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Sports
Teachers share high school, college sports stories Social Studies Teacher MARK Weisman: FOOTBALL
Before becoming a coach at Gunn, social studies teacher Mark Weisman played football in high school and college. After playing linebacker at Long Beach Millikan High School, Weisman continued his love for the sport on the football team at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Weisman was exposed to the sport at an early age, going to football games on weekends with his mother and watching his brothers play in the Pop Warner youth football league. “I’m the youngest of five brothers,” Weisman said. “They all played football, but I was the first one to actually play in high school.” According to Weisman, football helped develop his worldview and represented his childhood surroundings. “One of my beliefs is that sports is a microcosm of what’s going on around us in society; I was able to understand that at a pretty early age and I wanted to take part in that,” he said. Weisman believes his experience with high school and college football were very different. “One of the biggest differences is just the talent level,” he said. “I was one of the
best in the [Long Beach] area, an All-Star, but then I get to UCLA and I’m a walk-on. Out of a hundred guys, I’m probably the hundred-and-fifth best guy on the team. The talent was incredible. Speed, size, everything.” According to Weisman, the camaraderie is his favorite aspect of football. “On my high school team we had 75 freshmen on the freshman team, 65 [junior varsity] players and somewhere around 70 varsity players,” he said. “If we look at that particular aspect of it, suddenly I have 200 new brothers. The coaches were father figures to me; my father left when I was three, so having a male role model was pretty significant.” In addition to gaining new brothers, Weisman also met his wife over a shared love for football. “My wife, who’s a physical therapist at Lucille Packard, was a trainer at UCLA when I was playing—that’s actually how we met,” he said. “She enjoys the sport as well. My kids all enjoy the sport, even though they haven’t played tackle football yet. In that way, there’s lots of things in our lives that kind of revolve
around the sport.” Weisman believes that the most important lesson he has learned from football is commitment. “It’s hard working out four or five times a week, January through August so you can have 10 games to show off and perform. It’s not for everybody, that’s for sure,” he said. “Whether it’s school or a relationship or a musical instrument, whatever it is you do, [you should be] committed to what you do.” According to Weisman, football has carried over into his everyday life and helped him grow as a person. “I think there might be different opinions on this one, but I want to feel that it’s made me a better person and that in my relationships, I’m committed,” Weisman said. “I think that over half the students here at Gunn play some sport, and athletics is a great part of life that helps us. When I was at UCLA, the athlete population of UCLA had a higher graduation percentage than the regular population. It translates in so many different ways, and I think it’s good to keep that in mind.”
Photos courtesy of Daisy Renazco, Mark Weisman and Carlos Martinez
Left: Math teacher Daisy Renazco is pursued by a defender down the soccer field while playing for Saint Mary’s. Middle: Social studies teacher Mark Weisman (#67) poses with fellow football teammates. Right: Math teacher Carlos Martinez launches off the diving board at the start of a race.
Math Teacher Daisy Renazco: Soccer
Math Teacher Carlos Martinez: Swimming
Math teacher Daisy Renazco, who was 5 when she started playing soccer, had a different start to her soccer career than most girls. “Back then, they didn’t have girls’ teams so I played with the boys and was the only girl on a boys’ team,” she said. Renazco played on the boys’ team until she was 8-years-old, when a girls’ club team was created. Renazco had to overcome many difficulties as the only female teammate. “Boys won’t pass to you, and they will not think that you are good enough so you have to prove yourself, which is frustrating,” she said. “I think since I was a strong player, the boys realized pretty early on that I was one of them in terms of skill level.” Through her resilience, Renazco realized that she could overcome any obstacles thrown her way. As Renazco continued playing soccer throughout high school, she started to love the camaraderie of the sport. “I enjoyed the team element that soccer creates and it gave me an outlet to go and focus on other than my education,” she said. “It gave me friends that were different from school.” Although Renazco does not talk to her former teammates as often now, she refers to them as her “group of sisters.” Whenever she gets together with them, it is like nothing has changed and they pick up where they left off. Renazco played all through high school and then Division I soccer at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. During Renazco’s freshman year, Saint Mary’s made it to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament. Her team beat its rival Santa Clara, which allowed them to proceed to the Sweet 16, but lost to the University of Portland. She still looks back on that experience as a memory she will never forget. Despite a busier schedule, today Renazco tries to make time to play in the alumni game at Saint Mary’s ever year. “Since having my daughter it has been hard to get out and play, but I go watch the Saint Mary’s versus Stanford game every year,” she said.
When math teacher Carlos Martinez was in high school, he found his second home in the water. Martinez first started swimming as a freshman at Valley High School in southern California, and stayed on a swim team through his freshman year at University of California (UC) Irvine. When Martinez started swimming competitively in high school, it was mostly because his parents forced him to. “My parents wanted me to do a sport, and they said that if I didn’t pick one, then I had to do swimming and water polo all four years,” he said. However, he soon started to enjoy swimming for its own worth. Swimming provided an opportunity to work out and constantly push himself to do better. “Even though we do compete against other schools and other swimmers, it was mostly competing against myself and the clock,” Martinez said. Being on a swim team provided Martinez with many skills he applies to his daily life. Through swimming, he learned how to overcome difficulties to reach his goals. “It taught me how to continue to persevere and endure, and [that], with effort, I can accomplish what I’m trying to achieve,” he said. Martinez still treasures several memories from his time in high school swimming. He remembers loving spring break practices when all the other students were on break and the swim team’s daily practices. Usually, the team would play a fun game at the end of practice. Martinez recalls racing to pick up a five-pound black brick off the bottom of the pool. “The first team to pick it up, take it out of the water and place it on the pool deck would win, he said. Swimming also provided him with the chance to meet people who changed his life. He met both friends and mentors to look up to through the sport. “A lot of the people that I met in swimming became my good high school friends,” he said. “I had an awesome coach who knew a lot about swimming and was passionate and was a good role model.” Martinez still keeps in touch with some of his friends from swimming. One teammate remains his best friend, and has even become a close with Martinez’s family “He shows up to all my Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas Eves and days, and New Year’s,” he said. —Written by Danielle Gee, Prachi Kale and Liza Kolbasov