- Matthew Martel, a 47-year-old single dad from Williston, leads Ace Hardware's national Super Dad contest competing for a $25,000 prize and a commercial role.
- Martel balances coaching youth soccer, volunteering, and a full-time technician job while raising four children ages 9 to 16 alone.
- If he wins, Martel plans to buy a new car to visit his parents in Rhode Island and hopes the title makes his kids proud.
If you’ve already checked out the Kirby Farms fall festivities that kicked off this month, chances are you’ve come across Matthew Martel.
The 47-year-old Williston resident volunteers there, on top of coaching youth soccer teams, on top of his full-time job as a technician at Bounds Heating and Air and on top of raising his four children, ages nine through 16, as a single parent.
As of Monday, those efforts had put Martel in first place among the top 10 contestants in Ace Hardware’s national “Super Dad” competition. Dads from across the country are competing for the title, which comes with a $25,000 prize and a role in an Ace Hardware commercial airing during the Ace Shootout 2027 on the Golf Channel.
Before a winner is announced on Dec. 10, contestants will be whittled down through weekly rounds of voting ending at 10 p.m. on Thursdays through Nov. 12. Voting for the top five will end at 10 p.m. this Thursday, Oct. 8.
All voters for each round get one free vote every day for each round and can cast their votes on the Super Dad website. Click here for Martel’s page.
Martel told Mainstreet that the honor of Super Dad would help him support his family and make his children proud, as well as shine a light on the community that’s helped empower him to be the dad he is.
“It would be great to be Super Dad,” he said. “But at the same time, these people need to know that in a place like this, in a small community, it’s not about me; it’s about the village.”
Martel moved to Florida in 2014 from Rhode Island and has been a single parent since 2022, when the court awarded him full custody of his kids—two boys and two girls.
Every day before sunup, Martel transforms into a full-time schedule juggler.
After getting his elementary schooler ready for class by 7 a.m., Martel makes the 30-minute commute to Bounds. On the way, he checks in by phone with his high schoolers to make sure they are on the bus. He said he is grateful for a flexible, family-oriented employer that allows him to work around his children’s schedules.
Once off work at 5 p.m., it’s back to Williston for activities like sports, color guard and academic quiz teams, as well as keeping up with doctor appointments and medications that Martel said have compounded for the kids in the wake of the divorce.
For fun, the family is usually outdoors hiking, fishing and kayaking. Finances are perpetually tight, which Martel said comes with explaining to his kids why they don’t have material things other families might.
But he also turns it into an opportunity to teach his children that they have been blessed with time to give and to turn volunteer endeavors into a family affair.
Martel volunteers as a coach for his kids’ soccer team. Together, the family also supports homeless veterans through Amvets Post 88 in Bronson and helps run Halloween and Christmas activities at Kirby Farms.
Martel said one of his biggest challenges is keeping himself healthy when so much of his time is focused on his kids. But it’s all part of the dad job he never intends to quit.
“There’s a lot of running around,” Martel said. “I love it. It kind of keeps me on my toes, keeps me moving. I wouldn’t trade it.”
Occasionally, the father of four finds an extra minute to doomscroll on Facebook. That’s how an ad for the Super Dad contest caught his attention.
Martel said he tapped into the encouragement and feedback he’d received from friends and community members who recognized the difficulties of his single-parent job, to believe that maybe he did have what it took to be a Super Dad.
Still unsure whether the contest was real or just clickbait, Martel filled out the entrance questionnaire. Two weeks later, he found himself among a pool of 50 other applicants from around the country, all sharing a responsibility to raise daily votes for the win.
The first person Martel told to get the word out was his mom, and he snowballed into first place from there.
If he wins the contest, Martel said, getting to be in a commercial would hopefully make his kids proud.
The $25,000 would go towards a new car as he currently only has one he drives to work. But Martel said a new one would allow him to take his family up to Rhode Island to see his parents, whom he hasn’t been able to visit in nearly a decade.
Martel said he thinks the title of Super Dad would reflect how he lives to support each of his children as their father, a sacrificial mission he said he was put here to do that will never change.
“There are mornings I’m driving to work and I feel like I’m failing as a father. But then I think about what they’re doing and the feedback I get from them,” Martel said. “Being a Super Dad, it’s not about me. It’s about what they need.”