Faith, family, academics and baseball. In that order.
 
Those are what UTPA baseball head coach Manny Mantrana tells his players that their life priorities should be. Willingly or not, taking care of these priorities, in that order, is what has brought Mantrana where he is today.
 
Mantrana's journey began when his family moved from Cuba to the United States in the early 1970s, when he was only seven.
 
“During that time, the government would issue lottery numbers and then, fortunately, we got a number so we could leave,” he said. “Once you get on that list, you say that you want to leave the country, they come down on you… so it was difficult. My parents took a chance and finally, we got one of the visas.”
 
After spending one week in Miami getting all sorts of paperwork done, the Mantranas moved to New Jersey, where they lived for the next four years.
 
Growing up in Perth Amboy, young Mantrana used to play baseball with his neighborhood friends.
 
“We'd play baseball all the time during the summer because, obviously, baseball runs over the summer. I played baseball as far as I can remember,” he said.
 
When he was 10, he officially started focusing on baseball when he started to play in the Perth Amboy Little League, but a year after he started playing organized baseball, the Mantranas decided to move down to Miami, which is now home to Mantrana's parents Aurora and Enrique, and his five younger siblings.
 
MANTRANA THE PLAYER
 
In Miami, Mantrana joined the Carlos Pascual Baseball Academy. The team won the national championship for 13 year olds and won it again when its players were 16.
 
“The good Lord gave me a lesson: some things are just meant to be,” he said. “I could always play better than any of my elders. The good Lord said, 'your trait's going to be that you're a pretty good baseball player,' so I was blessed.”
 
And the blessings started coming early. As he was a successful player at Jackson High School in Miami, he got drafted in the 10th round of the 1981 MLB Draft by the Atlanta Braves. And although his dream of becoming a professional baseball player seemed near, Mantrana did not sign.
 
“I wanted to sign, but my mom wanted me to finish school. She begged me to do it and she started crying, so we kind of came to an agreement,” he said.
 
Mantrana decided that he would go to a two-year college, because if he went to a four-year college he would have to wait three years to be able to sign a professional contract. So Mantrana enrolled at Miami-Dade North College.
 
After a few months at Miami-Dade, Mantrana got drafted by the Orioles and rejected the offer. That same summer, he got drafted again, this time by the Texas Rangers. Again, his mom would not allow him to sign.
 
“Every time my mom would cry, it'd break my heart,” he said. “'Ok, don't cry mom. I'm going to go to school. I'm going to go to school.'”
 
After one year at Miami-Dade, Mantrana transferred to Middle Georgia Junior College, where he was part of a team that made it to the Junior College World Series. During the last game of the World Series, Mantrana hurt his knee for the first time.
 
“That was the beginning of seeing how smart my mom really was,” he said.
 
The injury required surgery, but Mantrana recovered and still got drafted by the Cleveland Indians that summer and said 'no' one more time.
 
“I wanted to sign professionally right out of high school, but my mom said, 'No, go to school. After you finish school, you can do whatever you want,'” he said. “I turned down the Braves, the Orioles, the Rangers, the Indians... it was hard. For a while I was mad at my mom, but every time she would cry, she'd break my heart, so she convinced me and it was the best decision I ever made.”
 
After Middle Georgia, he got a call from former University of Miami assistant coach Skip Bertman, who had just been appointed baseball head coach at Louisiana State University and wanted Mantrana to go play there. Mantrana decided to do it and concluded his collegiate career after two years at LSU.
 
Then, Mantrana signed as a free agent with the Detroit Tigers organization before getting traded to the New York Mets organization. Mantrana's professional career ended with the Milwaukee Brewers organization.
 
But the wait paid off. Mantrana hurt his knee once again and injured his arm three times. Even though he was still a good player, Matrana mentioned that those injuries would have not allowed him to make it to the big leagues. He realized that following his mother's advice was, in fact, the best choice.
 
“If it wasn't because of her telling me to finish school, who knows what would've happened. I would've probably never gotten into coaching. I would've never made it here to Pan Am,” he said. “She kind of knew best at the time.”
 
“Not signing was probably the best life decision I ever made and going to LSU was probably the best baseball decision I ever made,” he added.
 
Being an athlete under Bertman gave Mantrana the opportunity to learn about coaching and about the system to head a baseball program. 
 
Bertman started coaching at LSU in 1984, and led the Tigers to five College World Series Championships from 1990 through 2000. He then moved up to become LSU's athletic director.
 
Mantrana earned a bachelor's degree in Sports Administration from St. Thomas University in 1990 and then earned his master's degree in Guidance and Counseling from STU in 1997.
 
MANTRANA THE COACH
 
After graduating from LSU, Mantrana returned to Miami and became the coach at his alma mater, Miami Jackson High School, for five years. Then, he was an assistant coach at Miami-Dade College, where he had attended as a student-athlete for one year.
 
At Miami-Dade, he was under the direction of Coach Tony Simone, who besides giving him the opportunity to coach at the college level gave Mantrana the trust to increase his responsibilities that allowed him to learn the way college athletics works.
 
Mantrana started as a hitting coach, and by the end of the year, he was in charge of making the practice schedule, running practices, and working with the infielders, hitters and base runners. He also became the recruiting coordinator. 
 
“He saw that I was working hard, that I was doing a good job… He really had all the confidence in me to say, 'you take it,'” he said. “I'm very grateful to him and I will always be grateful to Coach Simone for that opportunity.”
 
After one year at Miami-Dade, he moved on to become the head coach at St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, where he served 12 seasons as the head of the baseball program. He quadrupled, from one to four, the program's number of trips to the College World Series. He was the winningest coach in STU history with a 451-220-1 (.671) record, including a 1997 season that ended with a program-record 54 victories.
 
Although he received a few offers while coaching at STU, he rejected all of them because he was very happy coaching there… and because he didn't think the schools had the potential to win. When he got the offer to coach at UTPA, he had never heard of Edinburg or the Rio Grande Valley. Still, he decided to go on a visit.
 
“I came not expecting too much. [It was] probably going to be a very small college, probably a little dot in the wall with run-down buildings, and I was pleasantly surprised when they brought me in and they took me on campus,” he said. “The buildings are gorgeous, the brown brick and the glass. It's a gorgeous campus.”
 
He liked the campus, the atmosphere and the Valley, so he decided to take the job and in August 2009, Mantrana, his wife Marlane and his daughter Maxine moved to the Rio Grande Valley.
 
MANTRANA THE TEACHER
 
Although student-athletes are recruited to play baseball, Mantrana considers the formation of the player's personality as the most important legacy he can have on each one of them.
 
The formula to do this is, first, to earn the player's respect by helping them understand that his coach is “the real deal.”
 
“When they're here, they're 18 to 22. You're young, but you're not stupid. So right away you're going to know if your coach is the real deal, and whether he knows what he's doing. Is he going to make you better at your sport?” he said. “That's the start… so we have to show them that we're good coaches, we're going to help them get better.”
 
Then, the coach goes on to let the athletes know that the coaching staff cares about them as human beings, not only as baseball players. Mantrana takes into consideration that, after their college years, most of them will move on to be husbands and parents and that they will need to be educated to support their families.
 
“The only time we care about you as a baseball player is the three hours when you're on the field. When we're practicing I'm going to treat you like a baseball player. When we're playing I'm going to treat you like a baseball player, but after those three hours baseball is a game,” he said. “It's pretty much meaningless after those three hours. It's just something that you enjoy doing and that you're good at.”
 
Mantrana makes an emphasis on faith. Regardless of the religion the student-athlete practices, Mantrana believes it is important to understand that there is “a greater power in control.”
 
As the main reason why student-athletes attend UTPA is to receive an education, Mantrana encourages his players to pursue a career they are passionate about, like he did. He explained that, when he was in college, he would ask and answer a lot of questions during practice, and that Bertman once mentioned that he would make a good coach. More than 20 years later, Mantrana keeps doing what he's most passionate about.
 
“I'm doing something that I enjoy doing, something that I'm good at, something that I have a passion for. And if you have a passion for something, you're going to work hard. You're going to be excited about it. And if you work hard, you're going to be good at it,” he said.
 
At the end of the day, Mantrana keeps focusing on helping his student-athletes see the bigger picture, one in which they must find their passion and pursue it without forgetting that education is what is going to take them to accomplish that goal.
 
“I always thought I was going to be a big league baseball player, playing on TV, making millions of dollars,” he said. “I have a passion for the game. We want our student-athletes to do the same thing, to study what they have a passion for when your playing days are over… and for most of us, it comes sooner than you'd like.”
 
WINNING
 
This year, Mantrana's third as UTPA baseball head coach, the Broncs recorder their first winning season in 12 years with a record of 30-22 and finished in second place in the Great West Conference standings.
 
But although he agrees that it was exciting for the UTPA community and for people who care about UTPA Athletics, for Mantrana, having a winning season is only the first step to where he wants to take the program.
 
“That has to be step one. If you want to get better, step one has to be to have a winning season. And we did that… so we're excited, but now we have to build on it. Next year we have to get better, and there are goals that we have to meet,” he said. “You can't think of going to Omaha, the College World Series, if you first don't have a winning season. That kind of turns the coin, and then you slowly have to build goals to get to where you want to be. But that was good. It was good for everybody.”
 
Still, it was an important accomplishment for the program. To put it in perspective, he explained, the last time the Broncs had a winning season this year's freshmen were still in kindergarten, while the seniors were barely in third grade.
 
“So that's step one, now we have to build up on that and get better. We're going to get to Omaha. That's the reason I took the job. If I didn't think we could do it, I wouldn't have taken the job,” he said. “There's a lot of work to be done. We still have a long way to go.”
 
Mantrana admits that there have been obstacles to overcome in the past three years and that he expects to face more obstacles ahead. But he's ready. Ready to base his work on his faith and ready to keep taking the program in the right direction.
 
“We tell our guys, life is always going to throw you curveballs and you got two ways to handle it: find answers to it and get over it, or feel sorry for yourself,” he said. “You got to face those obstacles and overcome them or let those obstacles take over. And we've chosen the first one.
 
One things leads to the other, there's been a lot of things here that we've had to face as coaches that a lot of programs don't have to face. There's a lot more work to do, so there are a lot more battles and a lot more obstacles to overcome.”
 
And for Mantrana, the goal is clear.
 
“I didn't take the job here to get a winning season. I knew we could do that. The goal is to play in the post-season and play in Omaha and see Pan Am on TV.”