Frank Jennaco comes to MU as the inaugural head coach of women’s flag football. GOJASPERS.COM / COURTESY

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Barbara Vasquez, Editor-in-Chief

Within the past few years, Manhattan University (MU) has reinvigorated their athletics program with the recent additions of new division 1 level teams at the university.

From 2024 to the current day, MU has added a multitude of teams to their athletic roster, including men’s volleyball, women’s golf, women’s flag football and acrobatics and tumbling. These sports, largely new to the NCAA, are for the most part ‘up-and-coming,’ and do not support many collegiate teams. Only around 12 teams offer acrobatics and tumbling at a D1 level; 28 for men’s volleyball and eight active women’s flag football teams. 

Men’s Volleyball

Adding these sports to our athletics program, especially while they’re so new to college sports in general, will set us apart from other schools, according to head coach of men’s volleyball Chris Schortgen. 

“Boys volleyball is the fastest growing team sport in America, so to provide a visual representation and a place for our campus community, and the surrounding volleyball community in the tri-state area, to see men’s volleyball at the division one level is a great access point,” Schortgen said. “There’s really not many of us, so it’s a tight-knit community, but I think that’s what makes men’s volleyball so unique.”

Schortgen joined MU early last year, when he signed on as head men’s volleyball coach in October 2024. Since then, he has led the team through their inaugural season, ending with a 6-6 conference record from a team consisting of, majorly, freshmen. Apart from their athletic presence on campus, the men’s volleyball team has become a social highlight of the campus community; their instagram page, @manhattanmvball, has garnered over 100,000 likes for their content, and they are known for their support of other teams’ games at the school.

“That was all intentional from day one, letting the boys know that we want them to develop as human beings,” Schortgen said. “We want them to walk out with the confidence and the skills and the experience to just go on to the next thing on their terms… [I am] very proud of the identity and foundation that we’ve built in year one, but we’re definitely hungry to be better”

Schortgen went on to talk about the ‘freshness’ of the team, and how their youth only adds to the program, moving forward.

“We just knew that, big picture, this would be great for our program to have our young team have so much experience by the time they’re sophomores or juniors,” Schortgen said. “That is hopefully our advantage [in the] big picture, and we’ll be looking to still add some leadership, some older players, some upperclassmen, that can add some different types of experience to our roster. But our core is 13 freshmen, and we’ll be excited to build with them throughout the next couple of years.”

Women’s Flag Football

Frank Jennaco, head coach of the women’s flag football team at MU, to be offered during the 2026-2027 year, shared a similar sentiment to Schortgen in regards to the newness of the sport and team. For Jennaco, the addition of the women’s flag football team will not only set MU apart in terms of athletics, but will also work to enrich the current programs at the school.

“Because it is so new to the NCAA, we have a great opportunity to come in and immediately be really successful,” Jennaco said. “If we put the resources in now and have the program focusing in the right direction, we have an opportunity to become national champions and one of the premier programs in the country. That’s really important, because it will strengthen the entire athletics department by having that level of success, and hopefully it raises the levels of success for all the other programs as well, and kind of sets the bar for what Manhattan athletics should look like.”

Jennaco stems from the College of Staten Island (CSI), where he built the flag football program from the ground up. Jennaco, a long-time supporter of flag football, fought for the program to be added at CSI for years before taking the coaching position. Even then, he had to create the National Collegiate Flag Football League (NCFLL) in order to create games for the team to play at. 

“Those lessons, and going through that and understanding what it takes, makes me a better coach now,” Jennaco said. “Especially at this level, because we have such tremendous support from the athletics department that, mixed with my experience of what I did over there [at CSI], will allow us to have a really strong, really prosperous program here. I have a ton of experience building programs, developing players, doing all those things, and now, with the support from the athletics department here, it’s going to allow us to go even further, even faster, and do a lot of great things that we want to do.”

Jennaco brought huge success to CSI’s flag football program, leaving the team undefeated during their most recent regular season, and bringing the first NCFLL championship title to the island. At MU, he hopes to continue this success in the future, and establish the school as a powerhouse for the sport.

“I want Manhattan to become the place for flag football in the Northeast,” Jennaco said. “I always say that UConn wasn’t UConn before Geno Auriemma [UConn basketball coach] got there. It was the University of Connecticut, and nobody wanted to go there. He turned it into UConn, the basketball Mecca, and we want to do the same thing here. We want Manhattan to be known as the place that you go if you want to play flag football on the east coast. We’re going to really do our best to get there and make it the household name for flag football.”

Acrobatics and Tumbling

Hallie Fowler, the recently appointed head coach of acrobatics and tumbling, is a 2025 graduate from Quinnipiac University. There, she had an incredibly successful athletics career: Fowler was named on the All-American team for her sport and is a two-time national event champion in the open pyramid and the six-element acro. 

At only 21, Fowler was the youngest person named a Division 1 head-coach in history – her youth, and fresh experience off the mat, is something that will definitely influence her coaching, according to Fowler.

“Our main focus is, and it sounds so corny to say, but fun,” Fowler said. “I had so much fun with my time during my athletic career. In turn, because I had so much fun, our program was incredibly successful. I ended up being one of the most decorated athletes at my institution, just because I had fun… I want these athletes to leave saying, thank you for pushing us and thank you for giving us this experience, because when I reflect on my journey, that’s where I stand.”

As she enters MU, Fowler is tasked with building the whole acrobatics and tumbling program from scratch. Though certainly a challenge, this endeavor is something Fowler is looking forward to. Now, Fowler has the autonomy to work with her future athletes to tailor the program to their specific needs. 

“When I was recruiting as well, [I viewed it as though] this isn’t mine, this is ours,” Fowler said. “In their [the recruits’] past experiences, they’ve had positive experiences, they’ve had negative experiences. I want them to come in and amplify those positive experiences and decrease those negative experiences they’ve had in the past, and just really make it their own, compared to conforming to an already established criteria when they step into a program.”

The Quadrangle asked Fowler how she hopes to contribute to the Jasper name with the new team.

“It’s really amazing to see what these athletes can do, and what they’re going to do,” Fowler said. “Manhattan has a long, long standing, really successful reputation behind it, and we just want to add onto that and build on what we’ve already established here.”