Editor’s note: The profile on Tommy Manning was researched and written by Jim Dunne, a 1955 Norwich High School graduate. This is the first of eight weekly articles profiling the inductees into the Norwich High School Sports Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony is Saturday, June 18 at Canasawacta Country Club.

Glenn “Tommy” Manning

(Class of 1925)

In the early 1920s, Norwich High School began to get serious about football. In 1921, it hired the first coach who was paid by the school. Before that time, local businessmen were solicited for funds to pay a Colgate student to come down and teach the rudiments of football to the boys of Norwich who wanted to play.

Superintendent Frank Wassung was determined that Norwich would become a football power in central New York. Before the 1922 season, in a talk at an assembly to all the students, he urged the girls of the school to have nothing to do with any boys who did not report for football.

The first paid coach was named Lewis P. Andreas, and he had just finished a successful career as an end on the Syracuse University football team. He not only coached football at Norwich, he was the basketball coach, the baseball coach, and in his third and final year, 1923, he was also the high school principal!