2026 Football Preview: Junior-heavy Manual team brings toughness to the board in Bailey’s fifth season

PEORIA – A new year is beginning for Manual football, and with that, another chance for them to make a breakthrough in an always-competitive Big 12 conference.

In head coach Dennis Bailey’s fifth year at the helm, things look different in comparison to prior seasons, and that started with what they did in the offseason.

“We kind of got away from a lot of the 7-on-7 events we used to do,” Bailey said. “We tried to get them more into team scrimmages and joint practices. We did a few 7-on-7s and those helped us as well, but I think we needed to get more into little joint practices and more team scrimmages and things like that.”

And while there are quite a few differences in how they’ve practiced, Manual has a number of returning players, many of them having experienced starting minutes in their sophomore seasons last year, which seems to be helping them as the seconds until their first kickoff count down.

“We have about eight or nine seniors, and 12 to 15 juniors that will contribute,” Bailey said. “Last year, the team was filled with a bunch of sophomores, and now a bunch of guys are gaining experience and I think they came back understanding the things they need to work on and improve on, and that experience is going to help us this year.”