Mannan out to change lives with Fort Wayne North Side Legends

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Austin Mannan has found his “why” and he pursues it on a daily basis as an educator and coach.

“I felt like I’ve had so many people pour their time and effort into me,” says Mannan, a special education teacher at Lane Middle School in Fort Wayne, Ind., and the head baseball coach at Fort Wayne North Side High School. “I have a duty to give that back to kids.

“I want to change somebody’s life. At the end of the day I don’t care what kind of baseball player you are, I want you to be a better person than when you got to me.

“I want them to look back and say he really cared about me. He really went the extra mile.”

Mannan has embraced his mindset and takes a cue from motivational speaker Eric Thomas, who asks “What’s Your Why?”

“Everybody has a reason to get out of bed everyday,” says Mannan. “You have to decide what that motivation is and what you can do to get there.

“(North Side) is an inner-city school. These kids have challenging backgrounds. We want to help them to be a better person.”

North Side (enrollment around 1,600) is a member of the Summit Athletic Conference (with Fort Wayne Bishop Dwenger, Fort Wayne Bishop Luers, Fort Wayne Concordia Lutheran, Fort Wayne Northrop, Fort Wayne Snider, Fort Wayne South Side and Fort Wayne Wayne).

The Legends are part of an IHSAA Class 4A sectional grouping with Columbia City, Fort Wayne South Side, Fort Wayne Wayne, Homestead and Huntington North. North Side is seeking its first sectional title.

Zach McKinstry is a 2014 North Side graduate. The middle infielder made his Major League Baseball debut for the eventual World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers Sept. 16, 2020.

North Side plays its home games at Carrington Field, located in Daryl B. Cobin Memorial Park on Coliseum Boulevard and about five miles from the school. 

With high schools in Fort Wayne Community Schools going from 9:10 a.m. to 4:10 p.m., games generally do not start before 5. 

Also the home of the Fort Wayne Baseball Federation‘s Jackers, Carrington Field underwent renovations that the Legends did not get to enjoy in 2020 with the prep season being wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s pretty nice,” says Mannan, who notes that many previous games at Carrington were wiped out when it rained. 

Eight seniors were on the 2020 roster, including college recruits in left-handed pitcher Max Meisner (Huntington University), shortstop Cameron Woehnker (Grace College) and hurler Taegan Armey (Indiana Tech).

Mannan’s 2021 assistants are Jordan Young, Toni Georgi and Armey, who developed an arm injury that caused him to shut it down rather than play college ball.

North Side junior right-hander Nate Spurlock has been getting attention from college programs.

Mannan, who was born and raised in Putnam County, Ind., and played at Cloverdale (Ind.) High School before Lincoln Trail College (Robinson, Ill.), Spoon River College (Canton, Ill.) and the University of Saint Francis (Fort Wayne). Until middle school, he split his time between third base and catcher. From high school on, he was a catcher.

Bryan Archer was Mannan’s high school head coach.

“I owe a lot to the person and player I am to him,” says Mannan, a 2013 Cloverdale graduate. “He never let feel sorry for myself. He just pushed, pushed, pushed.”

Spoon River head coach Ron Clark, who died in 2016, was an old school coach who embraced the fundamentals.

“By doing the little things right all the time that would lead to big things,” says Mannan. “My coaches were all fundamental guys. You can’t over-due fundamentals.

“I’ve broken down every aspect to try to give (North Side players) a solid foundation.”

A relationship built with Manny Lopez, owner of The Diamond Baseball and Softball Academy in Fort Wayne, Mannan has been able to get indoor reps for his North Side players.

“We made huge strides,” says Mannan. “Last year was going to be a our ‘back on the map year.’”

Mannan appreciates the way Lopez deals with the North Side kids.

“Manny tells them you can thank me when you make it,” says Mannan. “He understands what my kids go through on a day-to-day basis.

“I’ve never forgotten that.”

Besides being an assistant at Woodlan Junior/Senior High School (Woodburn, Ind.) while doing his student teaching, Mannan has coached the Northern Indiana Elite, Chicago 29ers and Fort Wayne Diamondbacks in summer ball. He is currently a 16U coach for the Diamondbacks.

As a player, Mannan got to know the junior college baseball grind from two head coaches — Kevin Bowers at Lincoln Trail and Clark at Spoon River.

“As a JuCo Bandit you’re a grinder,” says Mannan. “You’re putting in the work and getting after it.

“The grind of being a junior college player is incredible. You become so tough playing at that level.”

A typical schedule began with conditioning at 5 a.m., followed by classes, practice, study table and more practice with it all winding up about 10 p.m. Then the same thing the next day.

To get in games against top early-season competition, the team would cram 10 players each in three vans and drive 14 hours to Texas. Meal money was capped at $5 a day.

Junior college baseball is full of potential professional players and they are all MLB First Year Player Draft-eligible.

Two of Mannan’s Lincoln Trail teammates — Damon Olds (Kansas City Royals out of Indiana State University) and Justin Watts (Toronto Blue Jays out of the University of Southern Indiana) — were drafted in 2017.

In Mannan’s LTC recruiting class, 10 of 13 went on to NCAA Division I programs. Two went to NCAA Division II.

After a year at Spoon River (2014-15), Mannan landed at NAIA Saint Francis for two years (2015-16 and 2016-17). Greg Roberts was the Cougars head coach and his successor, Dustin Butcher, was an assistant.

Mannan, who also played summer ball for the Danville (Va.) Marlins in 2015 and Laramie (Wyo.) Colts in 2016, was honorable mention all-Crossroads League in the spring of 2016. 

At Saint Francis, Mannan earned a Secondary Education degree in 2018 and a Masters in Special Education in 2020. 

It was by coming to Fort Wayne that Mannan met an Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne student from Crown Point, Ind., named Adalyn. 

Austin and Adalyn Mannan were married in September 2020. She is a manager at Planet Fitness.

“We were supposed to go on our honeymoon during Christmas break,” says Mannan. Instead, the couple had a bout with COVID. Austin spent a week in the hospital. Except for occasional shortness of breath, he says that has recovered.

Austin Mannan was catcher with the Laramie (Wyo.) Colts in the summer of 2016.

Austin Mannan, who played at the University of Saint Francis in 2016 and 2017 and hold two degrees from the school in Fort Wayne, Ind., is the head baseball coach at Fort Wayne North Side High School. (University of Saint Francis Photo)

Indiana State’s Hannahs mixes old school with new

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Mitch Hannahs has been involved in sports for most of his 50 years and he’s learned from wise men.

The former Ohio schoolboy and All-American second baseman for Indiana State University who became an ISU Athletics Hall of Famer is now heading into his fifth season as the school’s head baseball coach.

His style is a reflection of playing for Hall of Famers — Mark Huffman in high school and Bob Warn in college.

At Skyvue High School (since consolidated with Woodsfield into Monroe Central in southeastern Ohio), he witnessed the patient of Huffman as he ran basketball and baseball teams. Huffman is in the Ohio High School Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

“A lot of young guys are impatient,” says Hannahs. “(Huffman) had a very calming hand. That really helped me.”

Hannahs says patience “gives you the rope and the time to develop a young player.”

Positive results are not always going to be instant and both coach and player need to realize that.

Hannahs not only played for American Baseball Coaches Association and Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Famer Warn, helping ISU to 172 victories and three NCAA Tournament appearances 1986-89, he came back to Terre Haute to be a Sycamores assistant.

“There’s old school. He’s double old school if there’s such a thing,” says Hannahs of Warn, who guided Hannahs and company to the 1986 College World Series. “His camps were tremendously tough. He taught us to be tough between the lines then carry ourselves like a young man should off the field. It’s something that’s carried with me for a lot of years now.”

It’s a transfer that not every athlete can master but Hannahs wants ballplayers who can be hard on the field and soft off it.

“An edge is required,” says Hannahs. “We have to have it and develop it.

“You have to be tough and resilient as you possibly can between the lines. You have to become very comfortable being uncomfortable. That comes with playing athletics at the very highest level. Then you walk out the gate and become the humble contributor to society.”

Another thing that Huffman did with his players was challenge them. He was famous for his overloads in basketball practice, sending five men against seven or eight.

“He was always creating ways to challenge us,” says Hannahs of Huffman. “I was telling my guys the other day about winning a court in the summer. If you didn’t win, you didn’t play. My guys had no clue what I was talking about.”

That being said, Hannahs news himself as a mix of the old and new.

“I like to think that I apply a lot of older tactics into a more modern approach,” says Hannahs. “It’s good to connect and have a rapport with your players.”

Hannahs has produced winning teams and players that have gone on to professional baseball.

In his four seasons to date, the Sycamores have won 127 games, made an NCAA Tournament and had three top-3 finishes in the Missouri Valley Conference.

Hannahs is the sixth coach in program history to record 100 or more wins. ISU rewarded him with a contract extension through 2020.

Following a 29-26 season (12-9 in The Valley which also includes Bradley, Dallas Baptist, Drake, Evansville, Illinois State, Loyola, Missouri State, Northern Iowa, Southern Illinois and Valparaiso), four Sycamores were selected in the 2017 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft — right-handed pitcher Will Kincanon by the Chicago White Sox (ninth round), second baseman Tyler Friis by the Cleveland Indians (21st round), right-hander and Franklin Community High School product Jeremy McKinney by the Washington Nationals (31st round) and righty submariner and former Terre Haute South Vigo standout Damon Olds by the Kansas City Royals (33rd round).

Keeping the talent coming to the ISU campus requires recruiting the right players.

“We want to get the best players we can find,” says Hannahs. “If we can pull them out of your back yard, that’s great.”

But don’t expect Indiana State to get commitments from players who are barely out of junior high — which is a big trend in major college baseball these days.

“When that early commitment stuff began to maintain some integrity, we said we can’t jump in quite so early,” says Hannahs.

The coach notes that North American players can’t be signed until late in their high school careers and yet high-profile college programs are getting verbal commitments from 15-year-olds.

“It’s an arms race so to say,” says Hannahs. “They are getting their (recruiting) classes organized earlier.”

Why is this happening?

“Because they can,” says Hannahs. There is no rule against it. Players can’t sign that early, but they can say they are going to School X at anytime.

“It creates a storm,” says Hannahs.

Plus, signing is one thing and actually making an impact is another.

“No one has researched number of kids who stay and contribute at these schools,” says Hannahs.

The coach notes that the very best players are easy for anyone to identify and project. It’s in the second and third tiers that the waters become murky.

ISU has gotten more involved in recruiting junior college players and has no less than 13 former JUCO athletes on the 2018 online roster.

“It allows us to watch them another year after high school before we make that decision,” says Hannahs.

The world of travel baseball closely relates to recruiting.

“Travel baseball has been very good in terms of exposing young players to potential recruiters,” says Hannahs. “It’s led to early signing and committing for a lot of kids.

“Those two coupled together have negatively impacted high school baseball. Some kids — after they commit — shut down on their high school team. That’s not to knock travel. It’s accomplished what people set our for it to do. I wish we didn’t have the negative impact on the other side.”

The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. A player can be loyal to his high school program and participate and thrive in travel baseball.

“We all have priorities whether we put it on a list or not,” says Hannahs. “Travel ball has been placed higher than high school in the minds of many.”

Hannahs says he wants players who are concerned more about helping the team win than their own accomplishments.

“It can be a tough adjustment period for guys who spend their younger years trying to be seen,” says Hannahs. “If you try to produce for your team and are motivated to help them win, colleges are going to beat your door down.”

Mitch Hannahs, who played at Indiana State University 1986-89 and is in the ISU Athletics Hall of Fame, is entering his fifth season as Sycamores head  baseball coach in 2018. (Indiana State University Photo)