Bronco Baseball Hires Manning as Director of Operations - Santa Clara

Posted: Oct 27, 2016

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Santa Clara baseball has hired Leslie Manning as the director of operations for the 2016-17 season. Manning joins the Broncos with eight years of working experience in baseball at the collegiate, minor and major league levels.

"Leslie is a game-changer for so many reasons," head coach Dan O'Brien said. "She's a great human with an insane work ethic, who communicates, connects, supports, empathizes and loves, all while being tough as nails. She'll be an amazing director of operations, but an even better servant leader in our program. She legitimately changes the game for Bronco baseball."

Before joining the staff at Santa Clara, Manning founded NextStep Baseball. The NextStep Baseball curriculum is a management system to control emotional intelligence in life and sport—fear, excitement, and confidence specifically.

Through NextStep, Manning built a relationship with O'Brien and the Santa Clara program during the 2015-16 season and immediately had an impact on the student-athletes.

"To confine her role to director of operations would be a massive understatement because she has done so much to help our guys as players and people," said Mitchell White, a former Bronco and second round draftee in the 2016 MLB Draft. "She's an unbelievable communicator who taught me something every time I spoke with her. I know that she'll continue that with every new guy in the program, whether they need to work through something in life or just need somebody who knows what it means to listen."

Manning graduated from Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and worked at the MLB Office of the Commissioner in New York and in Baseball Operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks. She was also awarded as the 2011 Minor League Baseball NYPL Executive of the Year.

"Having spent the past eight years in baseball at the NCAA DI, minor and Major League Baseball levels, my mission is and has always been to empower players to make choices that strengthen their lives," Manning said. "Under Coach O'Brien's leadership, this mission is very real at Santa Clara—it's an all day, every day, relentless effort."