Central Oregonian

Martinez named CCHS?head baseball coach

After three years as JV?coach, Frank Martinez is promoted to head coach

Lon Austin

November 12, 2012

Frank Martinez has been involved with baseball in Crook County for several years now.

He began by helping to coach a youth traveling team. Eventually, Martinez became an assistant coach on the high school baseball team. Now, after three years as the JV?baseball coach, he has been promoted to head coach.

“Frank is one of those guys that I can just say, ‘Go do this.’ — and he takes care of it,” said Crook County High School athletic director Scott Polen. “He’s really good with the kids and they love him.”

Martinez spent the summer directing the Crook County High School summer baseball program, and had continued to work with baseball players once the summer season was over.

Once hired as head coach, he immediately jumped into action, starting unofficial fall practices as soon as school started.

“We’ve been working the last few weeks on getting endurance, building our arms up, and working on our strength and conditioning,” he said. “We have been bringing in college players to help out and get kids ready to play and we have an athletic trainer working out with the kids to help make them stronger.”

The Crook County High School baseball program has had three head coaches in the last five years.

Martinez, a long-time Prineville resident, plans to bring some stability to the program.

“I’ve got a lot of goals,” he said. “One of my goals is to build a strong high school program that the community can be proud of. Hopefully we can do that”

Martinez takes over a team that has shown steady improvement for the last few years. The team was just 2-21 in 2009 and was outscored 216 to 67. By 2012, the team finished with a respectable 10-14 record including going 7-1 against class 4A opponents. Although the team finished with a losing record, they outscored their opposition 181 to 160 during the course of the year.

Still Martinez faces an uphill battle if he wants to be successful this season. The Cowboys are still scheduled to play in the Intermountain Hybrid Conference against larger schools. Not only that, much of last year’s squad graduated.

However, Martinez has a solid core of pitchers returning from last year’s varsity team. In addition, the team showed steady improvement throughout the summer baseball program.

“It may take some time to build a really strong program,” he said. “With the support of the community, I believe that we can do that, but my goal is to have a good season this year. Right now, the kids are working hard, and they have great attitudes.”

Polen is also confident that Martinez can do the job.

“We had a lot of good candidates for the job,” he said. “And I have no doubt that Martinez was the best fit for Crook County at this time.”