With Coach Dexter Carpenter’s decision to leave Badin to follow his passion for coaching girls wrestling, a new position had opened up for the head wrestling coach at Badin. The decision has been recently made that Coach Craig Martin will be taking over the program.

Wrestling has been a part of Coach Martin’s life for 30 years between coaching and competing. He also helped establish the Badin Wrestling Program alongside Dexter. Coach Martin had left the Badin Wrestling program for a while but returned for the 2019-2020 season for his fifth year as a Badin coach. When Coach Martin got the news that he would be taking over he had a few reactions.

“I was happy and also excited," Martin stated. “I am really happy to take over the program. I love coaching at Badin. Coach Carpenter has built a good program, and really happy about getting to be the one who gets to continue on with it. Excited is another way of putting it. Even though we are losing some great talent to graduation, we have some tremendous talent returning, as well as some good talent coming in as freshmen next year. This can be a really competitive team and I’m excited to see where we go," Martin said.

Over the years, Dexter has created many fun traditions that the wrestling team has continued to uphold. He has tried to keep the sport fun while still getting the practice in. Coach Martin plans to uphold traditions while adding a few new additions along the way.

“We try to make this sport about being a part of something. So we will have team activities and team building events as well. As we do these, some are old and some will be new, how the athletes respond and participate in them will determine if they become tradition. My goal is to expand on what Dexter has built. We want this sport to be competitive and fun. It is a tough sport, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy what we are doing. We look to move forward and have success at all levels," Martin said.

Coach Martin believes strongly in the support of each athlete as an individual. He likes to have personal conversations with his athletes to find out what their goals are for their season and how he can help make those goals a reality.

“I have two main goals for my first season. Goal one is to improve the team as a whole: more technique, more conditioning and mat awareness. Goal two is to improve each individual as a wrestler. This means different things for each athlete. For some it may be to win a bunch of matches, for others it could be to win some tournaments. Yet for others it could mean standing on the podium at state," Martin said.

Dexter set up an amazing wrestling program and Coach Martin plans to keep it running for years to come.