Ricky Martinez | Pflugerville High School, Class of 2016

For Pflugerville High School alumnus Ricky Martinez, Panther Pride is more than school spirit. It is pride in his community, the people who helped shape him and the place he will always call home.

A 2016 graduate of Pflugerville High School, Martinez credits Pflugerville ISD, PHS and especially the Panther Baseball program with helping shape the direction of his life.

“The community I found through Pflugerville ISD, Pflugerville High School, and especially the Panther Baseball Program fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life,” Martinez said.

Growing up in Pflugerville, Martinez had a dream and a passion for baseball. But pursuing that dream also came with challenges, moments of doubt and times when he needed others to believe in him.

He found that support in the people around him.

Martinez credits mentors including Dale Waggoner and Don Fry, along with many others in the Pflugerville community, for encouraging him while also holding him to a higher standard. Rather than simply telling him he was doing well, they challenged him to continue growing and showed him what he was capable of accomplishing.

“They demanded more because they saw what was possible, even when I lost sight of it myself,” Martinez said.

Those lessons have stayed with him long after leaving PHS. Today, Martinez serves as an assistant baseball coach at the University of Tennessee, carrying the lessons he learned as a Panther into the way he works, leads and supports the next generation of student-athletes.

For Martinez, his accomplishments are also an opportunity to honor the community that invested in him.

“I try to repay it through my work, the way I lead, the way I treat people, and through a constant effort to make the people who believed in me before I fully believed in myself proud,” he said.

No matter where baseball or life takes him, Pflugerville remains a part of who he is. Martinez even carries a reminder of home with him every day: a tattoo of the state of Texas that often gives him the opportunity to explain where he comes from — including that the “P” in Pflugerville is silent.

For him, that connection is what Panther Pride is all about.

“It is pride in where you came from, pride in the people who helped raise you, and pride in carrying that place with you wherever life takes you,” Martinez said. “I will always be a kid from Pflugerville. And I will always be proud to be a Panther.”