<p>One of the most promising high school swimming careers that Johnson County has seen in recent years almost never happened.</p>
<p>Recruited by a friend to come out for the Center Grove boys squad as a freshman, Ethan Martin almost missed the first team meeting.</p>
<p>Even when he got into the water, Martin wasn’t an impact performer — in part because he was still splitting time between swimming and soccer. But Trojans coach Jim Todd saw a ton of untapped potential in the ninth-grader, and he made sure to let Martin know.</p>
<p>"He would yell at me every practice, because I was always injured from (soccer)," Martin recalled, "so he would yell at me and be like, ‘You’ve got so much more potential in swimming, so you’ve got to quit that soccer.'</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
<p>After his freshman year, Martin listened — and he’s glad he did.</p>
<p>Now a junior, he’s enjoyed a meteoric ascent through the state’s swimming ranks, and he’s on track to make a big splash for the Trojans this coming postseason.</p>
<p>Martin qualified for the state meet in the 50-yard freestyle last year but didn’t make it out of the preliminaries, finishing 23rd with a time of 21.66 seconds. He’s already beat that this year, setting a Johnson County meet record with a 21.38 last week and going as low as 20.84 — a time that would have placed him fourth in the state last season.</p>
<p>He also swam a 46.14 in the 100 freestyle, which would have tied for seventh at state. Martin has also helped the Trojans’ 200 freestyle relay already go nearly a second faster than its 2019 state qualifying time, and the 200 medley relay quartet is almost at the time it put up in placing 12th in the state.</p>
<p>While those would appear to be the events he’d be best suited to compete in at sectional and state this year, Todd says that he could realistically put Martin in anything and he’d excel because of his work ethic and athleticism.</p>
<p>"He could go 200; he could go 100 fly," Todd said. "The only thing that I would probably not put him in is the 500 free, because he does run out of gas when he’s swimming longer than three or four minutes."</p>
<p>But when he’s swimming for less than two minutes, Martin can go faster than almost anybody in Indiana.</p>
<p>That certainly wasn’t the case two years ago, when he placed seventh in the 100 free at sectional and didn’t even get to compete in any other individual events — but he’s dropped about four seconds in the 50 and almost nine seconds in the 100 since he swam at county his freshman year, a trajectory of improvement seldom seen at the high school level.</p>
<p>"He’s really come a long way," senior teammate Tony Gipson said. "He’s really good energy-wise, he’s very positive, so he’s helpful to the team in that way — and he’s also very fast."</p>
<p>How fast he can go before the year’s out remains to be seen, but Martin figures to be the top point scorer for a Center Grove team that has a very good chance to finish in the state’s top 10 in February, returning the program to prominence after a handful of down years.</p>
<p>For now, the junior remains focused on the process that has allowed him to make it this far this quickly.</p>
<p>"I’ve got a lot of hopes and goals set for those high meets and stuff like that," Martin said, "but we’re taking it one step at a time. I’m worrying about me now — I’ll fix the things that I need to fix, and we’ll see where that goes."</p>
