feats of clay
WHETHER BATTLING COVID-19 OR OPPOSING BASKETBALL TEAMS, CLAY MARTIN COMES OUT ON TOP. By Peter Jackel
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s the always dapper Clay Martin takes his seat on his team’s bench at the Frank Herald Fieldhouse in Jenks, Okla., what one sees isn’t necessarily what one gets. The 6-foot-4 coach of the mighty Jenks High School boys’ basketball team is a deeply spiritual man who speaks in strictly G-rated language, addressing everyone as “Sir” or “Ma’am.” “That’s just the way I was raised,” he said. But Martin can instantly transition into a fierce competitor. Darned right he’s going to get into the face of any player who isn’t cutting it for the Trojans. Martin will certainly speak up when he feels an official has missed a call. As Shannon Martin, his wife of 22
18 | REFEREE October 2021
years, notes, “People are surprised because he’s so calm and peaceful outside of sports, but you get him on a basketball court or football field and he has such a determination and competitive spirit. He will stomp and he will get in your face.” The Martin Method has clicked for nearly two decades at Jenks, the third-largest program in talent-rich Oklahoma, with the Trojans going 277-128 and advancing to the 2009 Division 6A championship game under Martin’s watch. Up to 2,000 fans a game usually file out of the fieldhouse with smiles on their faces after games and that starts with Martin. But all of this doesn’t approach conveying what this man is all about. As Martin walks into another NFL stadium on game days, his sharp duds are replaced by a striped
official’s uniform and a white hat he wears with enormous pride. Martin didn’t pursue football officiating until 2005 — just two years after he took over Jenks’ basketball program — but his sharp mind and cool disposition enabled him to rocket through the ranks. By 2015, he had reached the NFL and, within three years, he was a referee at the age of 43. You’d better believe this — he’s a fighter. Less than a month after testing positive for COVID-19 last Dec. 19, Martin was at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City for an AFC Divisional game between the Chiefs and Browns. Incredibly, he had been hospitalized with double pneumonia (bacterial and COVID-19) just 13 days before that game. But that still doesn’t approach relating what Martin is all about. Not even close. For an express trip to the core of this remarkable man, let’s go to the seventh floor of St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., in July 2014. McKenzie Martin, Clay’s then-14-year-old daughter, had developed sepsis after complications from an appendectomy and she was fighting for her life. As
