West Ranch High School senior Hunter Manning has been nominated for the High School on SI National Boys Athlete of the Week after recording a no-hitter in last week’s playoff game.
A UC Irvine commit, Manning struck out eight in the Wildcats’ 10-0 win over the Sultana Sultans in the CIF Southern Section Division 2 quarterfinals. It was the second consecutive no-hitter for West Ranch after two pitchers combined to throw one in the previous round.
Manning was sick for a few days before throwing the no-hitter, according to West Ranch head coach Ryan Lindgreen, who has seen Manning put himself atop or near the top of many of the all-time program leaderboards.
“You could say this was the most impressive (performance),” Lindgreen said after the win over Sultana. “And for a kid that’s accomplished a ton … He showed up (before the game) and said that he was going to give me everything he had and give it for the team. And he did that. So, for a kid that was kind of battling through a rough few days here, he sure dazzled.”
As of Thursday afternoon, Manning was leading the other 15 nominees in the poll with 3,565 votes, representing 37.59% of the 9,484 total votes cast.
To vote, go to tinyurl.com/4vyvffdm.
