Jul 8, 2020 4 min read

Did you know that one of the nation’s most heavily recruited prep basketball players this year attended school in Washington last winter?

He plans to be back this year, too, practicing with his teammates in the gymnasium at the Brownson House.

No, he doesn’t play for Wash High.

Or Trinity.

Or in the WPIAL.

He is Mason Manning, a smooth-shooting guard who will be entering his junior year at First Love Christian Academy, a small private school located on Sunset Boulevard in Washington.

Unless you hang around at the Brownson House, where First Love practices, or you’re a recruiting junkie, you probably haven’t heard of Mason Manning. That’s OK. Khayree Wilson, the head coach at First Love, says that Manning has already made a name for himself with college coaches.

Manning is rated the No. 95 player in the country in the Class of 2022 by 247sports.com. Wilson believes Manning is only going to rise in the rankings, especially after he moves from his shooting guard position of last year to a more natural point guard position this winter.

Manning already has 14 scholarship offers and college basketball’s power-conference schools are included.

“Before he came to First Love, Mason already had offers from LSU, Baylor and Ole Miss,” Wilson said. “He’s picked up 11 more offers. Pitt and Penn State in the region have offered, so have Mississippi State, Maryland, Wake Forest, Illinois, Georgia Tech, Seton Hall, Bryant, TCU and South Florida.”

Last year, the 6-1 Manning averaged 13 points, four rebounds, five assists and two steals per game for First Love, which played a high-caliber schedule that included games in eight states and Canada.

“Mason is very, very mature,” Wilson said. “To be a true sophomore and play as well as he did for us, he was very poised. He’s a knockdown shooter but can also run a team. He’s very competitive. His competitive nature stands out. He can do it all.”

Manning is not from Pennsylvania. He’s a native of Jackson, Mississippi, but First Love, which listed an enrollment of 45 students last year, is a national program that attracts basketball players from across the United States and other countries.

“We are a nationally recognized high school,” Wilson says proudly. “We get inquiries from all over the country. We recruit, well, all over the world.”

First Love, which will be playing its sixth season on the national prep school circuit, has quickly developed a rich reputation for developing top-notch talent. Fourteen of its players have gone on to play Division I basketball and three are playing professionally in other countries.

Among First Love’s best players have been David Collins, a Youngstown, Ohio, native who will be a senior guard this season at South Florida; and D.J. Gordon, a Pittsburgh native, who will be a freshman at Penn State. Gordon is one of four First Love players from last season’s team who signed with Division I schools.

“Our niche is we develop kids,” Wilson said. “There are national programs like IMG Academy and Oak Hill Academy, and they just go get the kids who are ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the country at their positions. We get kids who are under a rock and polish them up. By the time they’re done at First Love they are like a shiny diamond.

“People see David Collins, who tested the NBA waters this summer and decided to return to school, and more people are checking us out. He was a two-star kid who was told before he came (to First Love) that to be a Division I player he would have to be a walk-on.

“It was the same way with D.J. Gordon. He was a 6-6 kid playing power forward at Obama Academy. He told me that he didn’t know if he was good enough to play in college at Clarion. After playing here, his final three college choices were Penn State, Minnesota and Iowa.”

Yes, college coaches know about First Love and where the Brownson House is located.

“We average about 100 college coaches a year at our gym,” Wilson said.

And they stay in contact, even during a pandemic.

“We’re constantly sending out films of our games to coaches,” Wilson said. “The biggest problem during this pandemic is not being able to get kids on campus. We missed out on some kids because of that, but we’re going to be fine. This is going to be one of our best teams.”