BACK TO BACK

Last week we said Dave Martino's name was going to come up a lot this summer. Turns out we didn't have to wait long.

For the second straight week, Martino takes home Player of the Week honors — and this time, he earned it in a tougher situation. Trinity dropped both games to Victory 3, losing 13-2 in game one and 13-8 in game two. It wasn't the team's best night, and the scoreboard showed it. But through all of it, Martino was one of the few bright spots the lineup could hang its hat on.

For the week, he finished 5-for-6 with a .833 average, 3 RBIs, and 3 runs scored. Those numbers might look familiar — because they're almost identical to what he did in week one against First Baptist. Across the two games, he also added a double and his first home run of the season, giving him a 1.000 slugging percentage on the night. The consistency is starting to become a pattern, and at this point it's hard to call it a coincidence.

Game one was a rough one for the whole team. Trinity managed just 2 runs against Victory 3 and couldn't find much momentum offensively. Martino went 1-for-2 with a run scored — not a bad line, but nothing flashy. When your team loses 13-2, there's only so much one guy can do.

Game two was a different story. Down and needing something to spark the offense, Martino came up huge. He went a perfect 4-for-4 — the best individual hitting line of the night for anyone on the roster — and drove in 3 runs while scoring 2 more. He also hit a double and his first home run of the 2026 season, giving the lineup some much-needed life when things could have easily fallen completely apart. Trinity still lost, but the fight they showed in game two — putting up 8 runs — had a lot to do with Martino refusing to have a bad at-bat.

Over two weeks and four games now, Martino is slashing .833 with 10 hits, 6 RBIs, and 7 runs scored. He hasn't struck out once. Not in 12 at-bats. That kind of contact consistency is rare at any level, and it's the thing that keeps separating him from the rest of the stat sheet week after week.

It's easy to put up good numbers when everything is going your team's way. It's a lot harder to keep doing it when the team loses by double digits. The fact that Martino showed up and had arguably his best individual game of the young season in a tough loss says a lot about the kind of player he is.

Trinity will be looking to bounce back next week, and if week two taught us anything, it's that number 17 is going to keep swinging no matter what the scoreboard says.