Ron Manges was an athlete, voice and man to remember: 'The community's really going to miss him'

Jul. 9—In the late 1960s, Ron Manges' ability to chuck touchdown passes helped the upstart Frederick Falcons semi-pro football team become an immediate success.

But long after making a name for himself in Frederick County with his arm, Manges cemented his sports legacy in the county with his voice.

For decades, Manges announced basketball games at Walkersville High School, injecting warranted praise and good-natured humor into his description of what was happening on the court.

Manges, who most recently announced softball games at Walkersville this spring and performed the same job years ago for Frederick Community College basketball team, died Tuesday at the age of 77.

Manges had been hospitalized because of problems with his lungs. While the exact cause wasn't clear, Van Gaus, who is Manges' son in-law, said it wasn't COVID or any cancer-related issue.

Inducted into the Alvin G. Quinn Sports Hall of Fame in 2017, Manges was a fixture in Walkersville, and not just as an announcer. He had served as an assistant coach for Walkersville High's football team and coached youth sports in the area.

"The community's really going to miss him," said former Walkersville football coach Dave Schrodel, whose coaching staff included Manges when the Lions won a state title in 1987 and returned to the state final in 1992.

When Schrodel took over Walkersville's football program in 1986, having Manges as an assistant seemed like a no-brainer. He had an extensive football coaching background, be it with the Frederick Falcons — he served as the team's head coach for a few years — or with much younger players in the Glade Valley Athletic Association, where he also coached baseball.

"Ron had been coaching with the youth program, Glade Valley, and I knew Ron just by reputation," Schrodel said. "He really loved working with young kids, whether they were in GVAA or high school and later, of course, he worked as a game announcer for many years."

Former longtime Frederick News-Post sports editor Stan Goldberg liked Manges' ability to season his announcing with personality. For instance, spectators often heard Manges utter, "Oh my," after an exciting play or development in the game.

"He was very entertaining to listen to," Goldberg said. "He just made the games more enjoyable with what he said."

Stationed at his courtside mic, Manges would say "nice pass," to compliment an inventive assist. And at least once, he delivered that identical comment to a player whose airball was caught by a teammate, who promptly hit a basket.

This spring, Manges manned a table near the Walkersville softball team's dugout, occasionally braving rain and bone-chilling wind so he could keep bundled-up fans informed.

Manges grew up in Cumberland, where he lettered in football, basketball and baseball at Fort Hill High School. He came from an athletic family that included his nephew Mark Manges, who was a star quarterback at the University of Maryland.

"You can't go to Fort Hill and not know who the Mangeses are," said Gaus, who played sports at Fort Hill and whose wife, Cindy, is one of Ron's daughters. "That's how well-known they are. Just all great athletes."

Ron Manges attended the University of Maryland and enlisted in the United States Marines Corps, according to a 1984 Frederick News-Post profile. He moved to Frederick after his discharge and joined the State Farm Insurance Company's Eastern Seaboard office when it opened in Frederick in 1965.

Manges became the Frederick Falcons' first starting quarterback during their inaugural season in 1968. Don Shipley, whose father, Dick, was the new team's head coach, vividly recalled what Manges accomplished that year.

Facing the defending Interstate Football League champion Baltimore Eagles in the second game of the season, Manges suffered a severe separation of his shoulder.

But the injured Manges returned to the field and threw the tying touchdown pass. The game ended in a tie, a breakthrough result for the unproven Falcons, who won the rest of their games that year to claim the IFL title with an 11-0-1 record.

Manges' shoulder injury was initially thought to be a season-ending one, but the quarterback saw action later that year. In fact, he threw five touchdown passes in the season finale.

Another great Manges moment Shipley mentioned came in 1970. With the Falcons trailing 23-6 to their rival, the Schuylkill Coal Crackers, Manges directed what Shipley called a "furious" second-half comeback. The quarterback threw three touchdown passes, including the game-winner to Wayne Randolph in the closing minutes.

Gaus said all of the Manges men were old-school, take-charge kind of guys.

"We live in a world where things are tough right now, and guys like Ron are a dying breed," Gaus said. "Guys that just roll their sleeves up and get it done."

After moving to Walkersville in the mid 1970s, Manges became involved with the Glade Valley Athletic Association, where he coached baseball and football. Meanwhile, his wife, Candy, coached girls basketball and cheerleading.

Schrodel said Manges served 15 years as a quarterback coach at Walkersville High School, a tenure that spanned the head-coaching tenures of Schrodel, the late Jim Abbott and Hal Grau.

Schrodel said Manges helped the Lions enjoy several successful seasons. His quarterback pupils included J.P. Filchock, who played for Walkersville's 1987 state championship team, and Dave Schrodel's son, Dana Schrodel, who started for a 1992 Lions team that went undefeated in the regular season and lost to Damascus in the state championship game.

There can be added pressure for a head coach whose son is the starting quarterback, but Manges helped alleviate it.

"I turned everything over to Ron. Ron was his coach, he was the offensive coordinator and just took a tremendous amount of pressure off me," Dave Schrodel said. "And I know my son had a tremendous, tremendous love for Ron, too."

Manges' son, Ronald Jr., who played JV football, basketball and baseball at Walkersville, died in a car crash at the age of 15 in 1985. Both Goldberg and Gaus pointed out how Manges went on to coach and work with kids after dealing with such a tragic loss.

When asked to describe Manges, Gaus used the word "resilient."

"If you look that word up in the dictionary, it's when everything is thrown at you to keep you down, [and] you keep going forward," he said. "I look back at what all branched out from Ron's resilience, his ability to just keep going forward."

Gaus mentioned Manges' family, including the grandchildren the former Falcons quarterback was so proud of. And of course, there were countless people in the Walkersville community who either learned some skill from Manges or, listening to his voice, learned who had just scored a bucket on Walkersville's basketball court.

"Look how many people Ron touched," Gaus said. "And he didn't mean to do it, he just did it."