A look at Senior Captain Tim McManus

By Bruce Wood

For most of us of a certain age, it was unthinkable as a child ever to refer to an adult by first name. Neighbors down the street were always Mr. and Mrs. Smith. If that were too formal for your parents' best friends, you might be allowed to call them Uncle Albert and Aunt Sally, but it would never be Al and Sal.
Times have changed. It's not unusual these days for even young children to refer to their friends' parents by first name and address them as such. Nor is it unheard of for high school students to call their English teacher Jody, or their math teacher John, or for college football players to call their legendary 83-year-old coach Joe.
Given the change, it can be jarring when a college-aged athlete addresses you as Mr. So and So.
The temptation is to sneak a look over your shoulder and see if your father happens to be standing there. Or to say, “Please, it's Tony.” Or,“It's Don,” or, “It's Bruce.”
In four years of observing Tim McManus' marvelous athletic skills and trying in vain to find the words to accurately describe them I've had many chances to interview him, to trade hellos in passing and on occasion to exchange emails. The greeting has always been the same. Always. “Hi, Mr. Wood.”
If it were virtually anyone else it would bring a grimace. But having gotten to know McManus over the last four years, anything else simply wouldn't feel right.
• • • • •
Just the ninth two-year captain in Dartmouth history, wide receiver Tim McManus is by nature and by upbringing exactly what you think of when you think of a Midwesterner.
The son of a judge who calls his parents his heroes, he is the genuinely proud brother of four accomplished younger siblings, is modest about his own successes and unfailingly polite.
He is also one heckuva a football player, but more about that later.
“It's all yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am,” Dartmouth coach Buddy Teevens says about the Minnesotan who hopes to become a doctor. “All the stuff that we talk about, he embodies. He looks you in the eye.
“He's candid, direct and honest. Thoughtful and considerate. He'll reach out to the young guys and relates well to the old guys. He is good with the alums. He's the type of guy you want your son to grow up to be.”
And did we mention he's a heckuva football player?
At St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights, Minn., McManus set school records with 3,297 passing yards and 26 touchdown tosses while earning all-state honors and being named a Mr. Football finalist.
You might call the McManus boys the Mannings of St. Thomas. The father, Tim, was the last QB to lead St. Thomas to a state championship, in 1975. Younger brother Ryan a senior, is bidding to do the same thing 35 years later.
And biding his time as a defensive back until he gets his chance in the quarterback succession is Danny McManus, a St. Thomas sophomore.
Not surprisingly, the oldest of the brothers was groomed to be a quarterback from an early age.
“My dad would have me out there a couple days a week during the summer working on things,” McManus said with a smile.
But like his father, an all-conference receiver in the late '70s at Drake, McManus saw his days at quarterback draw to an end in college.
Pressed into service at wide receiver as a freshman because of a depth issue, he finished the year as Dartmouth's second-leading receiver with 28 catches.
“Coming into college the first thing I wanted to do was get onto the field and help out in any way I could and that was at receiver,” he said. “I was blessed freshman year to have the opportunity the way things shook out to get on the field and also do a few things with the shotgun at quarterback against UNH, and a couple other games.”
He began his sophomore year at receiver, made one midseason start at quarterback, and then went back to wideout, where he made the All-Ivy honorable mention team after grabbing 60 passes, fifth all-time on the Dartmouth chart.
Midway through his third season in uniform – he missed all of last year with a broken leg – McManus is already in Dartmouth's top 10 for career receptions.
Although he's now a full-time receiver, he will admit the transition that was relatively smooth on the field was a little harder on the inside.
“I've played quarterback since first grade and in my heart I'll probably always think of myself as a quarterback,” he said. “My dad is probably the person I look up to most in my life – along with my mom – and he went through the same thing when he was in college. He helped me understand things were going to work out and that that I should stop worrying too much, which is a waste of energy. Just focus and go out and have fun.
“He reminded me that I was lucky to be able to make the switch, where some people might be locked down into one position.”
Teevens appreciates McManus' feelings about the position change and admires how he handled it.
“He's never hidden the fact that he loves quarterbacking and feels like he could play,” the coach said. “But he has deferred to the judgment that we have offered, that he can help our football team more at wide receiver, and it's been borne out.”
• • • • •
Coming out of St. Thomas, McManus's magical feet and Flutielike game brought a preferred walk-on offer from Northwestern, a late call from Stanford as well as feelers from New Mexico and Minnesota before he winnowed his final choice down to Dartmouth or Penn.
“They both recruited me pretty hard but what kind of tipped the scales was Coach Teevens and the feel here at Dartmouth,” said McManus. “I remember Coach Teevens saying on my recruiting trip that in the Ivy League you really can't make the wrong decision, but you can make the unique choice and that would be Dartmouth.
“All the opportunities it presents, the interpersonal relationships with the professors, the undergraduate experience, going abroad during the winter. It is because it has so many things to offer that Dartmouth is so unique.”
McManus took advantage of the college's foreign study program to do a term in Barcelona and then put his Spanish to the test last March when he

spent eight days in Honduras volunteering in the Holy Family Surgery Center at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos orphanage in Tegucigalpa. He hopes to return to the center – founded by Dr. Peter Daly, father of his good friend Mike – after graduation.
“It was an unbelievable experience,” he said. “I was able to scrub in and help out. There was one kid who had his fingers reattached after he sawed them off in a bandsaw and I was there for a follow-up surgery, holding the fingers back while they made incisions, and helping cut the stitches off.”
While there were plenty of mundane assignments like doing laundry and at one point he found himself offering up his veins to young nurses practicing IV skills, McManus said the experience only confirmed his desire to become a doctor.
Before then, though, he hopes there will be a little more football if the Ivy League looks kindly on his medical redshirt application after this season.
“I plan to come back next year for a fifth year,” he said. “Hopefully I'll walk with my class this spring and then come back for the fall semester. Then I'll be done in December, after we win the Ivy title for the second time.”

A veteran writer and observer of Dartmouth athletics, Bruce Wood launched a web site in 2005, www.biggreenalert.com, specializing in Big Green football news coverage.

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