English native Martin shining in senior campaign

When Charlotte Martin was 11 years old, she lived out every young tennis fanatic’s dream: She was a ball girl at a professional tournament, the now-defunct British National Championships.

She said she enjoyed watching the pros, and of course, there was another major perk as well.

“You got a good couple of weeks off school, which was nice,” said Martin, now a senior at IU. “A lot of the players would play at Wimbledon and stuff, so it was nice to be able to see them so close up. And obviously it was two weeks’ worth of being able to watch really good tennis.”

But even that involvement in a professional sporting event could not prepare the West Midlands, England, native for what she would witness when she arrived at IU several years later.

“We don’t have anything like college sports back in England, so just seeing things like Assembly Hall and the football stadium was a pretty big deal when I first got here,” Martin said. “And the whole athletic environment was so new to me, you know, and having all the facilities and stuff while being at school, that’s not really something we have at home at all.”

Martin enjoyed a promising start to her IU career but battled injuries during her junior season. IU coach Lin Loring said Martin is returning to form, going 19-5 since the fall and 10-2 in dual matches this season, playing primarily at the No. 4 position for the 10-2 Hoosiers.

“I think she played most of her freshman year at two for us and won some nice matches, and she’s starting to get back, she’s finally getting back there,” Loring said. “She’s just had a lot of arm and shoulder injuries during her career, so it’s really nice to have her finishing her career on a good note.”

Martin said she didn’t even decide to attend college until three or four months before she arrived in Bloomington in August 2007. Martin said she took a year off from school while she trained at a tennis academy and played in tournaments throughout the United Kingdom and Europe.

“It got to the point where it was just too difficult to financially continue, so it was sort of go to (a university) or get a job,” Martin said. “And a lot of my friends were coming over to America at the time for college and few of them were enjoying it and stuff so I thought that would be a good way to go with it.”

Martin said the only research she did on IU before she arrived on campus was looking up statistics of the previous season’s team. She said she chose IU because it was one of the highest-ranked tennis programs with a spot left on its team.

Despite experiencing culture shock and being thrust into a completely different education system, Martin is a two-time member of the Academic All-Big Ten team and was named a Big Ten Distinguished Scholar last year. She said she plans to graduate in May with a degree in journalism and move back to England to get a job in public relations.

With her schedule of tennis and schoolwork, Martin said she cherishes every moment of free time she has.

“I like to hang out with friends mainly when I get time,” Martin said. “I don’t get much time for it here just because we are busy so seeing my other friends that are outside of the team or just doing things like watching TV sometimes is such a privilege.”

Sara Joseph, Martin’s roommate and a junior on the IU water polo team, said Martin is laid-back and responsible. The two play board games for fun and have recently started baking, Jordan said.

“She’s always the voice of reason, but she’s a lot of fun,” Jordan said.

Jordan joked that Martin’s quirky obsession with Nutella, a chocolate hazelnut spread, has gotten one of her water polo teammates hooked on the product. Martin couldn’t deny this accusation.

“I’ve been through a couple of tubs in, like, two weeks so I really need to calm down on that,” she laughed.

As she approaches the end of her IU career, Martin said her maturity level is markedly higher than when she first arrived in Bloomington.

“I’ve definitely grown up,” Martin said. “In my year off from high school, I lived away from home at a tennis academy so I was used to living away and sort of fending for myself a bit. But obviously when you’re doing that on the other side of the world it’s much, much different. You can’t pop home for the weekend so you definitely grow up a lot just having to do things for yourself.”