The Cats’ new leader
May 19, 2007
By MIKE KESSINGER
Hays Daily News
As an assistant coach at Kansas State University, he helped guide the Wildcat men’s basketball team to their first postseason since 1999. No more than a month after the season ended, the man who asked Martin to come be an assistant the year before left to take the head coaching position at West Virginia. A day later, Martin was handed his first top spot at the collegiate level as a head coach. Three weeks ago, his wife Anya gave birth to their second child, Christian.
Quite a bit to take in for a five-month span.
And that’s just a small portion of what’s to come in Martin’s life for the next seven months.
For now, Martin, along with other representatives of Kansas State, will spend much of their time this summer, while preparing for their sport, going to different Catbacker events across the state. Friday, Martin, along with four football players, one member of the men’s and one of the women’s basketball teams, an assistant football coach, and head women’s basketball coach Deb Patterson brought their golf game to Smoky Hill Country Club. The Heartland Catbackers kicked off their first annual golf scramble, and Martin was a main feature.
“I might be back tomorrow to play again after the way I played today,” Martin said. “I’m not a real good golfer, but the way I played today, it made me feel like I need to play four, five times a week. I enjoyed it. It’s a beautiful course.”
Like on the basketball court, Martin looks as if he’s a perfectionist on the golf course as much as he is sitting next to Bob Huggins on the Wildcats bench last season. He’s intense. A long missed put on hole No. 14 was followed with Martin slamming his foot into the ground. Earlier in the hole, he was helping his partner find a ball. Martin stood in one spot, pulled his arms out and said, “your shot came right along this way.” While most of the group Martin was with had gone up a way, Martin continued to look around.
“I used to play more,” Martin said of playing golf. “I’ve never been real good, but I enjoy it.”
An assistant basketball coach at the NCAA Division I level since 2000, Frank Martin is excited about his new job. He had only been to Kansas once before moving to Manhattan last year, and that was a recruiting trip to Garden City.
“Western Kansas is so flat, that’s what I expected,” Martin said. “That first day, when I drove through Manhattan, you see all the Flint Hills, and the green, and rolling hills and all that, it’s a look I didn’t expect. It was different.”
It is something Martin has grown used to, and he likes. What he likes even more is the people of Kansas, and the attention the basketball team he helped build as an assistant has gained over the last year. He loves how the K-State following has gotten behind the team.
“It gives you a feel with the rolling hills, and all that, and I really enjoy it,” Martin said. When K-State took on KU in Bramlage Coliseum this last season, K-State promoted the game as a ‘Blackout’ in which all the Wildcat fans were to wear black, and sell out the building. Martin said the scene that night was one the best basketball atmosphere’s he had ever been a part of.
“It was unbelievable,” Martin said of that night in Bramlage. “I’ve been in arenas at Syracuse in front of 23,000 fans, I’ve been in Louisville where their crowds are special. At Cincinnati we had great crowds. We played in an NCAA tournament second round game in front of 42,000 people. I’ve never been in an atmosphere like that. It was unbelievable that crowd that night.”
With a team that will consist of a recruiting coup considered the best in the country, Martin has his work cut out him to start his career as the head coach of the Wildcats.
Now all he has to do is teach Bill Walker, one of the athletes who participated Friday, how to play golf.
Sport reporter Mike Kessinger can be reached at (785)628-1081, Ext. 127, or by email at
mkessinger@dailynews.net.