Fernanda Martinez Named 2025 Kay Pearson Keating Award Winner
6/30/2025 11:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
HOUSTON — Rice women's tennis freshman student-athlete Fernanda Martinez earned the Kay Pearson Keating Award, also known as the team's MVP award, for the 2024-25 season.
Martinez earns the honor after a superb freshman campaign where she earned a ranking as high as 33rd in the ITA Doubles ranking with partner Darya Schwartzman. She posted a 19-4 singles record (11-2 in duals) and a 17-10 doubles record (11-5 in duals) during the year. Martinez was named AAC Player of the Week on Feb. 11, 2025, after clinching a sweep against Houston that week. One of the highlights of the season for here was when she had the clinching point against Arizona at home to wrap up January.
The first woman to be inducted into the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame, Pearson Keating was the first female athlete in the history of The Rice Institute to gain considerable state and national acclaim for her exploits. As Kay Pearson while attending Rice, she earned All-America status by winning the 1934 National College Girls Invitational Tennis Championship in singles and doubles. She was the women's champion at Rice from 1932 to 1936 and won the Houston City Tennis champion nine times between 1931 and 1940 in addition to a host of AAU titles for singles, doubles, and mixed doubles.
Shortly before graduating from Rice in 1936, Pearson took up golf and won her first Houston City Women's championship two years later. She won the city title six times, with a five-year gap in the middle of her run due to World War II. She was the Texas Women's State champion in 1941 and again in 1947. In 1939, she tied for medalist honors at the Women's Southern Championship.
Keating Pearson was named an Honorary Member of the "R" Association in the fall of 1982 and became the first woman inducted into the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame in 1985. A lifetime supporter of the Owl Club, she endowed the award that bears her name.
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