Shield Bearers is proud to recognize and honor the achievements of two Spartan football Alumni who have gone on to achieve success in sports on the world class level. We’re talking about two Olympians in Mario Martinez and Rudy Guevara.
Mario Martinez
Unfortunately Mario passed away in January of 2018, but he left his mark on the sport of American weight lifting. As wikipedia states, “Throughout his career, he earned himself 10 national championships, 3 Olympics including a silver medal and a 4th-place finish, 3 Pan Am medals, on top of being the first American to snatch over 400 lb and clean & jerk over 500 lb in competition”
The GHS Football program and Shield Bearers is making a shirt to honor his achievements.
Rudy Guevara
Rudy, like Mario, played football at Gonzales High School. His calling was in the sport of wrestling where he placed 3rd in State representing GHS. From there his story is one of achievement after achievement, including coaching on the US Olympic Wrestling team. Rather than re-tell his accomplishments, read about them in this article the salinas californian wrote about his remarkable journey.
Shield Bearers is proud to have Rudy come in and speak to our GHS athletes and share his story.
Wrong Sport
Some people have asked, “why is the football booster club honoring a wrestler and a weight lifter, shouldn’t you stick to football?”, so we wanted to answer that here. Football is played by student athletes. We believe that student athletes are made better when they play multiple sports. Playing multiple sports requires our young Spartans to keep their grades up at school all year long and it makes them more athletic.
It’s not just us who thinks that either, here is a list of articles that share the same line of thoughts about football players who are multiple sport athletes:
- Tracking Football: NFL Draft Picks
- Tracking Football: SuperBowl Players
- Active For Life: Elite Athletes
- USA Football: Top Stars were multi sports athletes in high school
Go out and play
So Shield Bearers wants to encourage our students to play other sports, and what better way than to honor alumni who have played football and gone on to achieve great success in a different sport? We hope that one of our current students can learn from Rudy and Mario and become the next Olympic track star, or play in a World Cup! Perhaps we’ll have a future Home Run King currently wearing a “G” on their helmet? We can’t wait to see what success stories come out of our multiple sport Spartans!
Can somebody stop at the HS and pay for Mario Martinez shirts & take them home?
Hi Rosa, sorry for the late reply. You probably could but you should reach out to GHS coaches as they are keeping inventory. I’ll connect you to them in an email.