Scott McClurg/Journal-World PhotoEllyn Angelotti has had about a hundred boy friends during her four years at the University of Kansas.
She’s done their dirty laundry, lugged their stuff around, counseled them in times of need and seen them all strike-out many a time.
But there’s one thing she won’t do as the Jayhawks baseball team manager:
Date them.
“There’s been times when you kind of flirt a little bit, or become really good friends with somebody and you’ll just be sitting in the dugout talking to him for like three hours and you’re like, ‘Wow, he’s a really awesome guy,'” Angelotti said. But then “you’re like, ‘No, no, no. Brother mode — he’s a brother.”
Scott McClurg/Journal-World Photo“They’ll talk to me about stuff they wouldn’t talk to other guys about,” she said. “One guy isn’t going to go up to another and say, ‘Hey man, I feel really bad about striking out.'”
From setting up backstops to monitoring pitch locations, Angelotti is the stitches in the seams of the KU baseball program. It’s a job that has yielded innumerable friendships, though it’s also been something of an obstacle to her love life.
“I’m kind of screwed because I can’t date these guys, and it looks like I’m with a huge group of guys so no other guy is going to come up and approach me,” she said.
No softies
Well before becoming the baseball team’s manager, Angelotti was a diamond dog. She spent her youth scrapping out singles on the sandlot and following every move of her favorite player, Royals pitcher David Cone.
Scott McClurg/Journal-World Photo“I didn’t grow attached to softball the way I did to baseball. Baseball — there’s just something special about it,” says Angelotti, who passed on a chance to play Division III soccer in favor of managing baseball.
“I have a letter jacket — it’s almost like I’m an athlete. But I’m not, and I recognize that. And I appreciate that, too, because I don’t have to be there for the 6 a.m. practices.”
In high school, Angelotti’s resolve to stay involved in what she liked — versus what she was expected to like as a female — was tested beyond the breaking point of most student athletes. At Piper High School in Kansas City, Kan., she made headlines by going out for the football team her junior year.
“I went from having this group of great friends to having nobody,” she recalled. “Guys would threaten to burn my house down; they’d throw stuff at me at school … no one would talk to me.”
KU baseball proved to be a much more welcoming environment, though still she found that it took awhile to earn the respect of her peers.
Scott McClurg/Journal-World Photo“They’d throw it to me underhand,” she said. “I was like, ‘Guys — I can catch a baseball.'”
Now four years into her tour of duty, Angelotti said gender rarely plays a role in her day-to-day operations with the team.
“My goal is to not make me being a girl be an issue,” said Angelotti, who incidentally takes party pics for Lawrence.com. “I’d hope they’d treat a guy manager the same way they’d treat me.”
Dirty deeds done dirt-cheap
Shannon O’Connor came into the KU basketball program back in 2001 along with starting seniors Keith Langford, Wayne Simien and Aaron Miles. Anyone who’s watched KU games on TV probably recognizes O’Connor as the well-dressed girl behind the bench handing players water or towels.
Scott McClurg/Journal-World PhotoFrom that vantage point, the managing job may seem like a cush means to rub elbows with veritable celebrities. But the job is neither a cush one nor a particularly social one. It requires patience, dirty work, more patience and more dirty work — like doing Friday’s dirty laundry … on Sunday, after a weekend on the road. If there’s any time left over for socialization, it’s usually in the few spare seconds between the “wash” and “spin” cycles.
According to KU basketball coach Bill Self, the student managers are as hard-working and integral to the basketball program as anyone else on his staff.
“They’re sacrificing as much as 40 hours a week for us,” Self said.
The seven managers (2 female, 5 male) jokingly divide the jobs into “Richard” jobs and “Virginia” jobs — “Richard” for the manly stuff like carrying boxes and “Virginia” for the lighter duties like folding uniforms.
But O’Connor said she’s as likely as anyone else to tackle the “Richard” jobs.
“It bothers me when I supposedly can’t do things ‘because I’m a girl,'” she said. “For instance, if I’m carrying a heavy bag from the bus to the gym and coach (Bill) Self walks up to me and says, ‘Oh, Shannon, you shouldn’t be carrying that.'”
“But I understand … He’s kind of southern; he’s from Oklahoma; he’s being a gentleman.”
One thing that truly gets under her skin though: “People ask me all the time, ‘So which one’s your boyfriend?'” O’Connor said. “That’d be like dating one of my cousins … I see them do everything. They’ll be sitting right in front of me and they’ll all start burping and farting and cussing …”
“When I was first here I didn’t speak to any of the players,” she continued. “I didn’t want people to think that I was there to date the players. I was very, very conscious of my actions.”
That said, after four years with the team, she’s become good friends with many of the players.
“Our team really is a family,” she said. “I don’t take crap from the guys at all … When you go in you have to set a level of respect. I think that’s why I’ve been pretty successful as a woman in a man’s world.”
Right foot forward
Obviously, being the team manager has its perks, too. Big-time perks. Like the best seat in the house every game day.
After this season’s over, O’Connor will only be able to fondly reminisce on her days entering Allen Fieldhouse to the deafening sound of fans cheering. “The first time I walked with the team through the tunnel I was absolutely amazed,” she said. “Four years later, I still get so excited about that.”
KU football manager Lindsey Hoyer gets equally amped up talking about gameday.
“The K-State game this last year was THE best football game I’ve ever been to in my life and I got to be on the sidelines and in the huddle,” Hoyer said. Managing “doesn’t sound so much appealing when you talk about the day-to-day, but game days are absolutely ridiculous,” she said.
Since joining the team five years ago as a volunteer who “sat on a hill and blew an air horn every five minutes,” Hoyer has graduated to shadowing Coach Mark Mangino.
“All people ever ask me is, ‘You follow him around, don’t you?'” Hoyer said. “And I say, ‘Yes, I do. Now I have to get back to work.'”
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