CHERIE
MARTIN
ATHLETE
BASKETBALL
CLASS OF 2023
Cherie Martin played basketball for more than 60 years, out-scoring and out-rebounding opponents who competed at the national, international and Olympic level.
Part of a dynasty as a member of the vaunted Club 240 team coached by Bill Thomson (WECSHOF 2008 inductee), Martin established herself as a tenacious rebounder and a shut-down defender.
Taking the court with teammates Rose Boretsky and Patricia Harrison (both WECSHOF 2021 inductees), Martin was part of teams that won nine provincial championships and six Eastern Canadian championships in an era when club and university teams competed together.
In 1967, Martin and Harrison were chosen to play on Ontario’s silver-medallist team at the inaugural Canada Winter Games. They both returned to win gold at the 1971 Winter Games along with Club 240’s Boretsky and Cookie Leach.
Martin played on all-star teams at major international tournaments all across the U.S., Canada, England and Australia, winning gold at the World Masters Games in 2005 and 2009.
She played for club teams in Michigan and Tennessee, winning multiple U.S. Senior National titles with each, including her last tournament at the senior nationals in New Mexico in 2019 at the age of 75.
A standout in track and field, Martin set two state records in shot put and high jump at the 2010 Michigan Senior Olympics and won four gold at the 2016 International Masters’ Games.
She was a multi-sport star at both Forster Collegiate and Commerce High. Â
Martin also blazed a trail at Windsor Raceway as the first female driver who also trained her own horses.
She now takes a victory lap as a new member of the Windsor Essex/County Sports Hall of Fame.