Manahan Earns Player of the Year Honors

By Leroy Bridges
Sports Editor
The boot on Emileah Manahan’s recently fractured foot says it all.
It’s bulky frame is protecting a stress fracture that was a result of too much activity. It’s not shiny and she probably won’t save it, but it’s her trophy of sorts. It represents her domination of the White County athletic landscape during her four-year high school career.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this big,” Manahan admitted about her success in athletics. “It turned out to be my life.”
Originally, the 2009 White County Player of the Year just wanted to make Twin Lakes’ varsity team. And before that, her parents weren’t even sure if she would ever compete in a sport. That’s because Manahan was all about civic plays and crafts.
“She was not athletic at all,” her mom, Susan, said. “She just wasn’t in to sports at all.”
All that changed the summer before seventh grade. That’s when Emileah joined a traveling team with some of the area’s best players her age. At the time, practices were held in Lafayette, so the then timid Manahan spent a lot of time in the car sobbing on her way to and from the gym.
“I would cry because of fear on the way there and I would cry because I got in trouble on the way back,” Manahan said. “(The rides) seemed like they took forever.”
Despite the tears, Manahan wanted to continue playing and it paid off. That seventh grade traveling team competed against high school varsity teams and would win by double digits. The team’s success and Manahan’s production pushed her to new heights.
“She really cut her teeth that summer,” Susan said. “It gave her so much confidence and then she realized she could compete with the best of them. That opened up this whole new world that she hadn’t seen before.”
Couple the confidence with her No. 1 fan – her father, who played Division I college basketball – having a passion to help his daughter improve and Emileah’s athletic ability was in full bloom.
“It’s great because he has the answer to every question I have,” Emileah said of her dad, Pat. “There have been nights after the crying that we’re going out to the court at my house and making me practice for hours out there.
“He was always trying to make my game better even though I didn’t always want to get better. He made me get better and now I want to make myself better.”
That drive made Emileah’s presence on the basketball court bigger than ever this season. She was the cornerstone of an 18-4 Twin Lakes team on her way to averaging a double-double with 14.7 points and 11.2 rebounds a game. Both of those stats were easily the best in the county. Oh, by the way, she shot a county-best 47 percent from the field.
“She’s a very talented, athletic girl,” Twin Lakes coach Brad Bowsman said of Manahan. “She’s worked hard. I’m very proud of her. We knew that she was someone special and was going to be an integral part of the program.”
During her four years on varsity at Twin Lakes, the Indians won 68 games, she scored more than 1,000 points and captured the career rebounding record. How’s that for someone who’s going to Illinois State on a volleyball scholarship?
“It’s a mix of emotions,” Emileah said about graduating high school and moving on to play collegiate volleyball. “I’m excited because it’s a new level of play and a new step in my life but I’m nervous because it’s all new people and a whole new level.
“It’s going to be hard and it’s going to take up a lot of my time.”
She should be ready because it sounds a little bit like those car rides back-and-forth to Lafayette.

Published in the Herald Journal in April of 2009.