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Central Michigan Baseball’s Student Managers Help the Chippewas See Success

MOUNT PLEASANT - There are eight reasons behind some of the Chippewa baseball team’s success: Trevor Hulvey, Brendan Kramer, Austin Rudolph, Jared Haverdink, Ben Nast, Marc Carney and Max DeLong.

“When I first started, it was me and one other kid,” said Central Michigan senior student manager Brendan Kramer. “Now we’ve got eight of us and we do all sorts of different stuff. We got a bullpen catcher and now we have me doing the film and equipment stuff. [Trevor Hulvey] helping with the on-field stuff.”

“They’ve got school,” said Central Michigan head baseball coach Jordan Bischel. “Some of them have part time jobs, things on top of that.”

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Yet the managers tackle many duties that have given the team an upper hand. Such as tracking the analytics and statistics to better improve the Chippewa’s performance on the hill and at the plate. The managers have even picked up making social media accounts to showcase those analytics.

The social media posts have expanded beyond the statistics with Q&A videos, fun graphics and game-day posts. The managers are having fun while aiding the team to victories and championship games.

“What they contribute is pretty incredible,” said Bischel. “I don’t know if you can quantify how many wins it’s led to, but there’s certainly value there...we don’t micromanage them because I think when you give young people freedom, sometimes they bring things to the table that you didn’t even realize were there.”

Some of these managers joined the team to get back to a game they loved knowing exactly what they wanted to do, like this year’s director of baseball operations Trevor Hulvey.

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“I’ve always grown up playing baseball,” said Hulvey. “I played at Siena Heights University my first two years of college, and then when COVID hit, I transferred over to Central and contacted Bischel about being a student manager.”

Others just wanted to get back to being around baseball without knowing what exactly their future holds.

“I played baseball in high school, but only my freshman year,” said Kramer. “But once I got to college, I kind of just wanted to get back into it. I didn’t even know exactly like what I wanted to go into it, like in the future. But then I really fell in love with doing the equipment stuff here.”

While the managers are not out on the diamond, they ended up becoming a part of the team in the process.

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“When I first joined, it was it was tough because I always I felt like kind of out of place and like I didn’t know anyone,” said Hulvey. “But the second or third week, they really brought me in and I felt like a family to them.”

“It’s really great that the players definitely accept us and accept that we’re helpful for them,” said Kramer. “We’re just kind of one of the guys when we’re hanging out in the clubhouse or hanging out in the dugout. They don’t really see it as much of a difference and that’s part of what’s made this so fun for me.”



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