As players stretch at the start of football practice at Sheridan High School, Zeric "Coach Z" Martinez stops to greet every player on the field. Martinez was once a homeless student at the school. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
During the opening-day assembly at Sheridan High School, when new football coach and athletic director Zeric Martinez spoke to the staff, his story surprised a lot of folks ? including one who helped hire him.
"I knew he had struggles," says Jen Roberts-Uhlig, his classmate at Sheridan in the mid-1990s and now former AD for whom Martinez takes over. "But when he gave that speech, that's when I knew how deep it was."
Martinez, 34, returns to his alma mater in his dream job carrying the troubling memories of a senior year spent largely as a vagabond. Months of under-the-radar couch surfing ended that winter, when he was quietly taken in by the school's wrestling coach, Forrest Davis, who treated him like a
Forrest Davis, left, and Zeric Martinez. (Kathryn Scott Osler, The Denver Post)
son.So when the former three-sport athlete surprised his former Rams coach ? still an industrial arts teacher at the school ? and many others by sharing his personal account, there weren't many dry eyes.
"He's bawling, and I'm doing everything I could to hold back, but I cried when I was telling everybody about it," Martinez says. "It was a special moment."
The auditorium rose in a standing ovation.
"Sometimes," Davis says days later, still a little moist around the eyes, "you don't know your impact on a kid until he comes back."
From age 5, Martinez had pingponged between his mother in Washington state and his father in Denver. As a teen craving a football scholarship, and a means to more closely connect with his dad, he tried to settle in at Sheridan High.
When a falling out with his father sent him packing, he bounced into an ill-fated living arrangement with an aunt that blew up over her involvement with drugs.
Suddenly, Martinez found himself on his own.
"Every other day I stayed with a different friend," he explains, "so nobody caught wind that I was homeless."
He lived out of two duffel bags ? one he carried with him and another he kept at school.
Zeric Martinez, the head football coach and athletic director at Sheridan High School, throws the football with his coaching whistle at the ready. He was out on the football field for practice on Wednesday in Sheridan. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
Most days he wore sweat pants. He didn't own a pair of jeans.He never thought about breakfast. The principal eventually hooked him up with a free lunch. Dinner came as a fringe benefit of working a night shift at either McDonald's or Dairy Queen.
On a typical day, Martinez would attend early morning classes before heading to a nearby carpentry shop for a work-study program. He'd get off in time for football, track or wrestling practice.
He'd try to line up a couch or a bed ahead of time, but occasionally at closing time he would leverage his job to secure somewhere to crash for the night.
"When it got really rough," Martinez recalls, "I'd call a buddy and ask, 'You want anything from DQ?' They'd usually say sure, they could use some Blizzards. And I'd show up at their house ? and just stay."
The pivotal juncture in his senior year came around the time of the regional wrestling tournament in February, when Martinez had a high ranking going into the competition and a seemingly easy road to qualifying for state.
He faced an opponent he'd wrestled and beaten several previous times, including just two weeks earlier.
But on this night, he didn't have it ? mentally or physically. Beaten down by the endless cycle of school, work and the constant uncertainty about where he'd sleep at night, he lost a match he never thought he'd lose. He remembers his opponent on top of him, pressing him to the mat while he could see his teammates urging him to make one last surge.
"So I went for it," he says. "And it wasn't there."
Afterward, his coach approached him as he slumped against a wall, placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder and asked him what was wrong. The young wrestler broke down.
The next day, Davis brought him a lunch made by his wife. Martinez remembers every bite: ham on wheat, with mayo and some sort of olives. A couple of days after that, Davis pulled Martinez aside and invited him to become a part of their family.
"At first, it was shocking," Martinez says. "How could a guy want to bring some strange kid into his house? He had no clue what I was doing, bouncing from house to house."
Actually, Davis says, he knew a little bit of what was going on. But when he drove Martinez to his aunt's house to pick up the rest of his belongings, the boy told him to wait in the car.
"I thought, 'This is freaky,' " recalls Davis. "But I could just tell there was something in his eyes and in his voice. So I did."
Martinez says he saw some familiar vehicles parked at the house and knew his coach would be walking into a dangerous situation. Davis remembers sitting in the car and coming to a realization: This kid really needs to get out of there.
Life under Davis' roof was another world, governed by only four rules: eat what is served; clean up after yourself; go to church, any church you choose; and always let us know where you're going.
"The story with Zeric is that it's not one coach having a relationship with one wrestler," Davis says. "It's this student who had a relationship with the whole family. What's cool is he easily could've said, 'Nah, I don't want to come live with you.' But he was at wit's end, and he needed a turning point."
The living arrangement lasted through graduation. The relationship has seen Martinez through everything after.
He saw his own football dream come to an end at a small college in Kansas. But his passion for sports eventually gave rise to a coaching career, mostly as an assistant in a variety of sports. He has pursued the football head coaching dream while also piecing together the bachelor's degree that got put on hold while he started a family.
Most recently, he coached at Mountain Vista High School, biding his time and enduring a couple of rejected applications at Sheridan before this opportunity came along.
"I've always felt like Sheridan was home," says Martinez, who sees a lot of students today who face struggles similar to his own. "I love the type of kids that are here. It's how I grew up. I can reach these kids."
Principal Michele Kelley, who made the final decision to hire Martinez, was moved especially by his passion and his heart ? and his empathy for struggling kids.
"I didn't even realize his story until the opening session, when he shared how Forrest had taken him in," she says. "Now, he'll see a kid who doesn't look quite right and have a conversation with them. There are kids out for football who never have been before."
Roberts-Uhlig, the athletic director who zeroed in on Martinez as the leading candidate for the football job, left that job to become assistant commissioner for the Colorado High School Activities Association. She remembers him from the '90s as someone with a perpetual smile that concealed his personal trials.
"I knew he had different family dynamics ? it wasn't warm and fuzzy for him every day," she says. "But that did not change who he was."
In evaluating him as a candidate to coach the Rams, she adds, it came down to his ability to build relationships with students and rekindle the small-town-in-the-big-city spirit of the school.
"He knew his X's and O's," she says. "But he has what you can't get in some people, that compassion and pride and ability to build relationships with kids. I use the motto, 'Once a Ram, always a Ram.' I say it, but I think he bleeds it."
For inspiration, Martinez can always look across the hall to the man who made such a difference in his life ? and who couldn't be happier that his former student has found a professional home at the school they both love.
"The best way to describe it is 'proud father,' " says Davis. "I'm so proud he fulfilled his dream, and now he's giving back to a community that touched his life. I happened to be the lucky one that took him in."
Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739, ksimpson@denverpost.com or twitter.com/ksimpsondp
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