Athlete of the Week: Amber Martin

EDINBURG, Texas (ValleyCentral) — To excel at a sport, you pick it up at a young age.

Edinburg Vela senior Amber Martin is proving that notion wrong by only seriously dedicating herself to golf as a sophomore.

“Honestly, it's a lot of mental I mean, you do have to be here a lot practicing, non stop the summer going into junior year,” said Amber Martin Senior Vela Golfer. “I played tournaments all over Texas and Houston, San Antonio, Austin.”

Amber is a natural, at the district 31-5A tournament Martin came in first individually and helped Vela secure its first district in three years.

“I'm proud considering the conditions and the fact that we didn't get to practice much that week because of the flood,” said Martin. “But I do feel I could have done better, which hopefully we can prove at regionals.”

The sport Amber loves was almost taken from her last year.

“I woke up one day and I could only see about 50% of my vision from my left eye, and I had a tournament that Friday, so I was just trying to wait it out see if it would go away,” said Martin. “The next day, it got worse. And then finally, that Friday, I decided that I really need to see somebody, and she told me that if I had waited any longer, I would have lost all vision in that eye.”

She underwent emergency eye surgery.

“Completely put everything on hold for about four and a half five months was hard, and being able to come back stronger than ever, and mentally and emotionally, it's honestly helped me be more grateful for the sport,” said Martin.

Amber will play collegiately at Texas A&M International. Vela head coach Eloy Falcon says she’ll be hard to replace.

“It's going to be something that we're going to miss here, but I'm pretty sure she's left a little legacy, a little bit of herself with the other girls to kind of push that forward and motivate the other girls to be successful,” said Eloy Falcon Vela Golf Coach.

Success follows Amber and she hopes that continues all the way to state.