Cedarville legend Kirk Martin headed for Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame By Alan Brads Kirk Martin, former head coach of Cedarville's women's basketball team, earned a nomination as an inductee to the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame. He will officailly join legendary Cedarville figures like Don Callan and Maryalyce Jeremiah as members of the Buckeye state's hall of fame in April. Martin led the Lady Jackets from 2001-2016, but he had already made a name for himself at Southeastern High School, just 11 miles northeast of Cedarville. As a head coach, Martin really only did one thing: win. He stacked up 380 career wins at Cedarville and took the team to two NAIA division II championship games. He averaged 25 wins per season, a mark no other Cedarville women's coach has attained in even a single season. Perhaps most impressively, he led Southeastern to a 162-game conference winning streak, and Cedarville to a 72-game conference winning streak. "It indicated a commitment by my players to the idea that we are gonna do things right every night," Martin said. How did he sustain such success at two schools? "We kept it simple," Martin said. "We're gonna outwork you, we're gonna run, we're gonna run, we're gonna take quality shots and we're gonna rebound the basketball." Martin coached old-school ball, developing post players that practiced carefully rehearsed back-to the basket post moves. He laughs about his refusal to change with the times, but it wasn't broke, so he didn't fix it. Kirk Martin and eventual head coach Kari Hoffman pray with players. Simple but ettective philosophies like that win basketball games at any program, but only if the players buy what the coach is selling Some would say that's out of the coach's hands, but Martin found a way. "I believe every player knew I cared about them," Martin said. "And therefore they trusted that what I was asking them to do would get us to our end point." Building that trust in college proved far more difficult a task than it ever was in his small-town high school career. "There's a little more trust in a high school team," Martin said. "There's more trust from a player who grew up down the street from me than a young woman who never met me until she was a college student." But no matter how challenging it was to start late, Martin had to build those relationships if his players were going to buy into him and his system. "I felt like in four years' time I'd developed relationships with my Cedarville players that matched the relationships I had with high school kids," Martin said. After building effective bonds with his players he still had to convince them to buy into his philosophy. He chose to do so with an all or nothing approach. He determined Cedarville women's basketball players would behave as a team because they belonged to the team. Every detail mattered to him, from what his players wore on the bus to how they stood for the national anthem. "I had expectations of silly things for them to follow because it teaches team, and teaches that we're in this together," Martin said. He did everything he could to get his players to buy in, but still takes as little credit for it as possible. "Lots of coaches can ask for that stuff," Martin said. "If you don't have players that want to buy in it's not gonna work. God gave us kids that wanted to buy in." Graphic by Angela Delano Fall 2023 I
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