Dr. Raymond “Ray” H. Martinez was the first head coach of East Carolina’s swimming and diving team, leading it from its start in 1954, the year he was hired, until 1967. Martinez’s team won the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) swimming and diving championship in 1957, the first national title in any sport at East Carolina, and again 1959. During his tenure at East Carolina he coached 65 All-American swimmers, 19 NAIA national champions, and four National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) College Division champions. In 1964, the East Carolina swim team placed second in the NCAA College Division national championship. For ten consecutive years, Martinez’s teams finished in the top seven in NCAA competition. In 1968, after stepping down as head coach, Martinez served as the director of graduate studies in the Department of Health and Physical Education, and then, in 1980, as department chair. After retiring in 1986, Martinez was named emeritus professor and administrator in the College of Health and Human Performance.
Known as the “stroke doctor,” Martinez was an early proponent of biomechanics involving the study of swim strokes and dives on film in order to cultivate more effective body movements. Weight training and land exercises were integral dimensions of his training regimen well before they became standards in the swimming world. Martinez also helped develop the prototype for automatic judging and timing devices that came to be widely used. The ECU natatorium in Minges Coliseum, completed in 1968, was designed and built under his direction. From the start, the facility was equipped for automatic timing and scoring as well as media coverage. For those reasons, ECU was chosen to host the 1968 Amateur Athletic Union Indoor Swimming and Diving Championships, the first time a college or university in the south hosted such an event. As an emeritus faculty, Martinez played a major role in the planning and design of the Ward Sports Medicine Building, completed in 1989.
The first recipient of the Robert J. H. Kiputh Award for national leadership in aquatics, Martinez was inducted into the East Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1979, into the North Carolina Swimming Hall of Fame in 1991, and into the East Carolina Educators’ Hall of Fame in 2001. In 2005, the College of Health and Human Performance established the Ray Martinez Award for Excellence in Teaching in his honor.
Sources
- 2015 Alumni Award Recipients, Honorary Alumni Award. “Dr. Ray Martinez.” http://www.piratealumni.com/s/722/hybrid/index.aspx?sid=722&gid=1&pgid=1854.
- “Class of 1991, Ray Martinez.” North Carolina Swimming Hall of Fame. http://www.ncswimhalloffame.com/class-of-1991.html.
- “Hall of Fame, Dr. Ray Martinez.” https://www.ecupirates.com/sports/2016/7/7/hallfame-ray-martinez-html.aspx.
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Citation Information
Title: Raymond Harold Martinez
Author: John A. Tucker, PhD
Date of Publication: 6/25/2019