Yoakum cross country: Martinez runs Saturday morning at state

Gisela Martinez is scheduled to run in the  UIL state meet this Saturday at Old Settler’s Park in Round Rock around 8:30 am.
This will be Martinez’s fourth trip to the state meet, having been part of the Lady Bulldogs state teams in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
“Gisela is an amazing young woman who I feel will be extremely successful after high school. It's not just that she made it four years to State, but she did the work to earn four trips to State,” Yoakum cross-country coach Dennis Muehlstein said. “She is without a doubt one of the top 10 young adults I have had the please of working with. She is an all-around awesome person, athlete, teammate and young woman. She is what you want your daughter to go up to be and the girl you hope you son brings home to meet mom. She absolutely deserves to be there and lucky that we were able to stay healthy enough to qualify.”
Martinez placed No. 20 at the regional meet with a time of 12 minutes, 56.48 seconds and averaged 6:28 per mile.
“She needs to stay relaxed and control her emotions at the start....it will go out fast. Then she has to get excited and race the heck of the second mile,” he said.” There is a fine line between going out too fast and just enough to stay in striking distance. Gisela is a strong finisher and we want to stay close enough we can out kick a large group in the second mile.”