Raymond Martin wasn’t as fortunate as everyone else when he was born 16 years ago. The Jersey City native had Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, a rare form of a congenital myopathy and the most severe form of arthrogryposis.
The disease left Martin without full use of his hands and relegated the teenager to a life in a wheelchair.
“Sometimes when I was little, I let it bother me,” said Martin, who is currently a sophomore at County Prep in Jersey City. “But as I got older, I learned to accept it. I just don’t think about it anymore.”
When Martin was a student at Jersey City’s A. Harry Moore School for the disabled, he learned that he could do something in his wheelchair – namely compete in track and field.
“They had a track team at A. Harry Moore,” Martin said. “So that’s when I started.”
However, soon after he attended A. Harry Moore, he learned that he was to go to a mainstream school. So Martin was enrolled at P.S. 34 in Jersey City to attend elementary school.
“I liked going to regular classes, but I still wanted to do track,” Martin said.
Martin also had to learn how to push the wheelchair, because with Freeman-Sheldon syndrome, he had very limited use of his hands.
“That was a problem,” Martin said. “I couldn’t use my hands. I had several surgeries on my hands, but they couldn’t fit in gloves.”
So just to compete, Martin had to have his hands wrapped in two pairs of socks and had the socks taped around his wrists in order to push the wheelchair hard enough to make it move faster.
“Eventually, my hands got bigger and stronger,” Martin said.
Still, the idea of a little boy strapped to his wheelchair, wearing socks as protection to push the chair is a startling image. But Martin was a young man with a dream and a goal.
“I wanted to be able to do what other people did in track,” Martin said. “Okay, I knew I couldn’t run like everyone else, but I should be able to push my chair fast enough. There was nothing that was going to stop me.”
In fact, Martin and his father, Daniel, went as far as to form a team of other wheelchair-bound athletes. The team is called the United Spinal Navigators, a group of approximately eight wheelchair athletes who go to different events all over the world. The group has regular practice sessions in Bayonne County Park to prepare for their world events.
Yes, the world.
Raymond Martin is a world traveler. There aren’t many Jersey City teens who can lay claim to that. Martin has been competing all over the world since he was basically a toddler. He’s been to Switzerland and will head to the Czech Republic in August to compete in the World Junior Disability Championships.
Martin has also competed nationwide and holds several national records in disability competitions.
And Martin has to train just as hard – in fact, perhaps even harder – than most able-bodied athletes.
Three times a week, Martin goes to Planet Fitness in Bayonne to work out to get ready for his track events.
“I lift dumbbells to work on my arms, my triceps,” Martin said. “I do a lot of resistance training as well.”
Martin has a coach, Isabelle Cuevas, who pushes Martin to the limit.
“She can be very hard on me, but she’s great,” Martin said.
When the time comes for an event, Martin has to get his workout mileage in.
“The warm-up is about four miles,” Martin said. “It gets pretty tough.”
Four miles? In a wheelchair? That’s not exactly a walk in the park.
“It’s tough, but it’s what I have to do,” Martin said.
Recently, Martin went to South Plainfield to compete in the wheelchair portion of the NJSIAA Meet of Champions. He was on the same track as such champions as Zamir Thomas of Snyder, the 200-meter state champion, and Najee Glass of St. Peter’s Prep, the 400-meter state champ.
Martin competed in the 100-meter, 200-meter, 800-meter and 1,600-meter races and finished third in all three events, going up against athletes who have full range of motion with their arms and hands.
“It’s tough for me to go up against some athletes who are higher functioning than I am,” Martin said. “I’m actually competing with a higher class than me, because of my hands.”
But that didn’t stop Martin from being out there and earning medals in all four events. So in that respect, Martin was the most decorated track athlete from Hudson County at the Meet of Champions.
“I did my personal best times in some of the events, so that was a feat in itself,” Martin said.
Martin was asked what it was like to compete with approximately 5,000 spectators cheering him on at the M of C.
“It felt great,” Martin said. “I never thought it would be anything like that. There were way more people at the Meet of Champions than I ever saw at a meet before. It was great to hear those people cheering for me. I made me forget that there’s a barrier between us and the rest of the athletes.”
Martin said that he tries not to think about the competition when he’s out there.
“I just want to push myself to the finish line as fast as I can,” Martin said. “That’s what I do every race. I try to do better than I did the last time out.”
Spoken like a true track athlete, the ones who race against the clock and motivate themselves against their own times, just to see improvement. Raymond Martin is exactly just like them.
“Every day, I’m thankful to get the opportunity to be out there competing,” Martin said. “I’m able to go to other countries and I’m still able to compete. I get on my track chair every day and do something. It keeps me going.”
Martin said that he is a basketball fan and likes watching the Knicks, but his real passion is track and field.
“I love watching the Olympics when they’re on television and my favorite athlete is Usain Bolt [of Jamaica], the fastest man in the world,” Martin said. “I love watching them all run. They’re pretty fast.”
Apparently, so is Martin, only with the help of his trusty custom-made chair.
Martin plans on someday going to Arizona State University, because they have the best wheelchair track and field team in the country. He’s not sure what he would like to study in college, because he still has time to decide. He also has a few more years to compete as a world-class wheelchair athlete, because on the junior level, you can compete until the age of 21.
“That’s when you age out,” Martin explained. “I still have some time, but we have others on our team who are ready to give it up. We need more athletes to keep our team going.”
Maybe there is a young boy or a girl who is relegated to a wheelchair and they are now getting a chance to see the marvel that is Raymond Martin for the first time in these pages. Maybe they might be motivated to give track and field for the disabled a try, much like Martin did when he was just 5 years old.
“I never thought of that before,” Martin said. “If I can be a role model for someone else, then that would be great.”
Maybe a few years ago, the graduating class at P.S. 34 knew what they were doing when they voted Raymond Martin as the best role model in that class. He’s certainly living up to that billing every single time he takes his chair to the track.
Jim Hague can be reached at OGSMAR@aol.com.