which features the classification’s leader in total touchdowns, the largely unheralded — and, perhaps, underrecruited — Kiahn Martinez.
“Kiahn has the complete package,” Regis Jesuit coach Danny Filleman said. “He’s got the toughness, he’s got the quickness, the field vision and really good hands out of the backfield. He’s a versatile player who’s really hard to contain.”
Martinez’s 28 touchdowns are second in Colorado behind Class 3A’s Noah Roper of Erie, who has 32. Yet the senior running back’s only college offers are from Western State and Fort Lewis, even though he checks many boxes of a higher-division recruit by statistical metrics (3,374 career rushing yards, 60 career scores and 4.50second clocking in the 40-yard dash). The 5-foot-9, 185-pounder routinely has defenders on skates with his elusiveness.
But before Martinez could rack up the stats this season, he had to help accelerate the growth of a fresh-faced Raiders offense that features a freshman quarterback, Nicco Marchiol, as well as three underclassmen on the offensive line.
The inevitable growing pains Regis Jesuit dealt with early in the season didn’t help Martinez’s college prospects. He averaged 123.1 yards rushing per game as a junior while helping the Raiders make the quarterfinals, but he broke the 100-yard mark just once in his first five games this season as Regis stumbled to a 1-4 start.
“He’s been in a tough situation where (college coaches) want to see senior film the first few games, and he was doing all he could behind a young offensive line and a young quarterback,” Filleman said “He didn’t put up huge numbers in those games, but he’s been our workhorse, and we just keep trying to find different ways to get him the ball.”
Regis Jesuit began to gel as the season progressed with Martinez and senior linebacker Geno Ma- cias (121 tackles) the catalysts.
The Raiders closed the regular season with five consecutive victories — with Martinez rushing for 100-plus yards in four of those games — en route to winning the Class 5A South Conference title. Then, they battered No. 17 Smoky Hill 48-14 in the first round of the playoffs last week.
“It seems like an eon ago that we had that stretch of three straight losses (during September),” Filleman said. “There were chances when these kids could have packed it up and folded up their tents and not played for each other. But they didn’t do that. They kept believing in each other and the coaches, and we turned the corner.”
And while the Raiders are huge underdogs in Friday’s game at Valor Stadium in Highlands Ranch, Martinez remains uber-focused. Though he doesn’t have any FBS or FCS offers yet, the likes of CSU-Pueblo, Northern Colorado and Wyoming have all shown interest in recent weeks. There is, after all, an underdog stage on which the 17-year-old can showcase his talents this week.
Martinez is ready to own the moment.
“I know I can play against all those guys with big offers, I can play against the big teams, and I can hang with them just as well as they hang with me,” he said. “I feel like I’ve always played with a chip on my shoulder.”