Never Stop Building
Self Taught and Still Building
Austin Martinez was in sixth grade, sent into the hallway to finish a math assignment, when he finished early and opened a website called Scratch instead. He tried to build a video game. He had no idea it would turn into anything, until quarantine gave him hours of free time to keep messing around with it.
"That's where my love for coding and video game development came from," Austin said. He taught himself the rest.
A Life Full of Stages
Coding wasn't Austin's only interest, not by a long way. In high school, he was a percussionist and snare drummer in the marching and concert band, a varsity tennis player, a member of Student and Junior Council, and an active part of the drama club, performing in musicals and One Act Plays. He played Aladdin in a district-wide production of "Aladdin Jr." last year.
He also volunteered as an actor and stagehand at Harbor Playhouse, a local nonprofit community theatre, building and painting sets and performing for the Corpus Christi community. Austin eventually led his high school's drama club as president, helping the program earn a bigger budget and place higher in One Act Play competition. "I'm very active in many communities," Austin said, "and I have a wide variety of talents not limited to computer programming."
Family, and What Home Means
Both of Austin's parents and his older sister attended college before him, but he's the first in his family to move away from home to do it. His mother is an Assistant Principal at Roy Miller High School, his own alma mater.
One moment has stayed with him: when his father hurt his back, Austin left school for a stretch to help him, and afterward, his dad told him, "I'm proud of you." "He isn't always expressive," Austin said, "and I really needed to hear that."
What's Next
Austin is studying Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, part of the Class of 2030. He's open to a software engineering career and would love to work in video game development, potentially at a company like Nintendo. On campus, he's trying to stay involved in band and theatre alongside his coursework, and he hopes to audition for UTSA's Percussion Indoor ensemble. He's also hoping to travel to Wrocław, Poland, to visit a friend who spent an exchange year in Corpus Christi.
Austin describes the themes of his life so far as time-management and optimism, the two things that let him hold onto coding, theatre, band, and tennis all at once without dropping any of them. "Optimism is such a valuable tool to have," he said. "It keeps you happier, and well liked."
Austin's story is a reminder of what the Frazier Family Foundation believes: that intelligent and creative minds should never go untapped because of where someone lives or circumstances beyond their control. Austin built his range of skills, on stage and in code, long before the Foundation entered the picture. The scholarship is there to help him keep building.
Learn more about our scholars and the Frazier Family Foundation’s mission to open doors for tomorrow’s leaders at https://www.frazierff.org/news.
