Gold at Junior Nationals caps stellar 2016 for Ruby Martin

IOWA CITY – This time, there was no looking back nor looking up for Ruby Martin.

The Iowa City swimming standout capped a spectacular 2016 and stood atop the 200-yard butterfly podium with a gold medal at the Winter Junior National Championships Saturday in College Station, Texas.

'I was excited to see where my 200 fly would go with my training all summer,' Martin said. 'To finally be a junior national champion for the first time, it felt really great to step up on the podium, look up at the crowd and put a smile on my face and know that I really did put in the work for it.'

Martin, a member of the Iowa Flyers club team who turns 17 on Tuesday, claimed silver medals at Junior Nationals in the same event in each of the past two winters. This year, there was no peer as Martin surged to the wall in 1:54.74, the sixth-fastest 200-butterfly time ever for an American in the 15-16 age group.

'All the people that are out there and all the pressure of the college coaches that were watching me there, that all left my mind,' Martin said. 'It just came down to the 200 fly and I kept thinking about my prelim swim and what I could do better to improve my time. That's exactly what I focused on and it worked out really well.'

This new mindset of focusing exclusively on her own swims instead of the opponent produced the coveted gold medal, but the roots took hold during a rousing fourth-place finish in the 200-meter butterfly during June's United States Olympic Swimming Team Trials in Omaha, Neb. With a nothing-to-lose approach, Martin's Trials time of 2:09.96 was two spots shy of qualifying for the Rio Olympics.

'I went out there and I did my own thing,' Martin said. 'I wasn't afraid to go out too fast, I wasn't afraid to take one extra kick off the wall, I wasn't afraid to die in the end and even if I died, I gave it my all.'

The Trials performance vaulted the Iowa City West junior into the top-50 world ranking in the 200 butterfly, and in August she helped Team USA win its fourth-consecutive team title at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships in Maui, Hawaii with a fourth-place finish in the 200 butterfly.

The following month brought another honor with her addition to the prestigious USA Swimming Women's National Junior Team.

'At the end of February, the Junior National Team, we're going to go out to (the Olympic Training Center in) Colorado Springs (Colo.) and get together and we'll have a little camp out there,' Martin said. 'It's really fun meeting up with all those people at all the meets and knowing a few faces.'

The whirlwind year does not prevent a look to the future. The Tokyo Olympics in 2020 loom large as an attainable goal, while a collegiate destination will be secured beforehand. Martin currently has scholarship offers from Florida, Iowa and a third that arrived from an unlikely source – Jim Harbaugh. The Michigan football coach called with the offer in front of a roomful of football recruits that included older brother and Iowa City West senior Oliver Martin.

'The football head coach is like, 'Cool! You get two kids going to Michigan for free!,'' Ruby Martin said with a laugh. 'It was awesome. It was really funny.'

Oliver Martin – The Gazette Area Player of the Year in football – also holds scholarship offers from Iowa and Michigan, among others.

'If we did go to the same school, that would be awesome,' Ruby Martin said. 'I'd always have him there if I needed anything. My parents could come visit us. It would be a lot easier for them. … If I needed any help, I know he would help me. If we did go to different schools, our schedules now are very different. We have completely opposite schedules and we really don't see each other much during our normal day. … So I don't think we'd have a problem going to different schools.'

l Comments: douglas.miles@thegazette.com