Male Athlete of the Week feeling right at home in his senior season
Wyatt Eglinton Manner has been playing basketball and traveling for most of his life.
Not concurrently, mind you – otherwise he might not be one of the key players for defending Group 3 state champion Ramapo.
The 6-foot-3 senior came to Franklin Lakes in sixth grade from Wisconsin, one of several states in which he lived during his early years.
“This is the longest I’ve been in one place by a pretty big margin,” Eglinton Manner said. “I like it a lot. The food’s really good. Obviously, the schools are good… basketball is exceptional on the East Coast, especially in the Tri-State area, so I really like it.”
Last week, his Raiders enjoyed beating one of the Tri-State’s elite when they knocked off Bergen Catholic in the Bergen County Jamboree semifinals. The Crusaders had played in the last six finals contested before Eglinton Manner
(21 points, 8 rebounds) and Co. scored a
69-57 win.
“I think the state championship was probably a bigger win, just because we’d never had one,” he said. “But overall, to kind of cement the legacy of the school, I think getting to the county final was important. But I don’t want to speak too soon.”
Few do when the title-game opponent is 11-time Jamboree champ Don Bosco.
“Obviously, you want to win that,” Eglinton Manner added. “But getting through Bergen was a huge win for us.”
For good measure, he chipped in a season-high 25 points against Ridgewood last week and 17 in double overtime at Hackensack. That gave Ramapo an 8-0 record in the Big North Freedom Division.
Eglinton Manner has committed to play at Johns Hopkins, though he has yet to decide on a major. He has broken with family tradition a bit – his father, Derek Manner, played basketball at Notre Dame before graduating in 1998. His mother is Notre Dame Class of 1996.
“My dad played professional basketball in England,” Wyatt said. “So even from the time I was born, I was just kind of around the gym.”
Yes, his basketball journey began overseas.
“I was born in London… I don’t have dual citizenship just because my parents are both American, and then they were just over there for a work tenure,” Eglinton Manner said. “Then we moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, and then to Baltimore, Maryland, and then California. And then back to Park City, Utah, and then to Wisconsin.”
Once he got to Franklin Lakes, he did try other sports in middle school, including football and baseball. The hardwood, though, is his bailiwick, and the Raiders wouldn’t have it any other way.
Ramapo coach Nick Vier called his team’s Jamboree semifinal “one of the biggest wins in program history,” and he should know. Vier was a 1,000point scorer at Bergen Catholic and graduated in 2006.
“He didn’t make it too personal, but I’m sure he had some extra joy in taking down his alma mater,” Eglinton Manner said. “Like [us] players, he was kind of looking to the next game and thinking, ‘It’s not over yet. Let’s go win the next one’.”