Kaina Tops for Kingsville, But Will She Run for Belize Again?
Thirty-one-year-old Belizean Olympian athlete Kaina Martinez has completed her track career at Texas A and M University-Kingsville. She had three top finishes in the 2017 NCAA Division Two Outdoor Athletics Championships in Florida over the weekend. Martinez, who is from Seine Bight in the Stann Creek District, placed second in the one hundred meters with a personal best and national record of eleven point five-eight seconds; seventh in the two-hundred-meter dash in twenty-four point one seconds; and with her teammates, third in the women’s four-by-one-hundred meter relay. The ten-time All-American is headed back home with top degrees and high honors, but faces several questions: does she want to continue running for Belize following the controversy that kept her off the 2016 Olympic team? And, what does she want to do next personally and professionally? Kaina answered those questions for News Five in a telephone interview.
On the Phone: Kaina Martinez, Athlete, Texas A&M University-Kingsville
“What’s next is a good question. What I have learned in life [is] that I will not limit myself anymore; I will not just work for everybody and just shut down myself which is basically what I have done, using sports as a pathway to help make changes, but you never know what life has in turn for you. You plan one thing and something else happens. I’ve learned that, and so I’ve remained open-minded as to what is next. There is only certain things that I can do; there is only so much that I can do. Kaina Martinez cannot do everything on her own. So when they decide they want to mend it, then they do; if they don’t want to, then so be the case. But I am not going to sit around upset at people who lied on me and for me to just say, it’s okay what you did, when you have not even approached your own people and speak about what is what – that’s the worst thing you can do to anybody as a matter of fact; you don’t just lie to somebody and expect them to just settle with you and what you want them to do, life doesn’t work like that. So that’s a good question to ask them – that’s a question we should all ask them too, because I don’t know what is on their plate, what is on their mind. After whatever happened, happened, did we hear anything from them? Not really.”
Martinez graduates with degrees in sociology and speech communication, with a minor in business administration, and finished with highest honors – summa cum laude. She is considering further education to become a certified counselor. She transferred to Kingsville after one year at the University of Belize. This summer she will be holding a camp in her native Seine Bight, Stann Creek District but hopes to expand that outward.
