A Season to Savor
After years of struggling with migrane headaches, Robertson senior Jake Martinez gets to experience the thrill of victory pain free
1/26/2008
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — The smile on Jake Martinez's face is proof to Leasa Martinez that God answers prayers.
Sometimes, though, it comes in His time, and in His own way.
But when she sees Jake, the middle child of her three sons, and knows he walks, talks, laughs, lives and loves pain-free, the 13 years of almost unending suffering for Jake — and his family — from constant migraine headaches makes the last 18 months all worth it.
It's why every smile is a cherished one for Leasa.
"He can be happy now," Leasa Martinez says. "You can just see him enjoying life, where before everything he did — from waking up in the morning to going to school to sports afterward was three times the work. Now he can just enjoy things, and that's where I see the difference."
It was the difference between a good night's sleep and a long one spent staring at the walls or into the night sky.
And between Jake forcing himself to have a good time with friends and actually doing it.
And between hiding from the roar of a championship crowd and lavishing in it.
That last point was the most troubling for Jake, who has played out most of his childhood before an audience. It was hard to live in the moment when his head constantly throbbed with pain, and the pressure that tried to scream out of each side of his temple led to a silent scream in his heart. The headaches left him dizzy, woozy and often seeing stars, if not tears.
Yet, Jake toiled quietly, with a resolve that dragged him out of bed each and every morning — ever since the moment his head smashed into a concrete floor as the precocious 4-year-old he was, when his cousin Aaron Martinez bucked him off of his mock "bull" ride.
"Some of gods greatest gifts are all too often unanswered ...
Some of gods greatest gifts are unanswered prayers"
— Garth Brooks,
"Unanswered Prayers"
Since then, Jake lived by one creed.
"I wanted to live a normal life like everyone else," Jake Martinez says.
If there is one thing Jake isn't, it's normal. The senior at Las Vegas Robertson is one of the most decorated athletes in the school's history. He has played on two football teams that reached the Class AAA state championship, been a four-time individual and team wrestling champion, and completed his athletic career two weeks ago with a pair of third-place finishes in the 110- and 300-meter hurdles in the AAA state track and field championships.
Jake also has played for a District 2AAA championship team in baseball and lettered in golf, giving him five sports he has earned that distinction.
In the 2007-08 school year, Jake was the co-starting quarterback on the Cardinals' state runner-up team, won the 160-pound wrestling title with one arm, competed on the varsity golf team and helped the track and field team earn a red trophy as the AAA runner-up.
Those accomplishments make him The New Mexican's male athlete of the year, an honor his older brother, Adam, earned for the 2005-06 season.
While this year's accomplishments stand on their own merit, Jake Martinez's greatest feat is that he did them all headache-free — a first for the 18-year-old.
"He's endured so much getting through that," Adam Martinez says. "For him to have willpower, to continue doing this while being at his lowest, that shows a lot about him."
After spending 13 years seeking a cure from one hospital doctor after another (of which there were 25) and traveling as far as the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the answers to the Martinezes' prayers were found in Santa Fe with a homeopathic doctor.
The Martinezes won't identify him at his request, but his mixture of herbal remedies — mostly liquid droplets and dissolvable tablets taken from a variety of roots — and deep tissue massages finally brought relief. And a search that spanned two decades was completed in six weeks.
It also brought much needed relief to the family, who had to deal with the doubts from the traditional medical community.
"There were doctors out there who didn't understand me," Jake says. "They were kind of looking at me like I was crazy for complaining about this. In my head I was thinking, 'How can you help me? You don't even believe me.' "
But even as the Martinezes dealt with the questions about whether the pain was in his head or in his mind, they did find comfort in one session at the Mayo Clinic.
"One of the things they said, that they really pushed for him, was to have a normal life," Leasa says. "That's what we did, but it was tough."
Jake certainly lived up to it, especially with the help of brothers Adam and Daniel.
Their arena, their stadium and their field was their home, and cousins and friends were welcomed and wanted. They had a basketball hoop next to the house, and in the northeast corner of the family's three-acre plot was a baseball diamond, complete with a fair and foul pole. The living room was the place for wrestling, but also for indoor baseball and sometimes football.
The brothers Martinez had everything down to a tee — from the uniforms, the scoreboard, the lineups and even the trophies. As well as the pregame ceremonies.
"They would stand out there and sing the 'Star-Spangled Banner,' " says Richard Martinez, the patriarch of the family who also doubles as the Cardinals' head wrestling coach. "They took it pretty serious."
Their enthusiasm for sports knew no bounds, and sometimes that would be the problem. Richard can't put a figure on the amount of money spent on repairs to the house, whether it was a broken fixture, a torn up floor corner or an entire wall.
"Go show all the marks in the house, and the corners that are bent that I've had to put putty in them already," Richard tells Jake as he points all around the house. "They've worn out the carpet and hit every corner in the house, to where I had to redo the drywall."
"That wasn't me, though, Dad. That was Adam!" Jake interjects.
As much as Jake remembers the good times — and as much as he tried to hide his pain from the rest of the world — those moments are interspersed with struggles.
Of him waking up at 4 a.m., to the quietest "Jake" his mother can whisper, and Leasa sometimes watching Jake literally crawl out of bed, trying to make it to the bathroom.
"The bad days were, on a scale of one to ten, about a six or a seven," she recalls.
Or of Jake using every ounce of energy and strength to enjoy the dinner-table banter with the family.
Or of Coach Martinez doing his fatherly duties and forfeiting a wrestling match, which led to opposing coaches accusing Jake of faking his condition. The eyes of Robertson head football coach Chad Roanhaus and defensive coordinator Leroy Gonzalez were given the duties of watching over Jake during his junior and senior seasons, sometimes sitting him down even before practice started. Jake couldn't finish his junior season because of the pain.
"There were signs as to whether he was feeling good or not," Roanhaus says. "You could tell on his face, as much as he tried to hide it. If he was trying to gut it out on a real bad day, we wouldn't put him through a lot of drills."
The migraines were so bad Jake often couldn't stand the normal chatter of a busy cafeteria during lunch, the loud music of a stereo or even a good-sized crowd for games or matches. Jake often sought the comfort of his own solitude, and his brothers and friends knew when Jake was enduring the company of peers as opposed to enjoying it.
"They could tell when it was time for me to go, and they would help me get out of there," Jake says.
But everything changed in October of 2007, when Jake could finally sleep through the night and wake up refreshed, ready to take on the day. Jake felt a difference almost immediately. The energy that was once needed to help him get through the day now could be channeled into schoolwork, practice and friendships.
And the one thing Jake faked for most of his childhood was now as real and as natural as the sun breaking through the dark clouds.
"You saw him having more of a smile on his face," Roanhaus says.
And there was plenty to smile about. He went 84-7 in his final two seasons on the mat to finish with a 201-32 record, which is one better than Adam and the school record for wins. That might not last for long, because Daniel, a freshman, already has 88.
In February, Jake faced his biggest challenge since losing his headaches. He hyperextended his elbow just seconds into his championship duel with West Las Vegas' John Armijo. Using only one arm, Martinez navigated his way to a 5-3 win and his third straight individual title.
It also completed a string of five straight wins in championship matches for the Cardinals, which helped them pull away from Bloomfield and St. Michael's to win the team title for the third straight year. Jake's win finally settled down his coaches, who were sitting on the edge of their seats through most of the final day.
"That's when I finally felt a little relief," Richard says. "It didn't matter then
who won after that — Bloomfield or St. Michael's."
Jake was the starting safety and shared quarterback duties with cousin Adrian Martinez on the football team, and he had perhaps the most important run of the season for the Cardinals. His 23-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter of a AAA quarterfinal against Hot Springs helped Robertson seal a 19-9 win.
In track and field, Jake lowered his 300 hurdles time of 45.05 seconds in the 2007 Class AAA track and field championships to 42.48. In the 110 hurdles, he came within a whisker — .07 — from taking second place in an event he didn't even qualify for the year before.
But now it's on to college, and Jake has yet to decide where he will go. He is facing a tug-of-war between continuing his wrestling career at Menlo College, an NAIA school in the San Francisco Bay Area, and staying close to home at The University of New Mexico. At Menlo, Jake would wrestle, while he would become only a student at UNM. A major issue is money.
The cost of going to school at Menlo — tuition, books and boarding — runs about $40,000. Jake has $30,000 covered from academic scholarships, but it's a lot to ask his family to cover the rest. Jake also is looking at his future, too — which will be as a physical therapist with a concentration on homeopathic medicine.
His goal is to help those who have suffered like him, which helped Leasa understand the reason the family's prayers took so long to be answered.
She remembers hearing Garth Brooks' song on the radio during one of the many doctors visits, and it stuck with her. As she sat on her couch, next to her son, Leasa fought back tears to tell her revelation.
"It's a song about how God doesn't answer your prayers sometimes, for a reason," Leasa says. "I think there is a reason for it, and this is it."
Contact James Barron at 986-3045 or jbarron@sfnewmexican.com.