Cute Sports Club Manager



A High School Stock Character, the Cute Sports Club Manager is the equivalent of the Team Mom for the high school sports club of which she's part. She holds important various roles for the cohesion of the club: cleaning and buying equipment, preparing energy food, keeping tabs on the players' data, and providing moral support to said players.

Usually a pretty and good-hearted girl, she's loved and respected by the club's members. She may be seconded by one or two female assistants (more often than not her underclassmen) who act as her Lancer(s), or as either her girly girl or her tomboy, depending on the girl's own personality traits.

There are two common variations of this character:

1) She's the official team manager who is actually part of the school system. There, the Cute Sports Club Manager has a good chance of becoming an Official Couple with the story's club player main protagonist, even more so he's the team's captain, such as the Kendo Team Captain. Her assistant(s) and the other club players will then usually go Shipper on Deck for the two.

2) She's the coach's daughter, acting as the unofficial manager of the team. This variation tends to have her be a Tomboy and a sports nut, and either too young to be a viable love interest, or off limits because the coach would kill you (though this has the possibility of romance drama too).

It's not rare for both variations of this character to, at a point, make lucky charms such as hachimaki or misangas for every member of the team. The one she'll design specifically for her love interest will usually have an extra feature or be better made than the others.

A Stock Character in High School sports-themed Manga, Anime and Dating Sims (usually seen in works of The Eighties and Nineties).

In the West, this fits as a Discredited Trope. It was popular in The Fifties, with such girls functioning as The Chick (or a mix of Chick and The Smart Guy) in an all male squad. She usally took the form of team managers, water girls, cheerleaders and fraternity sweethearts. Nowadays such characters are much less sympathetic, usually the Alpha Bitch.

An Always Female trope. Since most sports teams are for a single gender, this is often the only way to bring a female lead into a male team, thus another reason why she's so shippable.

Anime and Manga

 * Sanae Nakazawa, in the Junior High arc of Captain Tsubasa, is the manga Ur Example and Trope Codifier. She's a cute-looking, popular Shorttank in love with the Soccer Club captain of Nankatsu Junior High Tsubasa Ohzora, and her assistants are her best friend Yukari Nishimoto (who, along with the rest of the team, ships Sanae and Tsubasa), and her kohai Kumi Sugimoto (who loves Tsubasa).
 * Yoshiko Fujisawa is Sanae's counterpart in the Furano Junior High Soccer Club. In love with captain Hikaru Matsuyama, and her assistant Machiko Machida is her best friend (who, along with the other members, ship Yoshiko and Matsuyama). She makes hachimaki for everyone, and gives Matsuyama a special one with her confession of love for him sewn on it (which will help them getting out of their Twice Shy issues). This hachimaki will become in later arcs Matsuyama's iconic item, wearing it in crucial matches.
 * In Musashi Junior High, Sanae's counterpart is her and Tsubasa's friend Yayoi Aoba, who is also very close to captain Jun Misugi. There's a buttload of Ship Tease among them, but not a definitive confirmation about them being either an Official Couple or Platonic Life Partners.
 * The videogames add Youko Katagiri, who is actually the assistant for the National Team and the younger sister of counselor Munemasa Katagiri. Has a slap stick relationship with Ryo Ishizaki, of all persons.
 * In the WYC manga, the manager of the National Swedish team is a cute-looking nurse named Shirley Marks, who is the daughter of the team doctor.
 * Hiromi / Hilary in Beyblade.
 * From Harlem Beat, Johnan’s opponents usually thought that Kiriko was this. They have NO IDEA (although she's more of a benevolent one).
 * Ayako in Slam Dunk, but as a subversion : while pretty and good-natured, she's much more assertive and tomboyish, practically a Tsundere.
 * Almost at the end of the manga,
 * Also subverted with Eri from the third movie, who is very Hot-Blooded.
 * Mamori, Juri, and Wakana from Eyeshield 21, to name a few.
 * In general, Eyeshield 21 loves this trope, as it's just about the only way to feature a female prominently on each team, as the cheerleaders are mostly stuck with the role of Chorus Girls.
 * Maria, of the Hakushuu Dinosaurs, subverts this trope to hell and gone. She's cute and she's the manager. She's also the object of team captain Marco's affections, and the reason for his slide into Love Makes You Evil. This leads to her becoming an Emotionless Girl until his eventual defeat.
 * Discussed / Invoked Trope in the Scorebook manga, where the two remaining members of the boys' baseball club dream about getting a manager like this (but get a Strange Girl instead).
 * Princess Nine has one of these, but the romance element is left out, presumably because the writers didn't want to do the Schoolgirl Lesbians thing. Also Lampshaded: the individual in question wanted to become one of these like in the manga she reads, but was disappointed to find that her all-girl's academy she attends didn't actually have a baseball team. When she heard they were putting together a team, she promptly recruited herself to the surprise of everyone else.
 * Chidori Kaname, of all people, is recruited into this position in one episode of Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. She actually did a relatively fair job... Too bad she got comboed with Sousuke Sagara as the team coach.
 * Ako Izumi of Mahou Sensei Negima  is this, nominally; it never really comes up and we never see the team. Presumably added in just for the sake of completing the series' authoritative catalog of otaku fetishes.
 * Word of God says she joined because she liked the team captain but was turned down after she confessed. Pushing her Butt Monkey status even even higher.
 * Ookiku Furikabutte has two -- Chiyo Shino'oka for the principal Nishiura team, and Suzune Miyashita for Musashino.
 * Shion Sonozaki in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni plays this role for the Hinamizawa Fighters, although the team is tangential to the main plot and only shows up a couple of times.
 * Asami Uchida of Detective Conan, who was the soccer club manager when Shinichi was in middle school. And when she reappeared...
 * Yumi Horikoshi and Noriko Kimoto were the CSCM's for Kogoro's judo club from college, and several years later they're very pretty ladies.
 * In Ojamajo Doremi's first episode, the Nice Girl Maki Takahashi is the soccer club manager and has a crush on her sempai and the top scorer of the team, Igarashi, but is too shy to tell him. (And so is he, to be fair.)
 * In some of the anime-only training arcs Sakuno Ryuzaki, An Tachibana and Tomoka Osakada from The Prince of Tennis got upgraded from Tag Along Kids and Chorus Girls to this.
 * Minami who's taking over from her equally cute friend Yuki in Moshidora.
 * 14 Juicy is a Slice of Life about a trio of these.
 * Several of the girls from After School Sex Slave Club are these.

Film

 * In Remember the Titans, the daughter of the assistant coach is an example of the second variety.
 * The 1986 film Wildcats has an example of the first variety.

Video Games

 * Saki Nijino, in the Kirameki Saga of the Tokimeki Memorial series, is the Dating Sim Ur Example. In the original game, being one of the easiest girls to win the heart of, she's highly likely to become the main protagonist's love interest; and in the Nijiiro no Seishun canon, they become an Official Couple.
 * Minori Akiho is at first Saki's kohai and assistant, and will oppose their relationship because she's in love with Saki; she'll let it go in the end, though. She then becomes a Cute Sports Club Manager herself in Tabidachi no Uta, once Saki graduates and once she takes under her wing her kohai Tomomi.
 * It's not her main gimmick, but Shiori Fujisaki can become one if the calculations of her starting parameters set her as a member of the Soccer or Baseball Clubs.
 * In the Radio Dramas of the first game, Megumi Juuichiya is the manager of the Basketball Club.
 * In Tokimeki Memorial 2, Kaedeko Sakura is the Cute Sports Club Manager of the Baseball Club of Hibikino High.
 * In Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side, Konno Tamami is the Cute Sports Club Manager of the Basketball Club and is your rival for Suzuka Kazuma. The Player Character can become the Cute Sports Club Manager of the Baseball Club and be the love interest of Hibiya Wataru. In Girl's Side 2, the player character can again be the manager of the baseball club, this time in order to romance Shiba Katsumi.
 * The Persona series:
 * Yuko Nishiwaki in Persona 3.
 * Ai Ebihara in Persona 4. Unusually for this trope, she did not become the manager by choice. Her attendance was low, so she was forced to become the manager in order to pass. We don't really see her doing any "manager" work at all.
 * There are four of them in Inazuma Eleven: Aki Kino, Haruna Otonashi, Natsumi Raimon, and Fuyuka Ono. They're not highschoolers, but rather junior high students, which is not very different. In Inazuma Eleven GO, set 10 years after the events of the first three games, they are replaced by Aoi, Akane and Midori.