IOWA CITY, Iowa — Kate Martin has carried a number of nicknames over her six years with Iowa girls’s basketball, however one description stands out above all to fellow senior Gabbie Marshall.“She’s been my rock,” Marshall stated. “I’ve never met a better leader than her.”Every Iowa participant says she leans on Martin all through difficult moments or when she wants a dose of fact. She’s supportive, passionate and disciplined. They say no person has worn the title “team captain” higher than Martin, who has served in that function the final three seasons. No participant has garnered as a lot belief from the teaching workers or has earned the respect of her teammates as Martin. That consists of famous person batterymate Caitlin Clark.“She’s somebody that’s wired the same way as me,” Clark stated. “At times that means me and Kate butt heads, but at the end of the day, we know how much we love each other. We step off the court, and it doesn’t matter, we just make each other better.”As Martin and Iowa’s different senior teammates put together for Monday evening’s NCAA Tournament second-round game towards West Virginia, ideas swirl from how their Iowa journey started to how there’s no time for reflection. Admittedly non-emotional, Martin collected her ideas earlier than her last pregame interview in Iowa City and paused. Then she smiled and conquered the second with stoicism.For the final word Hawkeye, who grew up with an Iowa girls’s basketball poster on her bed room ceiling, the house conclusion is bittersweet. But ever the competitor, Martin saved her focus solely on the current.“It’s sad,” she stated. “But we’re mission-focused.”Matt Martin coaches highschool soccer at Edwardsville (Ill.) High School, a captivating suburb situated on the east facet of the St. Louis metro space. Several of his pupils have performed main Division I soccer, together with former Iowa All-American A.J. Epenesa, now a defensive finish with the Buffalo Bills.As a baby, Kate Martin additionally performed deal with soccer, and he or she cherished it. She nonetheless does. It taught her teamwork and toughness. “I love football so much,” Martin stated. “If I could still play, I’d hope I’d play quarterback because that’s my favorite position.” It’s not essentially Martin’s passing prowess that might make her a really perfect quarterback; Clark’s throwing capacity, as an example, is otherworldly. But Martin’s management and game administration are exhausting to copy. She has proven these traits on the hardwood, they usually apply to soccer.Her work ethic units her aside, too, and to that she credit her dad and mom. “He always kept it real with me,” Martin stated of her father. “He’s never really sugarcoated things for me, and he was very encouraging as well. He gets college sports; he played college sports. He gets being what a good teammate looks like, he knows what a hard-working player looks like. And I think he and my mom both instilled hard work in me.”Competition has supplied the muse of Martin’s life, and that began at an early age. Her dad performed soccer at Western Illinois. Her mom, Jill, grew up as considered one of six siblings. Jill’s sister, Julie Fitzpatrick, is married to Iowa affiliate head coach Jan Jensen. Martin’s older sister, Kennedy, performed Division II basketball at Truman (Mo.) State.This season, Martin averaged 13 factors and 6.7 rebounds a game. In her profession, she has scored 1,230 factors, dished 469 assists and pulled down 718 rebounds. In Saturday’s NCAA first-round victory against Holy Cross, she recorded 15 factors and 14 rebounds.A late bloomer in highschool, Kate’s first provide got here from Bradley in her father’s hometown of Peoria, Ill. Just a few others trickled in, together with from DePaul and Wisconsin, however Iowa’s methodical recruiting course of was robust on Martin and her household. “I was a little frustrated with Iowa,” Matt stated. “They were real slow.”The household angle prevented an early provide and a simple commit. Jensen divorced herself from the method. There was a cut up among the many assistants on the time on Martin’s upside. Finally, Jensen had a dialog with coach Lisa Bluder earlier than their flight to go to Martin.“I’ve watched her grow up and this was her dream and she just was like a kick-butt type of player,” Jensen stated. “But I was also like, OK, everybody else has to be in on this. I said, ‘Lisa, you’re gonna fly with me. We’re gonna take this plane, but I’m not making the final decision.’ So we went down and Lisa watched and it was over.”“Coach J stayed out of my recruiting process because she’s gonna have some biases, like, I’m her niece,” Martin stated. “She knew how bad I wanted to come here. So all the assistant coaches really recruited me and some of them didn’t even realize I was related to Jan before they saw me, and were like, ‘Man, I like this girl.’”Martin’s first season at Iowa ended prematurely with a torn ACL. In the second, it was devastating. But she admits she discovered extra that season than from some other, reminiscent of changing into a supportive teammate. Martin watched nationwide participant of the yr Megan Gustafson work relentlessly on Mikan drills and exude a presence that pressured each teammate to match her dedication.“To see that in person, it was insane,” Martin stated. “She instilled a little bit of what it takes to get to that level, to be great like she was. I watched her workouts plenty of times and she never took a rep off at practice. I was like, ‘Oh s—, I’m going to have to bring my ‘A’ game every single practice next year.’”By her third season, Martin grew to become Iowa’s group captain.
Kate Martin is “wired the same way as me,” Caitlin Clark stated. (Matthew Holst / Getty Images)On Martin’s left arm in blueish ink is the phrase “sunshine.” It’s tattooed in an unrecognizable font to anybody however her. And that’s all that basically issues anyway.“Sunshine” is what Martin referred to as her grandmother, who lived within the Quad Cities when she was rising up. They performed board video games collectively and had a faith-based relationship. When Martin was youthful, she requested Grandma Sunshine to “pray for me to go to Iowa.” Before Grandma Sunshine handed in 2015, she wrote her nickname on a Yahtzee taking part in card and gave it to Martin. When she was sufficiently old to get a tattoo, she had it inked in her arm. “That’s for my grandma,” Martin stated.Family issues to her, and that’s from her blood family to her prolonged Hawkeye household. In the summer time following her ACL season, she texted Marshall and requested her if she needed to hang around at her residence with the opposite gamers. Marshall had but to fulfill all of her teammates and the invitation served as an introduction.“That just shows the type of person that she is,” Marshall stated. “She can read people so well. If you’re having a bad day or having a bad practice, she’ll text you after like, ‘Let me know if you need to talk.’ She truly brings other people along with her.”It works the identical approach for her dad and mom. Like their daughter, Matt and Jill normally maintain their feelings in verify on the subject of sports activities. In reality, the household rips on each other for his or her golf swings or their singing capacity on Rock Band. But on the best way back from Minneapolis after the latest Big Ten match, Matt and Jill noticed tons of Iowa followers at stops alongside the Avenue of the Saints.In the Big Ten match championship, Martin sank 4 3-pointers after halftime, together with two in additional time. Her pictures helped Iowa dig out of an 8-point deficit inside three minutes remaining to beat Nebraska for this system’s third straight match title.“I just wanted to yell, ‘Hey, Kate Martin’s my daughter,’ which is totally out of character,” Matt stated. “I had never felt that before. I was just so proud of her team. I was proud of her.“When this is all said and done, I’ll share that with her. I don’t know if I’ve ever really said that because it’s always been the next goal. I don’t know if I’ve ever said what a great job she’s done. What a fine young lady she’s become. We don’t talk like that. We tease each other. We’re ruthless to each other.”With Martin, there’s sizzle and steak. She’s all household and basketball, sure, however she has a layered character. She discovered learn how to trip a motorbike at 3 years previous. She cherished the video game Rock Band, capturing pool and bikes. She as soon as needed to be a tattoo artist, and he or she grew up climbing timber and digging holes.She traces each scorching sauce bottle she’s ever owned above her residence cupboards. She grew to become an early aficionado of Hot Cheetos, which her mom stated she ate “every single day for lunch.” That grew to become a gateway snack to her scorching sauce craze.“I had to wean off of them,” Martin stated. “I was going through withdrawals when I stopped eating them.”There’s no conclusion to the Kate Martin story — it’s solely the start. Her Iowa profession will conclude throughout the subsequent two weeks. She needs to proceed taking part in basketball for so long as doable earlier than changing into a coach. She can have her grasp’s diploma in May. Although she has made the dean’s listing at Iowa, she by no means needs to take one other course after this semester.In the current, she’s going to proceed to guide. That’s what she does. Martin combines bodily and psychological toughness with selflessness, to which Jensen stated, “That’s the thing that really separates her.”
This Kate Martin block made me go FERAL pic.twitter.com/sVUrWvAXoT
— Sam 🕷 (@sammacfarland_) March 24, 2024“I’ve often said she’s a captain’s captain, and I don’t say that lightly because we have had great ones,” Jensen stated. “But she stands alone with what she’s always carried and managed. And then you add what she has been able to do for Caitlin, she’s the Robin to Batman.”Bluder added: “She’s the first person that will hold people accountable, and she’s also the first person that will pat everybody on the back when they need it. She builds people up. I think that’s the biggest thing about a leader is when you can make the people around you better, and Kate Martin has done that.”At some level, she’ll be often known as Coach Kate. That day is coming. Clark stated Martin is “one of the best leaders any of us have been around.” From managing egos on the ground to working together with her coaches, Martin has turn out to be each a pacesetter and a peer. It’s one thing everybody acknowledges, from her father to Bluder, who stated, “She’s going to be a fabulous coach.”“This is a biased statement,” Matt stated. “If she goes into coaching, she will be known. It will be a matter of time, but she will be one of the best coaches you will ever see.”(Top picture of Kate Martin: Matthew Holst / Getty Images)