Kelsey Martinez blazing trails and inspiring as first female coach in Raiders history

Kelsey Martinez approached Mallory Singleton right when she noticed her on the Coliseum field last Friday afternoon. Martinez, 26, is a strength and conditioning assistant for the Raiders, the first female coach in team history and currently the NFL’s only female strength coach. Singleton, 5, is the daughter of Raiders running backs coach Jemal Singleton.

The 5-year-old looked up in awe at Martinez, who couldn’t help but hoist her and ask for a picture before the Raiders’ preseason opener against the Detroit Lions.

“It’s one of those things as a father, you want your daughter to have those aspirations to be whatever she wants to be. It’s nice to have something she can put her eyes on and say, ‘She’s a coach. I could be a coach,'” Singleton said. “I know a lot of hype has been put on, ‘She’s female.’ She’s just a good strength coach. That’s going to be the bottom line at the end of the day and that’s what she does well.”

This is one of the most rewarding parts of the job for Martinez, when young girls look up to her. Of course she knows the rarity of women in her profession, but she wants to be coach first, female coach second. Raiders head strength coach Tom Shaw has known Martinez for eight years. They worked together extensively at Shaw’s training center in Orlando for almost five, and Shaw recommended to Jon Gruden she be one of his lieutenants. Gruden even sent one of his two right-hand men, Mark Arteaga, to watch Martinez work out professional athletes in Orlando.

Now she continues to break barriers for an organization historically known for doing so, even if she doesn’t always look at herself that way. She’d rather spot Kelechi Osemele, maybe the strongest player on the team, or reduce aching in Frostee Rucker’s knees by recommending one-legged squats with less weight instead of two-legged ones with more. Those are the day-to-day tasks that fuel pre-dawn wakeups for Martinez, who in her first season with the Raiders is sticking out as the only female on the field but at the same time fitting right in.

“Believe me, if she didn’t know what she was talking about when she would actually talk to them and didn’t know the program, they would find somebody else to go to because they’re all trying to stay in the league,” Shaw said. “In the NFL, that’s what you have to do is you have to prove yourself in order to be accepted and she has proven herself.”

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Martinez grew up playing softball because she hated being indoors. Without a college softball career, she sought ways to stay around athletes. That’s where her desire to be a trainer bloomed. Martinez interned with NFL strength coaches, some of whom ventured to Orlando to learn from Shaw. Once she sampled a taste of the NFL trainer life, she wanted in.

At Shaw’s performance center, Martinez oversaw the regimens of over 40 MLB players, including Cleveland Indians All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor and Miami Marlins third baseman Martin Prado. She worked with other professional athletes, too, four who happen to be current Raiders – Bruce Irvin, Justin Ellis, James Cowser and Shakir Soto. She was nervous to first train pros as a college student under Shaw, who has groomed a litany of NFL first-round picks, No. 1 overall picks and Super Bowl MVPs, but gradually earned a reputation as a trusted trainer that eased her nerves.

Gruden liked what he saw in Martinez so much after Shaw and Arteaga’s recommendations, he told reporters in March at the annual league meeting, “She’s spectacular. Wait ’till you meet her.” We’ve waited until now since Martinez has been reluctant to do interviews and instead let her work do the talking. She still needed to prove herself in the NFL, like Shaw said, and relied on the word of those Raiders she’d trained before to vouch for her to those she hadn’t when she came on board.

Ellis, a starting defensive tackle who trained at Shaw’s facility, remembers the reaction when teammates heard Gruden hired the NFL’s only female strength coach.

“Guys were like, ‘Oh, man, we got a woman trainer,'” he said with a slight tone of shock. “I was just telling them, ‘She knows what she’s talking about.’ … She knew more than the guys that are working in some areas.” Like our Oakland Raiders Facebook page for more Raiders news, commentary and conversation.

These days in Napa, Martinez and the rest of Oakland’s strength staff arrive in the weight area around 5 a.m. (In Orlando they started at 9 a.m.) When the strength staff first joined the Raiders early in the offseason, in order to absorb the new system quicker, they rose an hour earlier. But now players trickle over the dew-stained grass and into the outdoor weight facility around 5:30 or 6 a.m. Players can lift at three different times throughout the day, and Martinez and Co. are there to supervise each one.

She intently watches practice, too, so she can incorporate position-specific drills in agility and strength work during the next offseason program. Right after practice ends around noon she’ll dart around the weight area, spotting for Jordy Nelson one second then instructing Rucker the next and helping Derek Carr on the bench press another. There’s far less time to interact with players during training camp than there was during the offseason, when she worked with them for four-plus hours on some days.

“Our day stays very busy. We’re never chilling,” Martinez said. “Some people have said that, ‘You’ll kind of just be hanging back, only working with them in the weight room.’ I can’t imagine that. There’s too much going on.”

Even without weights or speed drills, Martinez connects with players. She reserves two pages of paper for each player with the theme, “What’s your story?” They open up to Martinez about everything from life in elementary school to their parents’ history, Shaw said. She then shares those backgrounds in staff meetings, so coaches learn about players beyond the gridiron and the bench press.

It seems like the new coach in town has endeared herself to all the players she didn’t know just fine.

“She’s been great working with the guys,” Carr said. “I haven’t heard anybody complain or anything like that, like ‘Oh man, she didn’t know this or that.’ She’s very smart. She knows her stuff. I think that’s why she’s so respected.”

Back in 1990, Lee Brandon became the first female strength coach in NFL history when she joined the New York Jets’ strength staff. Martinez wasn’t even born. Female coaches in the NFL have rarely surfaced in the 28 years since, whether they be on strength staffs or as position coaches, and only in recent years have women carved out roles in the league.

Jen Welter became the league’s first female position coach in 2015 when she coached inside linebackers for the Arizona Cardinals during training camp and the preseason as part of an internship. Kathryn Smith became the first full-time female coach in 2016, serving as special teams quality control coach for the Buffalo Bills. The San Francisco 49ers hired Katie Sowers as an offensive assistant before the start of last season, making her the second full-time female coach.

Currently Martinez is the only female strength coach listed on a team website, which brings a smile to the first one in league history.

“I’m absolutely elated and love that the NFL is embracing women in such a classically male-dominated arena,” Brandon said earlier in the offseason. “It’s very exciting, and I’m mostly excited because I think that as strength and conditioning specialists, if you look at any of the top NFL websites and you touch the coaching tab, you’ll see underneath the head coach, the line coaches and all the coaches, you’re always gonna see the head strength coach and the assistant strength coach.”

Martinez doesn’t care much if her name is on a website or if she garners attention. Her biggest reward comes when players say they feel better during practices and games because of something she’s worked on with them. That, and inspiring young girls to follow goals some might deem unrealistic, is why she rises at Jon Gruden-esque hours to hone her craft.

To others, she may be a pioneer.

To Kelsey Martinez, though, she’s just doing her job.

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