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Onto the skateboard
What really changed his life was a slow elevator in the Roth Middle School. Until then, Martin had been in a wheelchair.

''It was the second day of seventh grade," says Martin. ''I had a class on the second floor but the elevator used to take forever. I said, 'I want to go up the steps on my own. I don't want to wait on the elevator.'

''So I left the wheelchair at the bottom of the steps and went on without it. I got to class and everybody said, 'Where's your wheelchair?' I said, 'I don't need that wheelchair.' That's where my skateboard came in.

''We were at the skating rink and we were trying to figure out how I was going to skate. First they put skates on my hands, and then skates around my bottom. They decided I might as well get a skateboard and just make it a little bit wider. So ever since then, I get one made once a year."

He also has prosthetics, which are gathering dust.

''Yeah, I have a pair, I don't want them," he says. ''They slow me down. There's training you've got to go through to use them and I don't want to go through all that."

In the eighth grade, Coach White -- then the wrestling coach at Roth Middle School -- recruited Martin, who was always getting into fights, for the wrestling team. ''He said, 'You know, you should come out.' " Martin weighed just 92 pounds.