Delea Martins: Milwaukee’s Fastest Daughter, Running for Carolina
You can trace a straight line from a six-year-old girl lacing up her first pair of spikes with the Milwaukee Mustangs Track Club to the junior sprinter who broke the Wisconsin Division 2 state record in the 200 meters, earned All-America honors at the NCAA Championships, and is now one of the more quietly ascending 400-metre runners in the Atlantic Coast Conference. That line is named Delea Martins, and it hasn’t shown any signs of bending.
Born in 2004 and raised in the Milwaukee area, Martins grew up in a household where sport was a shared language. Her mother, Neyahte Johnson-Martins, ran track in high school. Her father, Kevin Martins, was a three-sport varsity athlete at Muskego High School. Her older brother Justin Rabon was a track star of his own. The sport wasn’t simply introduced to Delea — it was embedded in the fabric of her upbringing.
The Milwaukee Mustangs and the Early Years
Delea was six years old when she first ran with the Milwaukee Mustangs Track Club, a youth athletics organization that serves competitors from ages six to eighteen and has long been a cornerstone of youth track development in southeastern Wisconsin. She was seven when she began competing. By that age, it was already apparent that something was different about the way she moved.
The Mustangs environment — a competitive but nurturing setting that introduces young athletes to the full spectrum of track and field — gave Martins her first real competitive formation. It was there that the fundamental habits of a sprinter took root: the discipline of structured training, the experience of racing against peers, and the slow accumulation of the confidence that comes from knowing you are fast.
Even as a child, Martins admits, the competitive instinct was intense. “I used to have so much anxiety that I would cry before every race,” she has said. “As I got older, I gained more confidence and learned to keep my composure, but I am really, really competitive and I hate to lose.” That combination — deep competitive fire tempered by a developing capacity for composure — would become her signature as an athlete.
Shorewood High School: Breaking Records, Collecting Championships
Martins attended Shorewood High School, a public school in the northern Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood that competes in WIAA Division 2. It was a school that had solid track and field traditions but had never seen anything quite like her. She proceeded, methodically and emphatically, to shatter that record book.
There was, however, a complication. Due to COVID-19 and the disruption it caused to prep sports schedules, Martins competed in high school track only during her sophomore and senior years — a reality that makes her accomplishments even more striking, since she compressed into two active seasons what most athletes spread across four.
Her sophomore campaign in 2021 immediately signaled what was coming. At the WIAA Division 2 state meet — which that year, due to a format change, compressed all events into a single day rather than the traditional two — Martins ran five races in the space of a few hours and walked off the track with gold medals in the 100 metres (12.07 seconds) and the 200 metres (25.00 seconds), plus a silver medal in the 400 metres (57.26 seconds). Those 28 individual points accounted for more than half of Shorewood’s 52-point team total. For her performance, she was selected as the VNN Athlete of the Week in a statewide vote, receiving 1,118 of the 3,207 total votes cast.
Shorewood head coach Dominic Newman took notice immediately. “Delea has brought a new level of excitement to the program,” he said. “Her passionate support for fellow athletes along with her high expectations make her a powerful team leader.” Newman would later add a prediction that proved prescient: “The college doors are beginning to open wide for Delea. And she’s going to sprint right through them.”
By the time Martins was a junior — competing on the national club circuit that year even if not in WIAA competition — she was ranked 10th in the 400 metres among high school juniors nationally, 4th in the 200 metres, and 7th in the 60-metre dash. Those weren’t the rankings of an athlete developing toward elite status. Those were the rankings of someone already there.
She also holds marks in Wisconsin’s all-time listings from her junior year of competition: her 24.34-second run in the 200 metres at the 2021 Myrhum Invitational at Hartland Arrowhead stands among the fastest ever recorded by a Wisconsin high school girl. She appeared on the Wisconsin all-time lists in the 400 metres as well, recording 55.79 at the New Balance Indoor Nationals.
Her senior season, in 2023, delivered the performances that definitively stated her place in Wisconsin prep history. She set the WIAA Division 2 state record in the 200 metres with a time of 24.34 seconds — a record that would stand until 2025. She ran 11.96 in the 100 metres and 39.62 in the 300 metres. She won the indoor state title in the 400 metres. She was a two-time Woodland Conference Track and Field Athlete of the Year. She was a conference record holder in the 100, 200, and 400 metres. And she competed at the AAU Junior Olympics, where her relay teams placed fourth (4×100) and third (4×400).
Through all of it, Martins maintained close to a 4.0 grade point average — a detail her father, Kevin, helped her maintain by keeping her loose but focused in the high-pressure moments around competition. The academic achievement was genuine rather than incidental; it reflected the same self-discipline that made her competitive.
Choosing Carolina: The Commitment to UNC
When Delea Martins chose the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her collegiate career, she was making a deliberate bet on herself. The ACC is one of the deepest conferences in collegiate track and field, particularly in the women’s sprints. Joining a program under head coach Chris Miltenberg that has consistently produced relay excellence and individual development, Martins committed to an environment where she could grow without the assurance that success would come easily.
She arrived in Chapel Hill double majoring in Advertising and Public Relations and Communications, pursuing both at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Her academic ambitions were clear from the start — she would later be accepted into the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Undergraduate Business Program and would announce an internship with Nike’s Converse division in the summer of 2025 focused on Social and Community Impact. The student-athlete identity was not a performance. It was the actual shape of her life.
Freshman Year (2023-24): A Statement Debut
If anyone needed evidence that Martins was ready for the college level, her first collegiate race provided it. At the Dick Taylor Carolina Challenge — hosted in Carolina’s own Eddie Smith Field House in January 2024 — she won the women’s 300 metres in a personal record of 39.43 seconds, defeating competitors from Duke, High Point, N.C. Central, and UNC Wilmington. She then anchored the winning women’s 4×400 relay. She was the only competitor at the entire meet to win multiple events.
The Atlantic Coast Conference took notice. Martins was named ACC Women’s Freshmen Track Athlete of the Week — the first of what would become a pattern of conference recognition. The award citation noted that she was the only multi-event winner at the meet, and mentioned her four Wisconsin state championships as context for what Carolina had landed.
She went on to compete in five indoor meets that freshman year, qualifying for the ACC Indoor Championships in the 400 metres and finishing 15th in 54.96 seconds. She was part of the relay team that finished fifth at the ACC Indoors. She earned indoor Academic ALL-ACC recognition, establishing a dual pattern of athletic and academic achievement that would continue throughout her time at Carolina.
Outdoors, she ran six meets across the 200 metres, 400 metres, and relay events. Her 400-metre personal record of 53.85 at the Charlotte Invitational was, at the time, one of the fastest times by a freshman in the country. She qualified for the ACC Outdoor Championships, finishing 12th in 55.10, and was part of the relay team that took sixth. She was named to the outdoor Academic ALL-ACC team as well.
Within the team, she was recognized with the Newcomer of the Year award for Women’s Sprints — an internal acknowledgment of exactly the kind of first-year she had.
Sophomore Year (2024-25): Breaking Through
The sophomore season at UNC was a step change in Martins’s development, and it showed up in the results with consistency.
Indoors, she opened the season at the Eagle Elite Invitational by helping the 4×400 relay team to a win. In January, back at her indoor collegiate home in the Eddie Smith Field House, she ran 54.16 in the 400 metres — the eighth-fastest indoor time in UNC history at the time — and logged it as a stepping stone rather than a ceiling.
The headline moment of the indoor season came in February 2025 at the BU Terrier DMR Challenge at Boston University. Running as part of the distance medley relay with Makayla Paige, Taryn Parks, and Ella Auderset, Martins contributed a strong split as the UNC women shattered the program’s DMR school record with a time of 10:44.71 — the seventh-fastest in the country at that moment. The performance earned the relay team the ACC Track Performer of the Week award. Carolina’s men’s relay team also set a school record that same evening, making it a historic night for the program.
That relay team went on to the NCAA Indoor Championships in Virginia Beach, where they finished ninth in the DMR final with a time of 10:53.02 — earning Second Team All-America honors. It was Martins’s first national championship recognition at the collegiate level.
The outdoor season of 2025 represented her sharpest individual improvement yet. She qualified individually for the NCAA East Regional in the 400 metres, running a personal best of 53.00 at the Irwin Belk Track and Field Center in Charlotte on April 26, 2025. That mark placed her eighth all-time in UNC program history. At the ACC Outdoor Championships, she earned All-ACC Second Team honors in the 400 metres with a time of 52.88 — a further improvement that moved her up the program’s all-time list.
She was also part of a 4×400 relay squad that had a memorable afternoon at Duke. Running with Gwyneth Goldowski, Alyssa Hernandez, and Makayla Paige, UNC set the meet record at Duke’s own stadium with a time of 3:35.85 — taking the record from the Blue Devils by three full seconds and logging the performance as ninth all-time in Carolina history.
At the NCAA East First Round, Martins ran both the individual 400 metres and contributed to the relay squad that ran 3:32.90 — the third-fastest time in program history. She was named to the College Sports Communicators All-District Academic Team, continuing her pattern of recognition on both fronts.
The 2025 outdoor season personal best of 53.00 is also reflected on her World Athletics profile, which places her current world ranking at #310 in the women’s 400 metres — a figure that will continue to move as she develops toward what her trajectory suggests is possible in the 52-second range and below.
Junior Year (2025-26): Building on the Foundation
The 2025-26 academic year has brought Martins into her junior season with an expanded leadership role and continued athletic development. Her LinkedIn profile, which she maintains with notable professionalism for a student-athlete, identifies her as Captain of the UNC Track and Field team — a position that formalizes what she had been doing informally from the beginning of her college career.
The 2026 indoor season opened with familiar confidence. At the Dick Taylor Challenge in January 2026, she again won both the 300 metres and the 4×400 relay — a repeat of her initial college debut performance but with a junior’s polish. She followed that with a 400-metre win at the Brant Tolsma Invitational, and a second-place finish in the 4×400 relay.
At the ACC Indoor Championships in late February 2026, she competed in the 400-metre prelims, posting a time of 55.08. The 2026 indoor season also brought another program record: the women’s distance medley relay team of Sydney Masciarelli, Delea Martins, Reese Dalton, and Vera Sjoberg ran 10:53.02 at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas — the third-fastest time in UNC history — earning Second Team All-America honors for the relay. It was Martins’s second consecutive DMR All-America honor, a remarkable consistency that reflects both her individual contribution and her importance to Carolina’s relay program.
Off the Track: Leader, Entrepreneur, Advocate
Martins brings a level of intentionality to her non-athletic pursuits that mirrors the focus she applies to competition. As president of FAST x UNC (Female Athletes Stand Together), she leads a campus organization dedicated to empowering and unifying female student-athletes at Carolina — building community, advocating for female athletes’ interests, and creating programming that extends the impact of women’s athletics beyond the scoreboard.
She is also co-owner of UNCUT, a venture listed on her LinkedIn profile that reflects an entrepreneurial spirit consistent with her business coursework at Kenan-Flagler and her media studies at Hussman. Her summer 2025 internship with Nike’s Converse division — focused on Social and Community Impact — brought her into direct contact with exactly the kind of work that bridges sport, culture, and community engagement that has been a consistent theme in her developing professional identity.
She has also served as a Fidelity Investments Student Brand Ambassador and completed an HR Talent Acquisition internship with Fidelity — a breadth of professional experience unusual for a Division I athlete at any stage, let alone while competing at the level she has maintained.
In her spare time, she volunteers with a nonprofit youth track and field team, mentoring young athletes by drawing on her own experience with the Milwaukee Mustangs. Her stated goal in that work is to share insights about the sport, instill foundational principles of youth athletics, and help young athletes develop toward scholarship opportunities — a direct reflection of the path the Mustangs helped create for her.
Personal Bests and Competitive Profile
As of April 2026, Delea Martins’s personal bests in individual events include 53.00 seconds in the outdoor 400 metres (Charlotte, April 26, 2025), 54.16 in the indoor 400 metres (February 2025), 23.83 in the 200 metres (April 26, 2025), 39.31 in the 300 metres (January 2026), and 11.96 in the 100 metres from her high school days. Her relay personal bests include a 3:35.11 in the indoor 4×400 (Louisville, March 2025), a 3:34.05 in the outdoor 4×400 (Durham, May 2025), and contributions to a relay that ran 3:32.90 at the NCAA East Regionals. Her World Athletics profile records her 400-metre best at 53.00 and ranks her #310 globally in the women’s 400 metres.
She is a sprinter who is improving at the pace that coaches dream about — faster in every season at the collegiate level, each personal best building logically on the last. The 52-second barrier for the 400 metres, which represents the threshold where athletes begin competing for All-America individual recognition, is not a remote target from where she currently stands.
Social Media and Sponsorships
Martins is active on Instagram and TikTok under her own name. Her Opendorse profile, through which she manages NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) opportunities, identifies her with approximately 5,825 Instagram followers and 6,105 TikTok followers as of her freshman year, numbers that have continued to grow alongside her athletic profile. She lists her interest areas as fashion and beauty, fitness, food, sports, and sports memorabilia — a profile that reflects her life as a student-athlete and her comfort with the brand side of the collegiate athletic experience.
Her summer 2025 internship with Nike, Inc. through the Converse division places her in proximity to one of the world’s most significant sports apparel brands, and her professional orientation suggests that formal sponsorship relationships will be a natural extension of her NIL and internship activities as her profile continues to develop. No individual brand sponsorships beyond NIL marketplace activities were publicly documented at the time of this writing, but her internship with Nike’s Converse team and her Kenan-Flagler business training position her well for exactly that conversation.
Looking Ahead
Delea Martins has one full year of collegiate eligibility remaining after the 2025-26 season concludes, with the potential for a graduate year beyond that. What is already evident is a career trajectory that most junior athletes are still trying to establish: four Wisconsin state championships, a Division 2 state record in the 200 metres, two consecutive NCAA All-America relay honors, a 400-metre personal best that already places her in UNC program history, and a 52-flat showing at the ACC Championships that confirms she is operating well above the pace of her own previous bests.
Her stated professional goals — grounded in journalism, advertising, business, and social impact — suggest she is building toward a career that will extend her influence long after the final race is run. But that final race is not close. If the first three years of her collegiate career are any guide, the best of Delea Martins’s athletic story is still to come. The Milwaukee Mustangs gave her the foundation. Shorewood gave her the records. The ACC and Carolina are where the ceiling gets tested.
Sprint right through it, Delea.
Personal bests (as of April 2026): 400m — 53.00 (Charlotte, NC, April 26, 2025); 400m indoor — 54.16 (February 2025); 200m — 23.83 (April 26, 2025); 300m — 39.31 (January 2026); 100m — 11.96 (high school). World Athletics ranking: #310 (400m). Competes for University of North Carolina Tar Heels (ACC). Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin. High school: Shorewood High School. Major: Advertising and Public Relations / Communications (Hussman School of Journalism and Media), with coursework at Kenan-Flagler Business School.
