Occidental sports teams have done well this year, with several teams reaching their respective SCIAC conference tournaments and others with seasons still in full swing. Every sports program at Occidental has both players and coaches, but many also have student managers, who play important roles across several teams.
For Occidental’s baseball team, student manager responsibilities have varied, according to head coach Luke Wetmore. Wetmore said student managers for the team have often been tasked with running charts — keeping track of important statistics and game events.
“If they’re running a chart, it allows me to see more,” Wetmore said. “I don’t have my head buried in a clipboard, and I can see a little bit more and communicate a little bit more effectively and efficiently because I’m not having to write stuff down.”
According to men’s basketball assistant coach Dominic Maynes, their current student manager, Naya Woods (sophomore), takes on various responsibilities for the team. Maynes said Woods often controls the shot clock and keeps track of statistics during games and practices.
“She’s supporting us as a staff and also supporting the program and anything that it needs,” Maynes said. “She’s with us on game days, sitting on the bench right there with us. She supports us by taking stats — with those stats, we get live feedback in the moment.”
According to lacrosse head coach Sierra “CC” Slack ’18, their current student manager, Emily Gutstein (junior), was a player on the team before she moved into the student manager role due to injury.
“She’s been our manager for the last two years,” Slack said. “She does a ton of things that are visible, but also a lot of behind-the-scenes work for us.”
Slack said Gutstein is a very valuable part of the lacrosse program, having integrated with the team as a player before becoming a student manager.
“She’s not an outsider coming in to do random things,” Slack said.
Malcolm Munnich (junior), who was a player on the baseball team before becoming a student manager, said the decision to become a student manager was an easy one.
“I played my freshman year on the [baseball] team, and then got cut at the end of fall my sophomore year,” Munnich said. “When [Coach Wetmore] cut me, he was immediately like, ‘If you want to stick around, we’d love to have you in the program — we just don’t see an option for you to play.’ It was an easy decision for me.”
Munnich said as a student manager, he maintained close relationships with the team.
“I felt like a player 95 percent of the time,” Munnich said. “That was influenced by the fact that I’d played there before, but [also] you’re just there every day. You’re in the locker room, you’re at team gatherings, so it just felt like being a teammate.”
Alex Tseng (sophomore) said he was drawn to a student manager role out of a desire to engage with volleyball at Occidental.
“I’ve been playing volleyball for the past eight years or so, and we don’t have any sort of men’s team,” Tseng said. “I love being surrounded by the sport.”
Tseng said he has worked alongside the women’s volleyball team doing everything from setting up nets to helping coordinate practices.
“There was one practice last week where I was able to ‘coach’ a certain team in a scrimmage, and it was really cool to be in that group […] talking about strategy,” Tseng said.
Wetmore said baseball student managers have often served as another set of eyes when coaching staff is stretched thin.
“We call them student managers not necessarily from an instruction standpoint, but from the way that they approach it [and] the way they look at the game,” Wetmore said. “We’re trying to [teach] them to see the game like a coach so they can support us and bring up the stuff that they see.”
Munnich is back on the baseball team as a player this year, but said his experience as a student manager allowed him to see the game in a new light.
“It was really cool, being able to see the process more, and observe what was working [and] what wasn’t working for people from a more objective point,” Munnich said. “That allowed me, when I came back, to think about [what] I was doing [as a player].”
Wetmore said it takes a special kind of person to accept a role as a student manager for a sport they’re hoping to play in college.
“It really is that ‘we-before-me’ [mentality] — ‘if this is what’s best for the program, how do I best support the program?‘” Wetmore said.
Contact Julian Levy at jlevy@oxy.edu
