By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – We all have co-workers whose life stories we don’t really know. Most are just people trying to make a living and take care of their families.
But then on a rare occasion, you chance to hear the life story of someone you know, and you realize you’re working with someone far stronger and braver than you could ever be.
Annette Manley is that person. Annette Manley is a hero.
She’s worked, on and off, for Old Dominion University athletics for more than two decades and currently is a part-time business office assistant. Her office is a dozen steps from mine.
Her full-time gig is at Norfolk Collegiate High School, where she is director of athletics and operations and the boy’s junior varsity basketball coach.
Yes, that’s right, she coaches boys and has been doing so for more than three decades.
Her most impressive coaching performance came three years ago, when she was the associate head coach and junior varsity head coach for boys’ basketball at Bayside High School.
The Marlin JV team traveled to Princess Anne on Jan. 12, 2023. And no one expected Annette to get on the bus for the short ride to PA.
Two days earlier, Annette had driven to check on her son, Todd Dominique Manley, at his Norfolk apartment. A 33-year shipyard worker who had long battled depression, he wasn’t returning her phone calls and she was worried.
She found Todd, slumped over, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Just before the game, she told her 13 players to open their phones, go to YouTube and do a search on her son’s name.
There, they found a video of Todd’s highlights as both a high school and a college player. And then she told them that he died two days earlier.
“Is it OK if we play in my son’s honor?” She asked them. Of course they said, on one condition, that every time we break the huddle, we shout his name.
“Of course,” she said, tears welling in her eyes.
She managed to hold it together for four quarters of Bayside’s 57-36 blowout victory.
Deonte Richardson, a starter on that team, is now 19 years old and a year out of high school. He says he remembers that game like it was yesterday.
“Her vibe was off. You could tell something was really wrong,” he said. “She told everyone to sit down and she wasn’t playing. “Her voice started to break when she talked about her son. She showed us the video of him hooping and he was really nice. He could ball. Me and my guys, we weren’t going to lose. We went out and crushed them.”
Annette said she decided that being with 13 young men who reminded her of her son was far better than staying home.
“I had two options,” she said. “I was either going to continue to lay in that bed, which I did for two days, and just bawl my eyes out. Or I was going to go and support 13 other young men who still needed my help. Coaching has brought me so much joy and you know what, I thought to myself, ‘I could handle a little joy tonight.’”
Eight days later, there was a viewing at the E. Vaughn Wray Funeral Home, followed by a funeral at Mt. Lebanon Baptist Church in the Campostella neighborhood of Norfolk.
When you lose a child, everything seems out of control, and so Annette took control of everything she could, at that moment, including dressing her son for the viewing and funeral.
“I told the funeral director that I wanted to dress him. He responded by saying, ‘I’m not sure this is something that you would want to do.’ I told him that I was the first person to dress him and I’m going to be the last. He stayed with me, he said, in case I decided at some point that I couldn’t do it. Todd’s feet were facing me and I just grabbed his toes and said, ‘This little piggy went to market,’ like I did when he was a baby. I talked to him the entire time. The funeral home staff, just stood by and gave me my moment.”
Annette was a devoted single mother to Todd. But for most of his career, she was also his coach.
Her path to a coaching career came in the late 1980s, a time when women faced far more obstacles in participating and coaching in athletics than they do today.
Annette graduated from Norfolk’s Maury High in 1987 and often would spend time in the office of boy’s basketball coach Jack Baker.
Jack, an ODU graduate, is a former Monarch basketball and baseball player who was a legendary head coach at Maury, where he won 746 games in 41 seasons.
Annette then played on Maury’s girls basketball team, but some conversations with Baker changed her career direction.
“I would sit in Jack Baker’s office and go over X’s and O’s,” she said. “I would ask him about his game plan for each week. It didn’t take me long to realize that I wanted to coach.”
So, she quit playing to become a team manager for the boy’s basketball team.
Baker recalls that on occasion, that teenage team manager would have the guts to make play-call suggestions during a game.
“I have to admit that she was a little bit of a pain in the rear,” he said with a laugh. “She was always asking questions. She was always inquisitive and wanted to know why we did this, why we did that. I didn’t know at the time that she wanted to coach. I was just impressed with how much she cared about the game and how eager she was to learn.”
Her chance to coach finally came when Todd was six years old.
Todd picked up a basketball at an early age and by the time he was six, he was playing daily in the Tarrallton Elementary School Recreation Center for hours.
“And he was good,” she said. “So, when he turned six, I signed him up for a team.”
At first, he balked. He was shy and didn’t want to play in front of people. He told her he didn’t want to play for an organized team.
“I said, ‘What if Mom coaches you?’ He said if I’d coach, he’d do it.”
That was 1995 and she helped coach the Norfolk Wildcats with Jonathan Wilson, now the head football coach at Granby.
She coached him all the way through high school, including AAU summer leagues, with the exception of one year in middle school. He was playing at Norview High when she took a job at Bayside and he followed her there.
“I honestly thought he would stay at Norview, that no one wanted to play for their Mom at his age,” Annette said. “But he told me, ‘No, Mom, I’m going with you.’”
After graduating from Bayside, he played at both Jeff Davis College in Alabama and Patrick Henry College in Martinsville, Virginia, before settling in Norfolk.
Like many college athletes, he struggled once he hung up his uniform for good. Some athletes, especially those whose careers began when they were very young, identify primarily as athletes, and when their careers end, finding a new identity isn’t always easy.
It was especially difficult for Todd, who battled depression most of his adult life.
Annette got him into counseling and on medications, but like so many suffering from mental health issues, he didn’t like his meds because they made him feel normal, and that often feels abnormal for a person suffering from mental health issues.
Annette was the ODU men’s basketball administrative assistant when Blaine Taylor coached the Monarchs, and so she called in a favor with one of the University’s most well-liked athletic donors.
Annette reached out to Ray Wittersheim, now the retired President & CEO of Técnico, and Ray helped get him a job at BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair.
“I told him Todd needs a job, and he doesn’t have any shipyard experience,” she said. “Ray said, ‘Send him to me,’ and he took care of Todd. He told me they’d train him, and they did.
“Todd fell in love with shipbuilding. He loved what he was doing.”
Ray said that he kept tabs on Todd and that “from all reports, he was a great worker. He didn’t have any skills when he came to us, but he learned very quickly. He was doing great and very happy.
“I was so shocked when I heard he had died.”
Now an athletic development officer for major gifts for the Old Dominion Athletic Foundation, Taylor had only recently returned to ODU after coaching several years on the west coast when he learned of Todd’s death.
He said he cried like a baby during the funeral. “I knew Todd pretty well,” he said. “It was a real blow to everyone who knew him. He was just really a great young man.
“To my shock, at the end of Todd’s funeral, Annette got up and spoke. She spoke about Todd. She had a message about his passing she wanted everyone to hear. It was educational, passionate, and inspiring. I was just in awe of what she had to offer. The first thing she said was, ‘You know, Todd wanted to be here. This isn’t what Todd wanted. He bought groceries that day. He didn’t plan for this to happen.’
“She went into how anyone could get into that spot and talked to the kids there about asking for help. She’s really a remarkable woman.”
Annette wears a constant smile at work. I love to hear her laugh. It’s loud and joyful.
But at times, it’s all an act.
“I’m still trying to navigate my new normal,” she said. “There are times when something good happens and just instinctively, I reach out to call Todd. I’m in the midst of looking for his number and then I remember, but I can’t call him because he’s gone.”
She left Bayside following the 2023 season and moved on to Norfolk Collegiate. “Too many memories there of Todd,” she said. “I had to leave.”
She’s still coaching and coaching well. Her Norfolk Collegiate team was 18-5 this past season, including a 49-46 upset victory over Maury.
Even in 2026, she still runs into sexism. There have been times when game officials, or opposing coaches, have walked up to her and asked her where is the coach?
“I’m the coach,” she usually responds with a stern stare.
Richardson, her former player, said she’s one of the best coaches he ever played for.
“She was always serious and always got us locked in,” he said. “You don’t see many women coaching boy’s basketball but she is as good as any man. She was like a mother to all of us on the team, that one mother who’s going to be on your neck, will hold you accountable but will also have your back. Coach Annette is a great coach. I’m very proud of her.”
Taylor did not know until recently that Annette coached two days after her son died.
“But I’m not surprised,” he said.
She was an “executive assistant” for Taylor’s program but was far more than that.
“She was half a travel agent, half an academic counselor. You have males dealing with male basketball players in the college game, but Annette was able to have this presence that really helped kids get through the ups and downs of college and college athletics. She was like their mother.
“We had study halls on the road. She saw the world with us. She went to Europe, to Madison Square Garden, and to the NCAA Tournament with us. She became so important.
“I can’t tell you how many hats she wore and how much we depended on her. Annette didn’t take any prisoners. If she didn’t like what was going on in your classwork, you went to study hall. She held the kids accountable. They knew not to cross Annette. And they all adored her.
“She never counted hours. She was all-in.”
She was obviously all-in on trying to save her son. They talked daily and saw each other several times a week. She pushed and cajoled him to go to therapy.
Initially, she was eaten up with guilt when he committed suicide. But she got into counseling and is dealing with her grief, anger and remorse.
Asked to tell a story about her son, she said a good friend lost her job just before Christmas in 2022. It was less than a month before he died. Todd went out and bought her friend’s children Christmas gifts.
“Mom,” he said to Annette, “I don’t have money to buy you anything for Christmas. I spent it all on the kids. He was such a sweet boy,” she said. “Instinctively, mothers are fixers. And for months, it bothered me that I couldn’t fix what was wrong with him. I’ve learned a lot through my therapy. Now I understand why I couldn’t fix him. When I talked to him about counseling and meds, he kept telling me, ‘Mom, don’t worry. I’m going to be fine.’ But inside, he was battling himself every day.
“Once they have an idea (to commit suicide) there’s nothing you can do to change their mind. It has nothing to do with being a bad parent or not loving them enough.
“Lord knows, I loved him so much.”
A video tribute to Todd remains online.
CLICK HERE for video tribute to Todd Manley
It has more than a hundred photos of Todd with his family. Most revolved around basketball. It was the tie that bonded mother and son.
She wears tattoos on her left arm to remind her of her son. “Son I miss you” with a heart is underneath his birthday and the day he died. His jersey number 3 is on her wrist.
“One Day at a time,” is on her arm, underneath a semicolon, the universal symbol of suicide prevention.
“That’s what I do now,” she said. “I take things one day at a time.”
Minium is ODU's Senior Executive Writer for Athletics. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
To see past stories from Minium, CLICK HERE