Written by FIGHTINGILLINI.com staff writer Lexi Shurilla | Follow @LexiShurilla

'This Is The Guy We Need'

Isaiah Martinez started wrestling at age four, following in the footsteps of his older brother who had started to wrestle after encouragement from their dad that they both had the build for the sport.

Admittedly, Martinez said he wasn't very good at any other sport, but it became apparent that he had a knack for wrestling right away. He became a three-time California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) State Champion and finished with a 205-7 high school record at Lemoore High School in California.

No stranger to recruiting athletes from the state of California - after all Illinois' two-time national champion Jesse Delgado is also from the state - Illinois head coach Jim Heffernan knew he wanted Martinez after he visited him at his home in Lemoore.

"I've been in college coaching for a long time and a lot of kids tell you their goals are really lofty, but I believed him," Heffernan said about his recruiting visit with Martinez. "I left his house, got on the phone and called the other coaches and said, 'There's something about this guy. This is the guy we need.' He looked me in the eye and told me what he wanted to do and, quite honestly, there are not very many guys over the last 28 years I've bought it from, but I bought it from him."

Martinez wanted to be the best, and he wanted to be in the conference that all of the best wrestlers called home, the Big Ten. He had offers from wrestling powerhouses, Penn State, Iowa and Missouri, but Martinez and Delgado had competed against each other in high school and once he saw the success Delgado had at the University of Illinois, he decided to take his talent to Champaign-Urbana.

"It was a little bit of a lot of things," Martinez said about making his college decision. "Being in the Big Ten is an honor in itself as a wrestler because it is the toughest conference. I had a great dynamic with the coaches. There was just something about the coaches and the way they spoke to me that clicked. When I came out here on a visit I loved it."

Perfecting His Craft

When he arrived in Champaign, the California native wasn't quite ready for the winters, but being at UI and feeling the dynamic of the team, Martinez felt at home. Martinez said that it's pretty common for wrestlers who want to be on an elite level to redshirt their freshman season in order to mature physically and mentally, so Coach Heffernan and Martinez decided that he would sit out his freshman year.

"I think it gave me the opportunity to step away from live competition and focus on my skill set and getting better and understanding the kind of work ethic it takes to accomplish a goal like I did this year," Martinez said. "It was a little bit of a lot of things that helped me grow as a person, grow as an athlete and handle the workload with school and having to live on my own away from my parents."

Martinez's redshirt year was calculated with the plan that he was from a small program and he didn't have a lot of training partners. His coach was an All-American so he had good guidance but the training portion wasn't consistent. Illinois' coaching staff planned for the redshirt all along with the purpose of getting him better for the next year.

During his redshirt year, Martinez was able to perfect his craft with the help of his coaches and teammates. He has been able to work very closely with Coach Heffernan, associate head coach Mark Perry and assistant coach Jeremy Hunter, developing a very special relationship with each of them.

"I have the best coaches in the world, hands down," Martinez said. "I'm sure it's different for other guys, but for me I have the best coaches."

Martinez gives his coaches a lot of the credit for elevating his game to another level as they all present different coaching styles that fit his mold.

"With Coach Heff, it's almost like a father figure," Martinez said. "He tells me what I should and shouldn't do. Mark Perry is a guy who builds my confidence and works with my mind. And Jeremy Hunter is actually on the mat with me doing technical skills. Being at Illinois, the coaching staff and the great teammates around me, I have a great support system here and that's been the biggest part for me progressing and moving forward."

"We let him grow up physically, emotionally and mentally," Heffernan said. "Even when he came in this year, we could see the progress. It was weekly for sure and daily most times in what he was doing and how he was getting better and how he was cleaning things up and becoming more disciplined in everything that wins you a championship. It worked out perfectly. A lot of times a redshirt year does a guy good, but doesn't guarantee you a championship but in this case it worked."

Champion Mentality

Martinez describes his style as aggressive, powerhouse, and being "uber-confident." Intimidation is a big thing in this sport so when he stares across at his opponent, he always asks himself, 'Does this guy think he's my equal?' He said he's yet to meet a guy who has looked at him and felt that way. So after all of his hard work, perfecting his craft and boosting his confidence, and now the idolization of many young wrestlers across the country, did the freshman actually expect to be this good?

"You know," Martinez paused to think about his answer before responding with a laugh. "Yeah, I expected to be that good. My coaches think I'm a lot better than I actually am, or maybe I am actually that good. Maybe I've got to believe them more. I started believing in what they were telling me more as the season progressed. They think I should be beating these guys worse than I already am. It is extremely hard. I may make it look easy, but it is very, very difficult. I think that why I'm kind of popular in the sport is because I have a style that no one has really seen before. It's just a different kind of mentality that I bring."

Now a national champion, thinking back on his year, Martinez said that this season was laid out perfectly. Having to wait a whole year, he had no idea what this season was going to truly encompass for him in the wrestling world. His season started with going undefeated at the Illini Quad meet, then moving on to go undefeated yet again at the Midland Championships in December and then all of the sudden he was 15-0 going into the Big Ten Dual season. This was the opportunity Martinez had been waiting for. He was going to face some of the best wrestlers in the country. His first big match was against senior James Green of Nebraska - who he would later face again in the national semifinals - and it was his toughest match all season, but he escaped with a 2-0 victory. Martinez said that he thinks Green is the best guy in his weight class hands down, with his skills and style making him extremely difficult to match.

After he beat Green, the confident Martinez looked at it as, if he just beat the best wrestler he was going to face all year, he almost knew he was going to win a national title. He wasn't going to allow himself to stumble. He was going to get up for every match and be consistent every single time.

"He told me at the beginning of November, I'm going to win at nationals this year and I bought it again," Heffernan said. "My job, at least from my perspective this year, was not to let him be a freshman and not to let him get in his own way."

Going into the Big Ten Championships in early March, Martinez was still undefeated and walked away with a B1G title. The cool and collected underclassman admitted he was a little anxious heading into Nationals because he was a freshman competing on the biggest stage in the college wrestling world. Martinez rolled through his first three matches at Nationals with ease, but knew he would face his Nebraska foe in Green - a four-time All-American who had already been in the finals a couple times - for the semifinal match.

"I was like, I've been here before, I've done this before and I'm ready to do this again," Martinez said of his rematch with Green. "Luckily I was able to come away with the win again, in an even closer match than before. After that, going into the national finals it was never even a question anymore. I was so relaxed. I was so ready, so confident and I was so sure that I was going to come away with the championship."

"It was just an amazing way to cap off a great season as a freshman. It was kind of a progression system, building more confidence as the season went along. I was lucky I didn't face tougher competition until later and not right away, where I wasn't quite ready at the beginning of the season. I was excited but I wasn't ready maturity-wise at the beginning of the season, whereas I was kind of considered a veteran by the end of the season."

Martinez defeated Brian Realbuto of Cornell by major decision, 10-2, to become the first freshman to be an undefeated national champion since Cael Sanderson of Iowa State accomplished the feat in 1999. Martinez finished his incredible season with a perfect 35-0 record, just the third time in Illinois history that a wrestler has completed an undefeated season and the first since Matt Lackey in 2002-03. Of his 35 wins, 24 came by major decision or greater, including an NCAA Division I-leading 11 technical falls. Dating back to last season, Martinez has won 42 matches in a row.

"Wow," Martinez said of winning his national title. "How do you put into words an indescribable moment, a culmination of 15 years of work? I've been working 15 years to reach this kind of pinnacle of our sport, so it was almost a relief. I dealt with a lot of pressure this year being undefeated, being a big recruit, winning all season long and being the number one ranked wrestler towards the end of the season, it was almost a relief. But when I was relieved from that, more stuff just jumped on my back and now I'm ready to shoulder all of that because I'm mature enough to assess myself better than when I was younger in the sport. It was probably the greatest moment of my life, hands down, so far. I can't wait to do it again."

Staying Perfect

So what's next? How do you top an undefeated season and winning a Big Ten and National title as a freshman? Well...

"First of all, I stay undefeated and win three more national titles, that's where I go from here," Martinez said with a smile.

"His confidence is why he's where he's at," Heffernan said. "Even when something goes wrong, he knows he's going to get better and that's what makes him believable. I think because he is the way he is, he's got a lot of qualities that will make him a great leader."

Martinez said he's still very raw in the sport. His skills can become tighter and he thinks he can build to become even more dominate. Typically the path elite-level wrestlers follow is to keep trying to win national titles and then move on and go to the Olympics or world championships. Martinez is trying to do that now, as a freshman, sophomore or junior in college. Some of his goals include making some of the world teams and maybe the U.S. Olympic team in 2016, if he's ready for that. Eventually he wants to go into coaching and maybe someday be the head coach at Illinois.

Although Martinez has accomplished so much so early in his career, Coach Heffernan knows he can do so much more and isn't even close to the ceiling with his potential. He's won one title, but he's got three years to go. After basking in the glow of his championship for a few days, Martinez was quick to ask his coaches what the plan was for spring workouts and how can he help make his team better. Now considered a sophomore on the team and with the experience of being a national champion, he will be a big part of building the team for the future.

"He needs to enjoy this because what he did was pretty special," Heffernan said. "He is in the infant stages of where he will be by the time he's a senior in college. That's what blows my mind is he's just starting. The God-given abilities he has have gotten him to this point and now I think he can start learning wrestling a little bit more. He's not even at the tip of the iceberg of what he can become."

"I always had a target on my back," Martinez said. "I'm the kind of guy who draws a lot of attention to the sport. I've dealt with that this year and I guess I'm too dense to think about it when I'm out there. It doesn't bother me. It makes it fun. I hope there's some other freshman out there who's just as hungry as me, who wants to be my equal and wants to challenge me because when you have challenges in this sport it keeps you sharp; it makes it fun. It causes a lot of anxiety sometimes but I'm going to be ready. I'm going to be ready when the bell rings every single time so it's not going to be easy to take me down. I know there's always someone else coming up, there's going to be someone, but I'm going to be ready for them."