Domonic Martinez always hoped to return to Overland High School in a meaningful capacity.
That certainly is the case, as several years after he did his administrative internship at the venerable Aurora school, he is back as its newly-hired athletic director.
“This is just a natural fit,” Martinez told the Sentinel. “I did my administrative internship here (in 2005 or 2006) and I said ‘one day, I’m going to work at Overland.’ It didn’t happen that way until now, but it’s brought me back to where I started.”
The 48-year-old Martinez takes over for Karl Buck, who has moved on to the assistant principal/athletic director role at Centaurus High School in Lafayette. Buck held the job at Overland since 2019 when he was hired to replace Ryan Knorr after he departed for Durango.
The best part of it all for Martinez — who originally interviewed for an assistant principal position, but pivoted when the athletic director job opened — is that his role at Overland involves athletics, which is a gigantic presence in his family and got him through difficult times growing up in north Denver.
He hopes to help make athletics a positive part of the development of Overland students.
“I think there’s great opportunity here, especially after the pandemic. We need outlets and we need kids moving, and what better way than high school sports?,” said Martinez, who has also been an athletic director at Abraham Lincoln High School, North Middle School in Aurora and at Denver Prep Academy, which he helped found.
“It teaches them a whole set of skills that will help them be a successful parent, a successful employee or employer,” he added. “People always says kids nowadays are different and yeah, they are, but through sport we can still stay grounded and rooted.”
It is an understatement to say that athletics is part of the “root” of Martinez’s family.
His uncle, Gary Rhoades, starred at Denver West High School and then played at Colorado State from 1970-73. He was drafted by both the Denver Rockets of the ABA and Houston Rockets of the NBA in 1973 and played professionally overseas. Another uncle, Harold Rhoades, won a paralympic gold medal for wheelchair basketball in Heidelberg, West Germany, in 1972. His mother was a longtime competitive softball player as well and he had two brothers who played college basketball.
Martinez himself was a prep basketball star at Denver Lutheran — which he attended instead of Denver West, his family’s traditional school — earned a scholarship to play at Western Colorado University (where he was inducted into the Gunnison school’s Hall of Fame in 2016) and played four years professionally in Mexico.
“Everything about me and my family have been rooted in sports,” said Martinez, whose father was a disabled veteran.
The winter season will be a busy one for Martinez, who in addition to his Overland duties will try to keep tabs on his two sons, who play basketball at Denver South. His oldest, Dominic Rhoades-Martinez, is a highly-regarded backcourt player going into his junior season, while the other, Matthew, is also one of the Ravens regulars.
Martinez will also spend plenty of time in the Overland gym watching longtime boys basketball coach Danny Fisher, one of the coaches he is most looking forward to being around.
Martinez — who has already made some splashes with coaching hires in Wondame Davis (girls basketball) and Mazen Kayali (soccer) — has specific goals for things he wants to work on at Overland both in the upcoming year as well as the future.
As part of an attempt to bolster the strength of the school’s athletic culture, he is looking forward to the establishment of an athlete leadership academy, which will be made possible by a recently secured grant. He also plans to try to engage with some of the school’s alumni to get more involved and maybe help contribute to strengthening the program in whatever way possible.
“One of the things that is really a strong suit for him is he really cares about kids,” Cherry Creek Schools Athletic Director Larry Bull said of Martinez. “I think the relationships he builds will be great for kids, coaches, parents and the community. Those are extremely important.”
Martinez’s greatest hope is that the promising young athletes near the school end up there, instead of going elsewhere via school of choice. Retention of neighborhood talent helped Overland — Aurora’s fifth-oldest high school — build success shortly after it opened in 1978.
Overland is just one of many schools that has been hindered by school of choice, which has allowed athletes freedom to go to schools in other districts if there is room. Martinez believes putting on events such as youth sports camps on campus could help cut the number of departures.
“The kids in the area need to be around our athletes, so they want to be here,” he said. “Sometimes you have to be able to feel it, experience and taste it before you know you want it. I want them to be coached up by our players and our coaches, so they say ‘I was on the fence, but I want to go to Overland because I’ve got a connection there.’
“We want to build to where this is a place they stay instead of where they leave.”
Martinez is the only new high school athletic director in Cherry Creek Schools, as Steve Carpenter (Cherokee Trail), Jason Wilkins (Cherry Creek), Vince Orlando & Heather Nelsen (Eaglecrest), Wes Smock (Grandview) and John Thompson (Smoky Hill) remain.
Courtney Oakes is Sentinel Colorado Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
