Glory’s last shot: Mike Manley chases elusive first title

Mike Manley sat in the Denver Outlaws locker room after a crushing 11-10 loss in the quarterfinals to the Maryland Whipsnakes last season. The game was a push the whole way, neither team with the clear edge.

In the end, the final margin was decided by a rogue pass that deflected off a defender’s stick for a two-pointer. This was another playoff heartbreak in Manley’s storied professional career, and many wondered if it would be his last.

In his 14 years of lacrosse, Manley had seen multiple chances at championship glory. He’d seen eras of the sport come and go. And in that locker room, he no longer saw many of the same faces he’d battled with time and time again.

But the ageless veteran knew he had more to give to the sport and his Outlaws teammates. Now, he has a chance to finally win his elusive first championship.

Manley started his professional lacrosse journey in 2012. He was a big-time talent at Duke, where he was a two-time All-American. The kid from upstate was a natural fit for Rochester – and a natural first draft pick for new Rattlers head coach Tim Soudan.

Soudan inherited the worst team in the league midway through 2011, and he slowly started to build the franchise in his image. He’d never coached at the highest levels, but he’d spent much of his adult life in and around pro lacrosse.

He built a culture and core of players he would want to play with. The Rattlers were predicated on hard-working guys who cared for each other and, above all else, liked each other.

In the 2012 draft, Soudan picked Manley with the third overall pick. The draft started with a pair of era-defining attackmen in Rob Pannell and Steele Stanwick. With another superstar attacker on the board, Mark Matthews, some thought offense was the way to go.

Matthews would eventually make a cameo in Rochester later in his career, but in Manley, Soudan not only got a premium talent – he got one of his guys.

Manley had known Soudan from long, long before his days with the Rattlers. He grew up watching Soudan play pro lacrosse indoors and outdoors. As a young lacrosse player, Manley even played for Soudan’s travel team, Blaze Lacrosse Club.

That bond carried through as Manley got to Duke. One summer, he worked at a camp with Soudan. The two connected and worked together, and Soudan, only a few years removed from his playing days, would go shot for shot on the radar gun with the young Manley.

“We’re going from 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, and we’re just going shot for shot,” Manley said.

Getting drafted to Rochester was a natural fit for all parties. In addition to Manley’s bond with Soudan, he also knew a handful of players on the team, like John Galloway and Joel White. Adding him to the locker room was like a hand in glove.

Manley’s arrival served as a signpost for Rochester’s rise in the MLL hierarchy. The Rattlers improved from 2-10 to 7-7 in his rookie year, and he was named to his first All-Star Game the next season in 2013.

In 2014, Manley was the league’s Defensive Player of the Year, a breakout that coincided with the winningest season in Rochester history. It ended in the Rattlers’ first MLL Championship game appearance since 2008.

Matched up against the immortal John Grant Jr. and a veteran Denver Outlaws team, the Rattlers lost a heartbreaker, 12-11, as Drew Snider scored a step-down with under a minute to give Denver the championship.

But this was just the first bite at the apple for a young Rochester core. They’d be back the next year, returning to the championship game. Manley wasn’t among them, though. After a clean bill of health to start his pro career, a torn MCL put him on the sideline for most of the 2015 season.

The Rattlers faced the superstar-laden New York Lizards, featuring Paul Rabil, Greg Gurenlian and – Manley’s likely matchup if he had played – Pannell. The Lizards won 15-12, with Pannell recording five points (4G, 1A).

Manley rebounded from his injury with a fury, winning his second Defensive Player of the Year award in 2016 while leading a Rochester defense that allowed the fewest goals in the league. Surely another shot at a title was waiting for them.

But that shot wouldn’t come until 2018, and it came under radically different conditions.

Following the 2017 season, the league announced that the club would be relocating from Rochester to Dallas,1,500 miles across the country.

For much of that core, playing in Rochester was a true home game. Many of those players lived in upstate New York or grew up and played college ball in the region. But despite the home cooking, the league never found a permanent place in the city.

The original Rattlers left the city in 2008, and even after a new iteration returned in 2011, there was never stability in Rochester. The team had to relocate to multiple home stadiums within a six-year span.

The Rattlers lacked a lot of the support and resources the other top organizations could offer. While the Outlaws, for example, had the backing of the Denver Broncos behind them, Rochester was being held together by the effort of people like Soudan giving everything they could.

When the 2017 MLL Championship game was played at The Star in Dallas, it was a glimpse into an exciting new market for the professional game. For the league, it was also a solution to its longstanding problems in Rochester.

But the move was a massive change for the players. Soudan stepped away as head coach after pouring everything into the team. This was the end of an era in professional lacrosse. The team, however, wasn’t ready for this run to end.

New head coach Bill Warder, another upstate guy who had been an assistant with Soudan, kept the band together, and the core of the team stayed intact. The Rattlers lit up The Star, going 11-3 and reaching their third MLL Championship game.

In 2014, Manley and company were the ragtag, young underdogs. Now, they were the established stars. Through a city change and all the challenges that came with it, they’d still reached the summit. This was their moment.

But the Outlaws were there again. Instead of Junior, another talented lefty stood between Manley and an MLL Championship: Matt Kavanagh. Kavanagh cemented his legacy with a nine-point performance, securing Denver’s place as the league’s dynasty of the era.

Soon after, the PLL was formed, and much of the Rattlers core joined a new squad, the Chrome. Some faces were the same, but it was different.

“You’re so used to being this, like, old guard,” said Jordan Wolf, who played alongside Manley for the Rattlers and Chrome. “We weren’t Soudo’s core anymore. We were a brand new team, different guys coming in, different coaching staff.”

Manley was as good as ever, but the new Chrome were missing the old magic. The team bounced between the league’s basement and middling success over the first three years of the league. Soudan joined his old band as head coach in 2020 and helped recapture some of that spark.

In 2022, the Chrome finally found success, and Manley found his way back to the All-Star team for the first time since 2018. But these highs never led to a championship run, and all the while, the faces around Manley were changing rapidly.

Between the start of the PLL and the start of the 2023 season, most of the old Rattlers core had hung up the cleats. Wolf, Galloway, White, Ned Crotty and John Ranagan had all retired from the game. The next year, Jordan MacIntosh retired from outdoor lacrosse, leaving Manley as the lone Rattler left on the Chrome.

“It was very tough for me to walk into the locker room and [not see] the familiar faces for the past 10 years or so,” Manley said.

It’s those same players who left that inspired Manley to keep playing. When MacIntosh retired, he left Manley with parting words: You’ve got another year, you keep playing.

With those words in his head, Manley ran it back last season as the oldest player in the league. He once again performed at an elite level, collecting 20-plus ground balls and eight-plus caused turnovers for the third straight season.

Now playing for the Outlaws, he led the next generation back to the playoffs. Even if the faces have changed, the heart of the locker room and the love Manley has for his teammates has stayed the same.

“I told these guys I’d go to bat for them any day,” Manley said after the Outlaws lost in the playoffs last year.

Once again faced with the question of retirement – but now with a team poised to make a title run – Manley did what he does best: ran it back.

For almost his entire professional career, Manley sported the number five. Now, in what may be his last season on the field, he wears the 37 that donned his back at Duke. That spark of nostalgia isn’t the only thing that returned; the wins did, as well.

Denver became a supernova, roaring to first place in the Western Conference. While his old friends aren’t playing with him, they’ve been following his ride every step of the way. Earlier this summer, many of the old Rattlers, including Galloway and Ranagan, went on a vacation as a group.

On a Friday night, they all gathered around their TV to watch the guy who was missing from the room, Manley, put on for the rest of them.

“We are certainly living vicariously through him,” Galloway said. “We want [Denver] to win so darn bad, and we want Michael to be able to do something we didn’t do because he was there for a lot of those trials and tribulations that we went through.”

The Outlaws took care of business in the semifinals, defeating the California Redwoods to book a ticket to the U.S. Bank PLL Championship. For the first time in seven years, Manley is playing for a championship.

All of the hard conversations about continuing to play, all of the teammates he’s seen retire and all of the new faces he’s welcomed to this locker room. It’s all led to this, glory’s last shot.

“It means everything,” Manley said. “That’s why I’m still playing the game.”