Homer Alaska - Sports

Julie McCarron was in charge of nominating Martin to the Hall of Fame through the Mariners Booster Club.

"We thought Larry was an excellent candidate because he grew up here, raised a family here and he's a great representative of Homer. We nominated him as an athlete because of his achievements not only as a high school skier but because he was a great collegiate skier and an Olympic skier," said McCarron.

Although Martin was nominated as an athlete, for many in Homer, he is known as a coach and mentor first, and a world-class skier second.

"He has given so much back too. He has worked as a coach, teaching kids how to ski and working on building up our trail systems here," said McCarron.

Martin moved to Homer in 1955 when he was 5 years old. That's when he got his start in skiing. As the archetypical younger brother he shadowed his older siblings as they worked out on the slopes.

"At the time there was already a really active Kachemak Ski Club and they stopped by at the schoolyard to help us out pretty regularly," said Martin.

In junior high Martin began working with Dave Schroer and improved steadily season by season.

Martin started first as a downhill skier, but he soon left the slopes behind and excelled in Nordic, or cross country, skiing, the sport that would eventually take him both to Austria and Japan as a part of the U. S. Ski Team in the 1972 and the 1976 Winter Olympics.

It was Schroer who gave Martin some of the best advice he could have gotten: to focus on Nordic skiing, and forget about downhill.

"I took it. I knew I wasn't that good on alpine and we already had some good alpine skiers, but I liked cross country, so I really started to work on that," said Martin.

Martin set his sights on the Junior Nationals, hoping that by the time he reached high school he could be an alternate, like his older brother.

Martin made the team all four years of high school.

"I really enjoyed the experience, but like a lot of kids, one of the best parts of being on the team was going on trips outside, down to the Lower 48," he said.

After high school, Martin went to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., on an athletic scholarship.

"At the time I didn't really care what the program looked like. I just cared that I was skiing," said Martin.

While at school Martin had a chance to compete against the best skiers in the country when the Nordic Ski National Championships stopped in town.

Photographer: Ryan Long, Homer News Larry Martin now Co-Owns Lakeshor Glass with his wife Linda.

"I remember that there seemed like there was a real division on the team, between the 'Old Men,' as we called them — the guys who had been to one or maybe two Olympics already — and the younger guys," said Martin.

But, young and "old" the U.S. team made its way to Innsbruck, Austria. While it did not set world records or win extraordinary accolades, the moments that stick out most in Martin's mind were seeing Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts meet in Innsbruck and having a chance to hand out the U.S. Team pin to the Russians.

In 1976 Martin traveled to Sapporo, Japan, where Bill Koch was the first American to take home the silver medal in Nordic skiing and just the second American to medal in Nordic competition, a feat that has only been bested this year in Vancouver with Billy Demong grabbing gold.

Martin retired from competitive skiing after the 1976 Olympics.

For a few seasons, he coached the Nordic ski team at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

He came back to Homer shortly after and worked construction in the summer and ran a small ski resort in Colorado in the winter with his wife, Linda.

He and Linda gave up the ski resort when their daughter Ida was born. Larry found himself back in the game of skiing when Ida started out on her own career with Homer's cross country running and ski teams.

By the time Ida had graduated the Martins' son, Tad, was making his way through junior high, so Martin continued to help out with coaching.

In the meantime, cross country skiing had begun to really push skate skiing over classical Nordic skiing.

"Mickey Todd and his coaches did a lot really well with skate skiing, so when they told me that they didn't know as much about classic skiing I told them I'd be happy to help if I could, and it gave me a chance to coach Ida and Tad," said Martin.

Martin put nearly 14 years into the Homer cross country ski program and still helps out at Homer ski events, like Homer's portion of the 2010 Besh Cup at Lookout Mountain Trails.