Big picture perspective

Central's head baseball coach challenges student athletes to learn and grow from pandemic.

Central Union High School head baseball coach Gene Martin enjoys training his young student athletes to compete on the diamond and to use the sport to mold them into young men who will grow up to become productive citizens in our society.

That program mission was challenged earlier this Spring, as the Coronavirus Pandemic shut down all sports activities in the Imperial Valley and the rest of the Desert Southwest back in March.

Without the luxury of full practices and games, Martin is adjusting to the new normal of reaching out to others with the tools of technology; replacing the person-to-person interactions that have been greatly limited since the start of the pandemic.

Even though the lost season is forcing seniors in the program to move on quickly and leaving the underclassmen isolated and trusted to work on their work-outs from home; Martin offers this fresh perspective as a learning tool, instead of a complete loss.

"I just want to send out my condolences for all these student athletes that lost their senior year, but actually, they gained life experience. Don't look at it as something that you're missing. Look at it as something that you can learn from and grow from and take whatever positives you can find from it and make this a learning experience. Because it shows how we can come together and we can do things that we argued and fought about things and now we look at them like they were so petty. Life is so much bigger than that."

Martin plans on imparting this wisdom to his underclassmen next season, as he plans getting his program back on track with the same program mission of building up the leaders and citizens of tomorrow through the game of baseball.