On an unusually warm night late last December, Alyssa Manley strapped a headlamp around her head, slipped on her shoes and walked out the door. Her family had just gotten home from seeing Alyssa’s grandmother for Christmas. It was dark and raining, but Manley hadn’t completed her workout that day.

Manley ran sprints up and down the streets near her Lititz, Pennsylvania home. Nick Manley, one of Alyssa’s two older brothers, sent a text to his girlfriend, who had planned to see him that night. He told her in the text to watch out for Alyssa, who was one week away from starting offseason training with the United States National Team.

“This is the first time in her entire life where she might not make it,” Nick Manley said in May. “It’s always been, she’s already on the team and starting.”

More than seven months after winning an NCAA national championship at Syracuse, Manley did not know if she’d play in the Olympic Games, fewer than 40 days away. But on July 1, she became one of the 16 players selected to represent the United States in Rio de Janeiro.

Manley is one of seven first-time Olympians rostered and the team’s only player to have played collegiately last fall. A primary defender, she’s the youngest player on the team.

Manley and the national team will play against India on July 18 and July 20, then Canada on July 26 before the Olympics begin next month. All three contests will be played at Spooky Nook Sports, an athletic complex about 8 miles from her house.

For most of June, she played in the Champions Trophy, a London tournament featuring six of the world’s top seven ranked teams. Before that, save for a handful of games, she had been practicing with the national team every day at Spooky Nook Sports. Manley, 22, put her final semester at Syracuse on hold for a shot at Rio.

“I’m excited. … It’s just so different,” Manley said of playing professionally. “It’s a whole new level. This is my job.”

Lynn Farquhar, the head coach at St. Joseph’s University, was Alyssa’s first contact at Syracuse. Farquhar, then an SU assistant, remembers little from the day she first saw the 5-foot-2 Manley. The summer before Manley entered high school she still had an undeveloped skill set but innate balance and aggressiveness, Farquhar said.

“She’s not a big person, but she played big,” Farquhar recalled. “You knew she had a fight in her.”

Soon Manley was on the verge of earning a starting spot for the varsity team at Warwick (Pennsylvania) High School, a perennial powerhouse. During Manley’s sophomore year, head coach Bob Durr was looking for a midfielder who could not only attack on offense, but one who could also get back on defense within a few seconds.

“And oh boy, we were fooling around with it at practice and I said OK, let’s try Alyssa Manley in the middle and see if she can handle this,” Durr said. “Well oh my God, me and the coaching staff all looked at each other going, ‘OK, I think we found our girl.’

“We’re like, ‘My God she’s back in the defensive circle, how’d she get there so quick? She had just taken a shot on goal.’”

Syracuse head coach Ange Bradley said Manley’s ability to dart left and right is one of her hallmarks. She was never the fastest player on the SU roster, but always the one running through the end lines during conditioning. She never came out of games, running about 10 miles per contest, Bradley estimates. The only position she didn’t play at SU was goalkeeper.

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In the national championship game last year, North Carolina’s Nina Notman was getting good offensive chances. “Killing us,” Bradley said. She told Manley to stay on Notman and deny her the ball.

“She really stepped up, took that responsibility,” Bradley said. “Her whole disposition and demeanor throughout the Final Four, what she was doing on defense — it was unbelievable.”

Manley earned Syracuse’s shark attack award, which goes to the player who displays work ethic and competitiveness and also earned the Honda Award, which goes to the nation’s best player.

“She’s set a new standard for Syracuse field hockey,” said Jess Jecko, former Orange goalkeeper who played with Manley for four years.

To train for the Olympics, Manley wakes up around 7 a.m. to make breakfast: A couple egg whites, yogurt with granola, a banana and maybe some peanut butter. She’s eliminated sugary foods from her diet and avoids carbohydrates. She opts for turkey, burgers, chicken, vegetables and salads instead. Around the time her Rio-centric focus began, she didn’t eat a single Christmas cookie.

In January, Manley struggled to do six pull-ups with 2 kilograms of extra weight. By early May she could do four sets of six pull-ups with 10 kilograms extra. At Syracuse a trainer said her body mass index was comparable to a cross country runner.

“If you see her now,” her mother Nancy said. “Her brothers have been trying to look that way but can’t.”

After a few months of training with the national team, Manley tried on her Syracuse jersey. It barely fit. “I can see it in her arms now,” Nancy said. “It’s like, woof! Even more so than at Syracuse.”

Before earning first team All-State honors as a high school senior, she played on the U.S. U-17 National team. Last summer, she helped the U.S. earn gold at the Pan American Games in Toronto. She was the only college player there.

After a game earlier this month against the Netherlands, the top-ranked team in the world, Manley texted her mother and pointed out how she felt tiny compared to the bigger players.

In a game against New Zealand, Manley made a defensive stop in a late-game 1-on-1 situation that kept the game tied and sent the U.S. to the bronze medal game. On Sunday, the U.S. knocked off Australia to win bronze. Earlier this year, one of the national team veterans complimented Manley, saying she’s “annoying.” Yet Manley, a three-time All-American at Syracuse, was unsure whether she would make the team.

“When you talk to her, she doesn’t really talk about it,” Bradley said in May. “At the end if she’s going to get picked, she’ll get picked. If not, she knows she did everything she could.”

On July 1, Manley found out that her Olympic dreams turned real.

Published on June 29, 2016 at 10:24 pm

Contact Matthew: mguti100@syr.edu | @MatthewGut21