Nars Martinez VIII was meant to be a baller. His dad (also Nars Martinez) made sure of that. The 2012 graduate of South Kitsap, where he played for former basketball coach John Callaghan, just thought it would be as more of an active participant.
“I grew up having a ball in my hands,” says Martinez, who turns 27 on May 29. “Yeah, I traveled to Seattle in second grade to train, following my brother Jake (Beitinger) for three to five times a week. Basically, my dad drove my brother and me to Seattle to get the best training and play on the best travel basketball teams.”
The elder Nars, who is remarried and living in Monroe, stressed the advantage of being trained by the best versus what was available in Kitsap County.
“We would drive three to four times a week to Seattle,” he says. “They would train twice a week and then have games on the weekends.”
Sometimes the two boys would take the Bremerton ferry to Seattle, doing their homework on the ferry and being picked up on the Seattle side by their select team coaches.
Martinez and Beitinger played on the Emerald City Pioneers and the Seattle Rotary Style, the same team that Bremerton’s Marvin Williams played on. The six-foot-eight Jake Beitinger would go on to play college ball at Eastern and Central Washington.
The six-foot-three Martinez was set to follow a similar college basketball path, having been recruited to play at BYU-Hawaii, a D-2 school after a stellar point guard career at SK.
“Nars was a good player,” says Callaghan. “He worked hard at it. He could handle the ball and shoot it — he was really skilled. Whenever I saw him he had a basketball in his hands. He was a gym rat for sure. He would go anywhere any time to play.
“He loved it. Still does.”
Martinez was all set to go to Hawaii in the summer of 2012 when unfortunately, he was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
“I was getting ready to go over to Hawaii when my body just locked up,” says Martinez.
“It got so bad he couldn’t play anymore,” explained the elder Martinez. “His back just wouldn’t allow him to do it. That was the end of his playing.”
Fibromyalgia is a disorder that causes musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, sleep, and memory and mood issues. Martinez believes he had the disorder from the ninth grade forward.
“It never allowed me to reach my explosiveness,” says Martinez. “I was still able to push through it in high school basketball. I had to take some pain pills. Nobody really knew about it outside of my parents. I didn’t understand what was going on until I was diagnosed later.”
Martinez did go to college at Eastern Washington, graduating with a degree in interdisciplinary studies with minors in sociology and communication studies.
As one door closed, another opened for Martinez. He began coaching a fifth-grade boys team for Friends of Hoops, founded by the late Jim Marsh and former Sonics’ coach George Karl. He coached FOH for five years while at the same time he opened his own business — 206 Basketball Training — and started his first basketball camp.
“Really, I was just trying to help a lot of kids,” says Martinez, who also began coaching at Mercer Island High School with head coach Gavin Cree. He was with Cree for three years,
He also became the head coach of the Northwest Blazers Orange 15-U basketball team out of Spokane that took second in the country in the 2019 Adidas National Tournament held in Atlanta, Georgia. Two years previously, he was assistant coach with the Blazers team that also placed second at nationals.
Martinez in 2020 became president and director of the nonprofit Finest Basketball Club (FBC) Northwest Alliance. The FBC is based in Atlanta and operates girls’ basketball travel teams all over the country. It is one of the biggest select programs for girls. It has branches in Tennessee, South and North Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, California and in the Pacific Northwest, which covers Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.
“I oversee everything,” says Martinez, who lives in Spokane. “But my main thing, my main job, is to make sure everything is going smoothly. We recruit top talent into our club to help girls get college scholarships to play basketball.
“One of our players is from Ellensburg High School, Olivia Anderson (6-6 forward) who just has been invited to the Youth 16 National Team Trials at Colorado Springs. She is one of 30 girls invited. She is being recruited by North Carolina, Stanford, Florida, Washington and Gonzaga.”
The cost to be with the FBC Northwest Alliance is $600 for the spring and summer seasons. Teams from the alliance play in big showcase events, including in Charlotte, North Carolina and Birmingham, Alabama.
Martinez’s balling isn’t just confined to running the alliance, he also is the lead scout for prepgirlshoops.com.
“I evaluate, scout and rank girls basketball players (around the country),” Martinez says. “I’ve been doing that for three years now. I opened the first prep girls hoops website.
“I’m also an events director, so I run showcase camps for girls’ basketball players. I invite college coaches to be in attendance. Hopefully the girls obtain college scholarships.”
The alliance has coaches in different areas to limit travel for practices. There are coaches in Seattle, Boise and Coeur d’Alene. They all do meet for one shared practice a month, usually on a weekend, and when they meet these practices can go five or six hours. Players come by car and a few will fly in.
“In a single weekend we are able to practice 10 hours,” says Martinez. “Most clubs are only able to get in three hours a week. We get a whole month of practice in one weekend.”
COVID-19 hasn’t really slowed down the alliance. Practices are still held and tournaments still played. And with Martinez still in his 20s, he’s an outer that continues to have success by doing what he has always done – ball.
“He’s been in basketball all these years,” says his father. “He knows everybody in the Seattle area and beyond.”
This is his life, his dedication. So far, he has coached, mentored and trained over 50 girls that have advanced to play ball at D-1 schools and others at lower levels. Martinez is very young compared to others who do the same thing around the country.
“I look at other people who are in the same position I am and they are in their 50s or mid to late 60s,” Martinez laughs. “Yeah, I’m happy with how many youth girls I have had a chance to affect. I would say over the years I probably have had over 300 girls going into college.”
Martinez’s dad says, “It’s been a lifelong goal of his to have his own program. He’s wanted that since he was a young kid.”
“I always had planned on being involved as a coach,” says Martinez. “I wrote it down in my notebook in the fourth grade what my dream was for my life. It was to have a travel basketball program. I found the notebook as an adult and I have really lived out my dream.
“So now I’m doing it.”
