Most young boys probably fantasize about being superstars or even world champions of their favorite sport when they grow up. Let’s look at a young man who didn’t just fantasize about it: he made it happen, and he didn’t wait for adulthood or even adolescence.
Martin Reyna is the now 10-year-old son of Diego Reyna, a successful competitive shooter in his native Guatemala who came to the US to find a better life for his family. The boy’s rise in shooting has been meteoric, a classic example of dedication to excellence. In a few short years, he had won the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) World Championship in the super-junior division.
A Father’s Perspective
Olympic-style shooting had been Diego’s sport in Guatemala. Diego explains, “When we moved to the United States, I brought some of my old medals with me, and Martin always kept them in his room. When he was about five years old, he started talking about getting into competition shooting. We went to a sporting goods store in Melbourne, Florida with his grandfather, Otto, and bought him an air pistol. I put some targets on a tree and we went from there.”
Other youthful diversions turned out to be just that: they merely diverted Martin from his most sharply focused goal, which was shooting. His dad remembers, “I thought he was too young to get deep into shooting, and I thought there were other sports he should try. Football, soccer, baseball, basketball. He did karate for two or three years. When he was six, almost seven, we bought him a Go-Kart and he got into carting. He did well driving them, but after three or four months, he told me he didn’t enjoy it as much as he did shooting.”
A Path Is Taken
The proud dad relates, “When we discussed it, he told me, ‘I know what I want. I want to shoot!’ One sunny day I told my wife, ‘He just wants to shoot’ and she said ‘Well…’”
They bought the boy a Smith & Wesson M&P15 .22 rifle. “We took him to Shooter’s World in Orlando and started him with precision shooting. Five yards, ten yards, and of course safety and trigger control and everything. By 25 yards he was getting bored, but then we tried shooting steel and he was hooked,” Diego continues. “Soon it was more shooting and less carting, and ultimately we sold the carts and focused on the guns. At age seven we bought him his first pistol, a Walther P22. We started shooting from chair and bench, one round in the magazine, and progressing. He had to pull the trigger with both fingers at first, but soon he was shooting at 25 yards, always hitting center, and thriving on challenges.”
Entering the Competition Arena
In 2019 Diego, now an NRA instructor, took a course at the Volusia County Gun Club and learned that a competition was hosted there. The Steel Challenge Match Director checked out young Martin and, satisfied that the lad was safe and competent, allowed him to compete. Father and son were soon shooting matches together in not only rimfire pistols but rimfire rifles and pistol-caliber carbines.
They met Gorka Ibanez, a spectacularly successful Grandmaster shooter, who took the boy under his wing for coaching. Gorka soon told Diego that his son was ready for the USPSA competition just before his ninth birthday. The Sig Sauer P320 was particularly adaptable to small hands and Martin was soon running one with an optical sight. Two months into shooting USPSA, the boy had won his first medal. The die was cast. In 2022 he won the National title and won the President’s Medal in Thailand as well. In June of 2023 at the National Carry Optics Championship, shooting against the adults, he won second place in C-class.
Today, he has earned sponsorship from Black Scorpion holsters, Hunters HB Gold shooting glasses, America brand ammunition, and Gorka and Manny Bragg’s Extreme GM Training. He gets all As in school, indulged by teachers who excuse him to travel the world for sport as long as he completes his homework and exams.
A Young Champion Speaks
Young Martin told us, “I shoot about 125 matches a year. Volusia has 2 or 3 matches a week and a practice session or two, so I’m shooting five out of seven days. I shoot about 50,000 rounds of 9mm a year and dry-fire an hour every day. My workouts focus on pushups, curls, squats, sit-ups, biceps and triceps, and core and legs. I want to get stronger to achieve my goals.”
Martin Reyna. Remember the name. If you follow the shooting sports, you’re likely to be hearing that name a lot, for a long time.
