Sebastian Martinez can be hard to define.
He’s an athlete who won an arts award (specifically, the Sculpture Award at last year’s Arts Awards Night.) He’s smart—“like, very smart”, emphasized an exasperated Director of Institutional Advancement and Boys’ Varsity Soccer Associate Head Coach David Fahey ’99—but he once tried to get out of a test by convincing a teacher he had been asked to speak to none other than Pingry’s Board of Trustees, just the slightest of stretches from the Zoom panel he actually spoke on to the Pingry Alumni Association two days prior, something that Mr. Fahey, with a mixture of incredulousness and something bordering on admiration for such teenage moxie, called an “unbelievable fabrication of a partial half truth.” Sebastian has a charming, sunny demeanor, a friendliness that can be hard to reconcile with the accumulated red cards he racked up when he was younger and had a penchant for slide tackling his opponents until a coach moved him to the goalie position (“I didn’t hurt anyone,” he recalls pleasantly. “On purpose, anyway.”)
Sebastian is affable and deploys a likable personality to put anyone at ease. “He’s got—you know they call it ‘rizz’ these days?” asks Mr. Fahey, sounding just a little bit tired. “He’s got rizz.” Mr. Fahey is referring to the 2023 Oxford Word of the Year. “He’s got all the charisma and charm and raw cognitive power to come up with an enlightened statement in class. That’s the kind of kid he is.” Mr. Fahey can only speculate on what Sebastian’s future might be. “He could be a spy,” he says earnestly. “He could go work for the CIA. Brilliant. He could be a diplomat. He could be a salesman—oh my God, could that kid sell.”
While the future is far away, it’s also bearing down on Sebastian, just like it is for most seniors. So he revels in being a goalie, and there’s something hard to define here, too—the freedom he feels from being rooted in place, defending a net that is 24 feet wide and 8 feet high. He’s not confined to the penalty box, but he spends most of the game prowling in front of it like a tiger ready to pounce. Being a goalie brings him joy. “It’s an escape from everything else,” he says. “It’s one of those positions where a lot of it is preparing your body, but a bigger portion is preparing your mind. Once I’m locked in, and once I’m focused on practice or the game, I kind of forget about everything else.” He pauses here. “Especially a place like Pingry, where there's high academic rigor, and then everything with college is really stressful… I can just go out there and kind of forget.”
Is there a difference between how he is as a student and how is on the pitch?
“Yeah. Definitely,” Sebastian says without missing a beat. Even this seems hard to define, especially when he switches gears and speaks with some reverence on the necessities of studying. Artist? Athlete? Very Smart? and, just in case the dog eats his homework, Very Likable? It all seemed a bit contradictory, and led to the following exchange:
Ms. Courtney: So let’s say, hypothetically, you haven’t studied for a thing like a big test. Do you ever try to get out of it?
Sebastian: No, I just try to power through it.
Ms. Courtney: Really?
Sebastian: Yeah. But I take good notes in class.
Ms. Courtney: What if I’ve heard stories of you trying to get out of it?
Sebastian: Oh. Well, then I would say yes, those stories are accurate.
“Great kid,” says Mr. Fahey. “He’s Anakin Skywalker. He’s got all the powers of light and dark. He just needs to decide what to do.”
***
Upper School 3D Arts Teacher Seth Goodwin taught Sebastian in Clay 1 during his sophomore year, and then taught him again in his Sculpture class, where he was struck by his student’s inquisitive nature. Mr. Goodwin, who used to be a soccer goalie himself, recognized Sebastian’s intellectual curiosity and encouraged him to challenge himself creatively. “He’s really curious,” says Mr. Goodwin. “He’s curious about the way things work—and not just necessarily an object or a machine, but also the way things work in your daily life.”
Sebastian embraced sculpture. “He ended up having his own little area in the back of the sculpture studio where he would just be every day, in between classes, and he would constantly be bringing in things, ‘Mr. G, look what I found!’, and he’d have a big basket full of objects that he could make sculptures with. And I would give him the assignments for the course and he would fill those, but he would also be making all these other sculptures on his own. He was exploring. He really became an artist,” says Mr. Goodwin.
Like most high schoolers finding their way, Sebastian occasionally encountered a few bumps in the road as he found his focus. Mr. Goodwin was determined to see his student succeed. “I wanted to make sure he had a place where he could be himself,” he says. “I definitely wanted to make sure that there was a place that he could go in that studio and that he could feel at home.”
Mr. Goodwin has soccer balls, footballs, and frisbees in his classroom, and when he saw Sebastian needed a break from the pressure, they’d take a soccer ball and go out into the sculpture courtyard and kick the ball around—teacher and student, sure, but also two soccer goalies enjoying some fresh air and fresh perspective.
Sometimes, Sebastian would kick the ball around with his teacher, and other times he’d work on a project out there. “You’ve gotta have a place,” says Mr. Goodwin. “Somewhere.” When he suspects his students are getting frustrated, or overwhelmed, or just needing a break, he encourages them to step outside—”take a minute. Kick the ball around. Go outside, go for a walk. Just a couple minutes. That will help,” he says with compassion. “This place is so rigorous. And yes—they’re going to end up doing their work. And they’re going to end up fulfilling their assignments. But sometimes they just need a minute.”
Some things are hard to define, but not this. When asked why they need a place, Mr. Goodwin laughs and makes it clear the answer is simple enough.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
***
Ms. Courtney: Can you define charisma for me?
Sebastian: I don’t know. Just a little bit more.
Ms. Courtney: A little bit more what?
Sebastian: Just… there.
If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, then trying to decipher how and when Sebastian will deploy his charm may be worth considering how and when he has utilized it in the past. To get out of a test, sure, and he did it with style, too. But, more often than not, Sebastian is tuned in to a kind of social frequency that others ignore.
Julian Martinez is a junior at Pingry. He and Sebastian are only 17 months apart, but at first glance, you may not even know they’re brothers—Sebastian, stocky with bright blonde hair and a welcoming smile, and Julian, lanky with black hair and a cautious grin. It’s easy to mistake them for just two kids in the hall, but these two kids go way back.
Whereas Sebastian was speaking at an early age, Julian took his time. Where Sebastian jumps into the fray and makes fast friends, Julian hesitates, preferring instead to observe. “They’re very different,” says their mom, Dr. Angelica Diaz-Martinez ’88. “Julian is super quiet, very reserved… he is slow to warm up. Sebastian is quite the opposite. It’s two extremes. They get along and they complement each other. But they are very different kids.”
For Sebastian, the gift of gab was always present. “In general, Sebastian’s always been very personable. Since he was really little, he was verbal and able to express himself at an early age,” says his mom, before adding that he was also bigger than other kids his age, which led his teachers to assume he was older. “I think because he was able to articulate well, preschool teachers forgot that he was only two or three and would treat him like he was older. I think that was great in certain circumstances… and not so great in others because there was an expectation that his behavior should be that of a six year old when he was three. So there was some of that,” she says with a smile. “But he has always really been able to engage people.”
When they were little, the contrast between the cheerfully chatty Sebastian and Julian's quiet mumbling often drew the attention of impatient adults. Sebastian, blessed with a disarming charm, would help his brother out. If someone asked Julian a question, Sebastian would answer for him. Out at a restaurant with an irritated waiter? Sebastian would politely order for his brother. “He would speak for him because it was hard to understand [Julian] at times,” recalls their mom, noting this would lead to the awkward situation of Julian being asked to repeat himself. “So Sebastian would come in and translate for him.”
“It would be hard for me,” Julian says quietly. “Even to order food at a restaurant, because sometimes I’d just be so nervous.” Sebastian was there to make sure his brother was never left out, and he would encourage him, too. “Someone would ask me a question and I would just nod or say ‘uh-huh’. And then he’d answer fully and then he’d tell me quietly, ‘Go talk. Say something.’”
It could sometimes be annoying, like when they would go on vacations and Sebastian would knit together a whole new social circle by introducing himself to other vacationers. “He’ll go up to random kids our age and just start talking with them,” says an amused and somewhat baffled Julian. “And then he’ll hang out with them after we eat dinner… I don’t really go out and do that all the time.” When they were younger, Julian joined reluctantly. “There was one vacation, I don’t remember where, but he met a bunch of other people. And I was forced to go stay with him and hang out with him and those people. And I would just be answering people with one- or two-word answers and he would talk for me.”
Julian was making friends, whether he wanted to or not. “I admire that he’s able to do that. But it’s also a bit annoying when I have to go with him and I don’t know anyone and it’s like 20 people he’s just randomly met,” says Julian, sounding every bit as exasperated as Mr. Fahey.
Whether he felt annoyed or not, the reason behind his brother’s assistance was always clear. “He did it to help me put myself out there,” says Julian. “He knew if I started talking to people, it would be easier to open up and make new friends like he can.”
Julian has witnessed his brother do this in other scenarios, too. If there is someone left out, Sebastian will pick up on it and use his social skills on their behalf. When they were younger, they would attend a sports camp every year. Much like those preschool teachers from way back, the coaches leaned on Sebastian to help out. “He would help with all the younger kids. And the younger kids wouldn’t really listen to the coaches. But he would make sure all of them were playing and that there wasn’t one of them sitting on the side, but that all of them were having fun and getting the attention they needed.”
It’s an unusual thing—charisma—and it’s an increasing rarity nowadays, where social skills seem reduced to simply looking up from one’s phone. To disarm a teacher or a coach so they can’t quite get mad certainly comes in handy. But to do good by making others feel good? To make sure the little guy—whether that’s your taller little brother or a quiet kid on the sidelines—is never left out? To be tuned into that frequency is a gift itself.
“He will include anyone in a conversation,” says Julian with quiet admiration. “He’s not just gonna have it with one person. He’ll make sure everyone is getting involved. He’s just inclusive like that.”
***
For Assistant Director of College Counseling Cynthia Santiago, who is Sebastian’s advisor, she’s watched him grow and mature, and she is looking forward to him embracing his potential—and his influence. “I’ve said this to him from day one,” she recalls, “I”ve said, ‘You’re very charismatic, so use that charisma for good.’ I remember having this conversation with him back in ninth grade, and I said, this is a strength I see in you. So use it for good. Your peers are going to look to you in terms of the influence you have. So use that for the positive side. Be a leader. Right?” She smiles. “And I just remember him chuckling at me and saying, ‘Oooookay, Ms. Santiago.’”
When it comes to Sebastian’s charm and powers of persuasion, Mr. Fahey doesn’t mince words. “I’m talking Jedi,” he says. “He could be Luke Skywalker…. You know, he’s got that kind of power.”
Sebastian, who is committed to play soccer at Stevens Institute of Technology in the fall, is determined to do good in the world and, while he’s at it, make others feel good about themselves. “I want to do something that makes a change in people’s lives,” he says. He’s interested in marketing, having done an internship at the Meadowlands over the summer. But when asked where he sees himself in ten years, he’s onto something new entirely. “Maybe a lawyer,” he suggests with a smile. “We’ll see.”
However he defines his future, one thing is for sure: charisma will come in handy there, too.
***
Photos by Anthony "Truncs" Truncale '26
To contact the author: Sara Courtney, Communications Writer