Ray H. Martinez . . . The 'stroke doctor'

Biographical sketch of Ray Martinez. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.

The citation for this article is: "Ray H. Martinez . . . The 'stroke doctor'," Pieces of Eight, November 1, 1985.

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"I've never really been impressed with sports except as a test of what you have done in your training," says Ray Martinez, the one-time engineering student whose coaching brought a trophy case full of glittering championships to East Carolina in the 1950s and 1960s. He was ECU's first collegiate swimming and diving coach.

"To me the most important thing is practice," says the scholarly Martinez, chairman of the Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Safety (HPERS) since 1980.

"To tell you the truth," he adds, "I think an age group swim meet where you have all these kids swimming together, is about as exciting as watching the grass grow. The important thing is how well the child did. Did he improve? Did he learn anything?

Trophies and Titles

Over the years, Martinez's scientific coaching techniques helped East Carolina win two NAIA national championships and produced 20 national championship swimmers and 45 All-Americans.

By studying swim strokes and dives with motion pictures and computers, applying the principles of mechanics and motion, he was able to convert wildly thrashing arms and legs into smoothly-functioning windmills in the water. He was called the "stroke doctor."

By today's standards, use of technology in athletics is called biomechanics. Martinez was considered to be years ahead of the time.

"A favorite uncle used to tell me that I would make a good engineer because of my interest in model airplanes," Martinez recalls. He fashioned his models from strips of balsa, paper and thick rubber bands and entered them in take-off and flight competitions in his hometown of New Orleans, Louisiana.

He completed only two years of study -- pursuing an engineering degree -- before being called to military service in the Army Air Force in World War II. In the military, he developed an interest in swimming. After the war, he returned to Louisiana State University for a double major in math and physical education.

He joined the LSU swim team and excelled as the Southern AAU 50-yard freestyle champion. With a master's degree earned in 1950, he became a special field representative in first aid and water safety for the American Red Cross. In 1952, he was a Red Cross researcher at the Helsinki Olympics.

The next year, he met a swimming instructor from East Carolina College while working as an aquatic instructor at the Red Cross aquatic school in Brevard. The ECC man, Charles DeShaw, took word of Martinez to the ECC president, John D. Messick, who was going on a trip to New Orleans.

After some negotiations, Martinez accepted an offer to become swimming coach at East Carolina, which heretofore had only club swimming. The deal was for $4000 a year salary plus a counseling position for Martinez's bride, the former Inez Norris, and an apartment in Ragsdale dormitory.

Teaching First Aid

One night there was an automobile accident on Fifth Street and a man was bleeding badly. "I realized that the ambulance driver, when he reached the scene, knew nothing about first aid," says Martinez.

Pretty soon, Martinez was teaching first aid classes for Greenville's first rescue squad -- a squad that also was to win national championships and international recognition.

He completed his doctoral degree work at the University of Iowa in 1960. He also was selected that year for a Fulbright scholarship to study in Burma but family commitments kept him at home. Instead, he opened a competitive swim training facility which he and his wife named Raynez.

Swimmers from all over the United States, Canada and other countries came to train at Raynez, drawn by the success of Martinez's somewhat unorthodox methods of coaching.

Start From Scratch

In his first few years at East Carolina, Martinez recalls he had to recruit from learn-to-swim classes. One day he watched a young student named Kenneth Midgette from Oriental, North Carolina, diving in the Memorial Gym pool.

"I would watch him walk out to the end of the diving board and dive beautifully. I asked him why he didn't use an approach and take-off," Martinez recalls.

"He said he had never dived from a board before. He had always dived from a bridge in Oriental."

Midgette went on to become a two-time national champion in diving.

Doing Things Differently

Martinez attributes part of his coaching success to doing things differently in training. "We had weight training when few coaches were pushing it for swimmers. Also, isometric excercises were used. We took chances and experimented with different regimens of exercise," Martinez says. "But it all paid off. It made it more of a thinking man's type of workout.

In addition, Martinez taught health and physical education classes, directed the intramurals program and for four years coached the tennis team.

The highlight of Martinez's coaching career came in 1968, his last year as coach. ECU hosted the AAU Indoor National championships, a qualifying meet for the world Olympics in Mexico City. The event was held in the new Minges Coliseum natatorium. "By every standard, we put on the best meet that has ever been held," Martinez says.

Stresses Values

Much of Martinez's work, including major research in cinemagraphic studies of swimmers, is on stressing the value of sports as a worthwhile pursuit and the need for more academic and scientific approaches to sport studies.

He believes ECU needs a biomechanist to work with the medical school, physical therapy, physics, biology and the performing arts. "If we had a biomechanist in association with what we already have -- the medical school, the human performance lab, the special physical education lab and sports medicine -- we could become a satellite to the Olympic Training Village in Colorado," he says.

Ray Martinez has announced that he will retire at the end of this academic year but says he will always remember his 32 years at ECU. He recalls a story that illustrates what he feels is a good description of the ECU philosophy.

"Once we were driving to a meet in Charleston, South Carolina. The athletic department station wagon broke down at the top of that bridge (Cooper River) entering Charleston. We coasted in and I called Nephi Jorgensen (the athletic director, 1947-1963) and asked him what we should do.

"His advice was the same then as always. 'Do the best you can.'

"I think that's the philosophy of East Carolina. Do the best you can."