Amid the squeaking of basketball shoes and reverberating of bouncing balls on the hardwood floors of Pauley Pavilion, a figure stands courtside, basketball clutched tightly in her hands, eyes attentive to the action on the court.
At first glance, it’s easy to see Molly Mann’s tall athletic frame and assume she’s one of the players on the UCLA women’s basketball team.
Molly Mann (center) once received an opportunity to
spend a day with the UCLA women’s basketball team in 2007.
Courtesy of Katie Mann
After all, the women’s basketball team manager played the sport in her youth. She did, however, run through a detour before coming full circle to the sport she started with.
JUST RUN WITH IT
The second-year psychology student inherited both traits of loving UCLA and distance running from her mother, Katie Mann, and a young Molly Mann dedicated a large part of her childhood chasing the dream of following in her mother’s footsteps.
During her freshman year at San Clemente High School, the realization of her dream came delivered in a handwritten, gold-embossed letter from UCLA cross country coach Forest Braden.
“Just from there I was like in a dream world,” Mann said.
“She gets the best of both worlds; she gets to be with the girls and be part of a team, but not have to worry about injuries anymore.”
– KATIE MANN, MOLLY MANN’S MOTHER
In the fall of 2012, Molly Mann began embracing her new home in Westwood with eagerness in her heart. What she didn’t anticipate, was she had to do it with a pain in her back.
Mann has dealt with scoliosis her entire life. As a junior in high school she started a battle with sciatica. By March of her first track and field season at UCLA, she started feeling an unfamiliar discomfort in her lower back, one that wouldn’t go away.
What was initially diagnosed by her doctors as a pinched nerve was later reevaluated to be herniated disc – both problems that weren’t supposed to have an adverse effect on the runner in her youth would heal on its own with time.
But with each pounding step on the track and each clearance over a steeplechase hurdle, the pain intensified. It reached a threshold where the hurdles weren’t the only obstacles Mann had to overcome during her races.
Molly Mann used to compete
in the 5000 meters and
steeplechase events for
track and field.
Daily Bruin file photo
“It was pretty bad that last couple steeplechase races,” said Katie Mann. “She fell and just couldn’t even get up.”
After three months, the mystery behind Molly Mann’s continual struggle with pain was finally lifted – she had a stress fracture in her fifth lumbar vertebrae.
“Everything just started spasming,” Mann said. “So my doctors were like, ‘You gotta chill.’”
It wasn’t, however, just an injury she could just put some ice on. The road to recovery started with a two month break from running in addition to eight months of physical rehabilitation.
“I do feel like if I would’ve been a manager for cross country or track it would’v been too close to home and I would’ve been a little upset watching them compete and not being able to compete.”
– MOLLY MANN
At that point, her medical retirement from competitive running was inevitable.
What she did next, was find a way to represent UCLA once again – even if it had to be from the sidelines.
ONE DREAM TO ANOTHER
Growing up, Mann had a magnetic personality that charmed those around her. That, combined with the influence of various teachers over the years, molded her ambition to impact the lives of others as a teacher and a distance running coach.
“Even when she was 12, the little kids would always run after her,” Katie Mann said. “I think she always knew she’d work with people.”
As a student enrolled in UCLA’s Science Teacher Education Program, Mann had already started the ball rolling.
She managed, however, to take another big step toward that goal, a step that began with Mann’s desire to stay connected with UCLA Athletics after her career-ending injury.
It was a connection she wanted to maintain, as long as it wouldn’t remind her of the pain of not being able to compete in distance running, so she decided to reconnect with an old friend – basketball.
“Our family had always been huge basketball fans,” Katie Mann said. “She was all about basketball until running kinda hit.”
In September of 2013, Molly Mann sent an email to UCLA women’s basketball Director of Operations Pam Walker, expressing her interest in filling a vacant manager position.
UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close on Molly Mann
Aubrey Yeo / Daily Bruin
After a 10-minute face-to-face conversation with Walker, Mann’s effervescent smile officially become a regular fixture in women’s basketball practices.
“Molly’s just got a warmth about her. She smiles every time. She’s willing to do whatever,” said UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close. “It’s one thing to be a great worker; it’s another thing to be a great worker with a cheerful heart.”
She didn’t just find a new family in her new home, but she also found new mentors.
“I could just tell how connected they were to her. She really looks up to Coach Close as a coach and as a leader. We see how it’s come full circle and how she got into UCLA for running, but she’s ending up doing the basketball and being guided by the basketball coach which I just think it’s fabulous.”
– KATIE MANN
Mann will complete her education with a Master’s in Education as part of STEP under the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Informational Studies, a school that happens to include Close and Walker as alumnae.
Being a team manager gave Mann a chance to get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a coach and make a team run. But being a team manager in the women’s basketball program gave her a chance to seek guidance from forerunners who had already trod the path she wishes to follow.
Molly Mann discusses more on her future plans
Aubrey Yeo / Daily Bruin
With 40 seasons of combined coaching experience and two graduate degrees of education from UCLA between them, there’s plenty Close and Walker can offer Mann while she journeys through her pursuit of higher education.
“She’s always admired coach and Pam,” Katie Mann said. “She has so many mentors there. It feels good as a mom knowing people have her back and are looking out for her and guiding her through this process of her career as well.”
In Molly Mann’s new home, she’s managed to find herself in good company.
Just like when she was a freshman in high school, she’s on the right track to achieving her dream.