In the summer months,
Martin (Arlington) baseball players are on their own.
But when school starts in the fall, serious team building begins, a good five months before the first game of the regular season.
The cheering crowd is only a distant consideration when coach Curt Culbertson maps out weight lifting and a conditioning regimen that gets tougher every season. Even Culbertson concedes the workouts are "rugged.''
Curt Culbertson, Martin head coach
Courtesy photo
"We do have a few that fall out, sometimes some pretty good athletes,'' said Culbertson. "But there's no way they would make it through this kind of grind.''
The "grind'' of which the coach speaks is Martin's push to reach its second straight UIL state tournament Final Four. The Warriors (34-7-1) are one series win away from a date in Round Rock for the Class 5A state semifinals. Martin faces Carroll (Southlake) in a best-of-three Region I final at Grand Prairie's QuikTrip Park, beginning 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
For leading a team with only five returnees this close to a repeat trip to state, Culbertson was selected as Dallas High Yield Coach of the Year presented by Capital One Bank.
Martin posted a perfect 14-0 record to win District 3-5A and has prevailed in four playoff series, knocking out Keller, Coronado (Lubbock), Fossil Ridge (Keller) and most recently L.D. Bell (Hurst). A third game was needed only in the Fossil Ridge series. But every series has had a one-run Martin win.
"Even though we had only five guys back, they have accounted for a heck of a lot of offense,'' Culbertson said.
This coming from a coach that knows how a great high school hitter should look. During an 11-year stint at Bowie (Arlington), Culbertson coached current New York Yankees outfielder Vernon Wells.
"Vernon could do everything,'' Culbertson said. "He was the best I've coached. The complete package. The problem was we didn't have pitching. So we had to win games the other way.''
When it comes to clutch hits this season, the man the Warriors like to see at the plate is
Drew Dowdy. The senior center fielder stroked a two-run single for a 4-3 victory in the decisive third game of the Fossil Ridge series and followed it up last week with a single off the wall to score two runs and clinch the regional semifinal series over Bell, 4-3.
"We like to feel that the work we put into it makes a difference in those key situations,'' Culbertson said.
Success last season did not take the coach by surprise. "I had a good feeling,'' Culbertson said. "We were just so deep in pitching.
"This year, we had question marks, but I started feeling pretty good about three-quarters of the way through district. Our seniors can hit any pitching they see.''
And two juniors can really pitch.
Turner Larkins, last year's No. 3 starter and closer, has been terrific. And the record of
Daniel Lingua tells it all. He's 12-0.
Martin's baseball history is not long, but distinguished, producing high draft choices Todd Van Poppel (first round, 1990) and Ben Grieve (second round, 1994). The Warriors made state tournament appearances in 1990 and 1993.
But when Culbertson took over in 2005, the Warriors were coming off a 12-win season that ended without a playoff berth. Twelve months later, under Culbertson, Martin won 25 games and a district championship. That's the year that Culbertson put teeth in the off-season program.
"I remember some negative reaction that first year,'' Culbertson said, "but we have had kids come back from college baseball programs and tell us our program got them in better shape.''
Culbertson was a middle infielder in his high school playing days for the Arlington Colts. He continued to play right down the street at UT-Arlington and signed a professional contract with Cincinnati. But in one season Culbertson realized his future rested in coaching, not playing. So he completed work on his degree and took a job coaching in junior high and began to work his way up in the ranks.
His first baseball head coaching job came at Weatherford in 1990.
He returned to Arlington to lead Bowie for 11 seasons and found his way to Martin as an assistant for two years before being promoted to head the program.
"The job just kind of fell in my lap,'' Culbertson said.
The 52-year-old and his bride of 30 years, Carol, have three daughters. The youngest two are in college and the oldest has made Curt a granddad.
"It's a boy. We're already thinking baseball,'' Culbertson said.
