Leading OFF
Beloved mom driving force behind Martin’s success
She barely reached the shoulders of the strapping young man to her side, but Lourdes Martin nonetheless clung to her grandson like a tall oak in a strong wind. Standing in a corner on the floor of Madison Square Garden, Lourdes had tucked her head under 18-yearold Brandon’s left arm, the same one he’d draped over her shoulders and clasped into her hand, just to make sure the crying she’d mostly overcome but the shaking that was still rippling through her body wouldn’t cause her to fall.
When you’ve just watched your son Frank, Brandon’s father, coach his South Carolina basketball team into a most unlikely Final Four berth, when you’ve just stood on the court and watched that same son you raised all on your own snip the final strands of the net to the overhead strains of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New
York, when you’ve just emerged from a hug with that son so powerful neither of you could hold back your tears, you are understandably a bit weak in the knees and perhaps prone to paying a physical price for such an emotional moment.
“I was out of breath, and then when I hugged my son, it was just, ‘Please, God, give me some peace,’ ” Lourdes said Sunday, with all the crazy trappings of South Carolina’s 77-70 Elite Eight victory against Florida swirling around her. “He told me, he said, ‘Mommy, I’m so happy, but please don’t cry.’ But he was crying, too. I’ve been crying for a while now.”
Yet here’s the thing Frank Martin would really want you to know about the amazing woman he is privileged to call Mom. She might have needed some support Sunday, but for him, she has been standing tall forever.
“Strongest woman I’ve ever met,” Martin said from behind a stage and a microphone Sunday, using the highest point of his professional life to highlight some of the most compelling ones of his personal life. He is the son of Cuban immigrants exiled by political persecution, and he and his sister learned everything they know from this indestructible woman, from a mother and grandmother who fought for every inch of their American dream.
“Husband runs out, leaves her, never gives her a penny, she never takes him to court, doesn’t make excuses,” Martin said. “Worked on a salary for — as a secretary. Raised my sister and I. We’d go to Wendy’s or Burger King every two Fridays; that was our family meal. She gave me the courage to try and do this for a living.
“Every time I’m in a difficult moment and I’ve got to make a choice and do right or do wrong — I made her cry one time when I was a teenager because I made the wrong choice. I’m never making her cry again for making the wrong choice. And watching her cry tears of joy because all her sacrifices have allowed me and my sister to move forward in life. Those are the tears that are important to me. That’s extending her life. When you make your mother cry for joy, it gives her more life, and she’s a special lady. Special lady.”
Statistics can only tell you plenty about what happened in a basketball game, and on this particular afternoon, South Carolina offered plenty of evidence of why Frank Martin was able to push the Gamecocks to the first Final Four in program history. He coached an offense that had four starters who scored in double figures and a defense that held Florida to 7for-26 shooting from three-point range. But the true pulse of sports runs so much deeper than a box score, runs through the people behind those numbers, people such as Frank Martin, who still brings his mother to every game.
“We know her personally. She’s been there for everything, ups and down,” senior sixth man Duane Notice said inside the celebration in a winning locker room. “I think she was even on my recruiting visit. That shows the relationship we have with her. The fact that we could do this in front of her is just an amazing experience. And it shows that Frank is a great guy. We preach family — family’s very important to us — everybody on the coaching staff, their wives and children, we’re all close with.”
“She’s a real sweet lady, man,” fellow senior Justin McKie said. “Being around her kind of reassures you. When you’re like, ‘Man, Coach is on me,’ she reassures you that he loves you, he just wants you to do good. She’s a real sweetheart. ... He talks about her all the time, about her bringing him up, helped shape him into the man and leader he is today.”
That Martin has found a strong path to bonding with his players is undeniable. They speak reverently of staying connected to his voice throughout a game, talk respectfully of what he has accomplished everywhere he has coached and why that makes them continue to believe what he is preaching to them, open up honestly about the impact his personality has had on them, even when he comes across your television screen looking like a wild man screaming at his players.
“A lot of times you see the yelling while we’re on the court, but people don’t pay attention when we’re on the bench and he’s teaching,” McKie said. “They just see he’s loud. And he is loud; Coach is loud. That’s his intensity. He told us before this tournament just stick with him, we listened to him all year and had success, so listen to him throughout this tournament and we’ll be fine. That’s what we’ve done.”
They have, in the words of a coach who used a tug-of-war analogy to weather a tough midseason stretch, “hung on to the rope.” They could do no less for a man who has clung to every life raft life gave him. Frank Martin stayed away from the meanness in the streets of his Miami neighborhood. He bonded with the Miami High teammates who would become friends for life, eating his mom’s grilled tuna steaks with them by their backyard pool, waving to them as they sit in the stands for every tournament game. He asked the same woman on a date seven times before she said yes, and he never let go of Anya until she became his wife and they started a family.
“Everybody thinks that he’s tough,” Lourdes says, still hanging on to Brandon, who hopes to continue his basketball career next year in college. “I mean, he’s tough, but you’ve got to be tough to coach. At the same time, he takes care of his players. At home, he’s a great husband, he’s a great father, he’s a great son. This is his oldest son right here, and he’s a great dad. He cooks for them, takes care of them when he’s home. He’s just a big teddy bear.”
Last Sunday, Frank Martin went to the top step of a yellow ladder and cut away the final strands of the basket that sent him to his professional dreams. But you can bet on this: He will never forget the personal love that got him there.