Martinez chases dreams at North Carolina
By AARON TAUBE | The Daily Tar Heel
North Carolina midfielder Enzo Martinez is what his coach Elmar Bolowich likes to call “opportunistic.”
Indeed, the sophomore has shown a penchant for being in the right place at the right time this season in nabbing his team-leading nine goals. And sure, Martinez has done a fine job with the extra playing time he’s been afforded by season-ending injuries to a pair of All-ACC Tar Heels.
There’s more to it than converting scoring chances in front of goal, though. After all, it was opportunity that first lured Martinez and his family from their native Uruguay 10 years ago, bringing Enzo first to Rock Hill, S.C., then to Chapel Hill.
It’s been a long journey for UNC’s sophomore sensation. But the thing about opportunity is this: There are no promises along the way, only a handshake agreement that with skill, determination and a lucky bounce here and there, one just might wind up where he belongs.
The long road to Chapel Hill
Martinez grew up without air conditioning or carpeting in an impoverished area of Montevideo, where he first came to love soccer. He and his younger brother, Alex, went to school four hours a day and spent the rest of their time playing pickup with friends in the street.
The games ended when Martinez’ father was fired from his factory job, no longer able to provide for his three children in Uruguay. Instead, Enzo’s parents chose to move the family to Rock Hill, a small city located 35 minutes southwest of Charlotte.
“I think I’ve been blessed because I got to live 10 years there and see how tough it is, and then I came here and I got to live very comfortably,” Martinez said. “I guess I got the best of both worlds.”
But things weren’t always comfortable for Martinez on this side of the equator. Not at first, anyway.
A 10-year-old a world away from home, he struggled to adjust to eating new foods and speaking a language he didn’t know. Like so many immigrants who came to America before him, Martinez found comfort on the nation’s playing fields. The 5-foot-7 dynamo blossomed into a scoring machine, netting a preposterous 182 goals at Northwestern High School and leading the Trojans to three state titles.
Along the way, Martinez’s English improved and he became not just a member of the Rock Hill community but a local celebrity, signing autographs for admirers and earning All-America recognition.
”When you start playing, it’s weird because you’re not you, it’s like another person takes over,” he said. “It’s the funnest time, all of your problems go away.”
The game also offers a different sort of escape for Martinez. When he takes the field, he’s not playing just for himself. He’s playing for his family, too, so that one day his mother can stay home from her 12-hour day at a warehouse and his father won’t have to wake up early to install satellite dishes.
Every time he sprints after a loose ball in practice or charges toward goal in a game, he does so with full knowledge of the sacrifices made for him, not just by his parents who have sweated out countless hours of manual labor on his behalf, but also by the handful of Rock Hill families who helped pay for his food and lodging on travel soccer road trips, some of his clothing and his cell phone bill.
While it’s true no one becomes the leading goal-scorer in South Carolina high school history without talent, Martinez’ drive is what set him apart and gave him the opportunity — there’s that word again — to be the first member of his family to attend college.
“Seeing my mom, my dad work and work — until today, my mom has had 10 days off of vacation in 10 years, and I’ll be surprised if she did that much because she works so hard,” Martinez said. “I think that’s what makes me the way I am.”
From superstar to substitute and back
Martinez’ first year at UNC was a long one, on the field and off. For the first time since leaving Uruguay, Martinez wasn’t a superstar. Though he played in every game, he was frustrated coming off the bench and missed the encouragement of his high school and club coach and the Rock Hill community.
Adjusting to the speed of college play was nothing compared to the catch-up Martinez had to play in the classroom. Martinez’s English is good, but it takes work. He speaks at a measured pace, like he is thoughtfully scanning a mental database in search of the precise word. For a student who had never even heard of the SATs until Bolowich asked for his scores, just keeping up at such a rigorous academic institution was a tall order.
Again, Martinez’s industriousness yielded results. He spent hours working with a tutor and managed to comfortably meet both NCAA and University requirements. He developed a reputation for dominating practice competitions and eventually found a rhythm as a substitute.
“He is a tremendous individual,” Bolowich said. “He is very, very good in the classroom. There are no issues with him. Enzo is the most disciplined player I have seen in a long time.”
At the onset of this year the Tar Heels suffered a pair of season-ending injuries that thrust Martinez back into the spotlight and the starting lineup. Martinez wasn’t worried about replacing two of the team’s four leading scorers the previous year or having to play at new positions.
It was just another chance to help his team win games and to get one step closer to realizing his dream of playing professional soccer.
“The funny thing is I have this belief in me that it’s no pressure,” Martinez said in a Sept. 16 issue of The Daily Tar Heel. “It’s all opportunity.”
Martinez more than made the most of it.
He started all but one of the Tar Heels’ games this season, helping UNC to an ACC regular-season title and the No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which starts Sunday for UNC.
To watch Martinez play is to truly understand how hard he works. From the opening whistle he is a tornado with legs, hurtling after loose balls, flinging his body at headers contested by larger opponents and darting into the box to receive passes from teammates.
On the attack, he is one of the most dangerous men in the ACC, the sort of player who dribbles the ball as if it were tied around his foot by an invisible string. If there is one flaw in Martinez’s game, Bolowich said it is that he sometimes loses his poise in front of goal, as if the mere thought of putting a ball into the net sends a jolt of excitement through his body that interrupts his circuitry and causes him to misfire above the crossbar.
“(He’s) just somebody who just wants the ball so bad and they’re going to go after it no matter what and never back down,” Martinez’s housemate and UNC goalkeeper Scott Goodwin said.
“When he’s having to sit back and hold a little bit, it’s kind of like holding a lion on a leash.”
Despite his inextinguishable competitive fire, Martinez is remarkably chipper when he’s not on the pitch. Friends and teammates tell stories about how he frequently cooks for his housemates no matter how many times they forget to pay him back for ingredients. And Alex, now a freshman on scholarship at High Point University, says he could not ask for a better brother to get advice from.
“He’s the kind of young man that you just want to be your son,” family friend David Benson said. “That’s the best way I can say … he is a son.”
Following up
Martinez’s humility was on display in last week’s ACC Tournament, where he came off the bench for the first time this season in a quarterfinal match against N.C. State. Martinez responded by scoring two goals and thanked Bolowich in the postgame press conference for giving him the opportunity to help the team.
Two days later, the Tar Heels were deadlocked at zero 54 minutes into a semifinal match against Boston College when UNC’s Kirk Urso teed up a shot from distance. Anticipating a rebound from Urso’s rocket, Martinez made a beeline for the goal as soon as Urso hit the ball and found himself in perfect position when it bounced off the goalie’s hands.
Martinez missed his first chance, bouncing a shot off the left post, but followed his miss by burying the rebound for his fifth game-winning goal of the season.
“I remember one of the practices we had, that’s what we worked on, following it up,” Martinez said in the press conference after the game. “But that didn’t mean that I just had to do that for that game and never do it again. As soon as I saw Kirk wind up, I just took my chance and the keeper dropped it.”
No pressure. All opportunity.
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