Krystal Kleiner

My high school experience was full of activities because I was part of the music department and the drama department and athletics when I was younger in debate and forensics, so I kind of just lived here most of the time.

I describe high school as the worst place you can be stuck for four years because the best thing for me was I got to get to know some great teachers and make some really great friends and the friends. I didn’t have a ton of friends but I had a good solid set of friends. It kind of got solidified in AP classes because AP had just been invented so we were all together all the time. The worst part was learning how mean people could be and how hurtful for their own selfish gain, but I think that made me a better person because I never wanted to hurt anybody. It made me more determined to never make anyone feel like that

I feel like Manhattan High School was my home then and it is now. I started coming here in fourth grade for basketball camp so I always say I leave home to go home every day. I love being here and I wanted to come back to Manhattan High School because it was my home and it’s where I wanted to be. I wanted to give students a home and an experience like I had.

Eric Kleiner

It was fun and easy. I didn’t have to pay bills so it was overall really good. I made a lot of friends and had a good time.

The best part of high school was the band that I was in at the time. It was really awesome. We were just kids who thought we were good and probably weren’t. Orchestra was awesome. I was in orchestra all four years. Mr. MHS was great.

The worst part about high school was wanting to leave high school and then being like ‘Man, it wasn’t that bad.’

My sister works here so I was up here a lot beforehand, I just get paid for it now.

Mike Marsh

I had a great time at Manhattan High. There were a lot of changes going on when we were in high school. We moved up here as sophomores and our sophomore year was the first time they brought the freshmen back up to the senior high. It became a four-year school rather than a  three-year school. I was involved in athletics as a student. I played football all four years, I played basketball, and at that time they didn’t have a baseball program so I played American Legion in the summertime. I had groups of friends like most teenagers do but I sought after people who weren’t in athletics, I had friends outside of that general core like so many kids do.

I would say that having lots of friends and being a part of special teams that I was involved in. You build bonds throughout the years and that bond over the years is important.

Not the worst experience I’ve had but the moment that will always stick with me was when we were playing in the state playoffs and our team was ranked number one and we were playing Wichita East who were ranked number two and my eventual roommate ended up getting stopped about the length of the football on a fourth down and won in overtime and that was the first game that as a class had ever been beaten in a football game.

Greg Hoyt

It was a great high school experience, great teachers and our graduating class was in the mid 300s so our classes were smaller. I remember a lot of diversity in our class and so we did have cliques but all our cliques got along. We had the Goat ropers and the Jocks and the Hoods and I was in the Jocks but we all got along.

I don’t know if I can boil down the best part into one thing but all of the events were great. I would imagine that hasn’t changed. Those are what I remember as being really fun.

I don’t really remember anything being bad at all but I would say that if I could do high school over again and could make a major change it would be this: I was dating a freshman in college as a senior in high school and I probably devoted more time to doing things with her outside and away from school and I can’t go back and get that time again. I wouldn’t have done that and there were things I missed.

It was really odd when I graduated K-State I came back and taught math for 16 years so coming back as a first-year teacher was really odd because most of the teachers that I had going through high school were still teachers here so then I would be in meetings with them and I had to force myself to call them by their first names. It’s nice to be back now and to see things from this side of things. It changes the way I look back on high school but it also gives me an appreciation for students and what they’re going through and recognizing that I wasn’t an angel in high school and kids are kids and you guys need to be caught breaks too.

Tim Ekart

I was a little bit of a wallflower. I had a small group of friends. It was the ‘80s. We were 501 Levis, half shirt, long hair. We said stuff like ‘gag me with a spoon’ and ‘that’s totally gnarly.’ I was in cross country and track, I was not stellar at either of them. I tended to get along better with people who were in the classes above me and behind me rather than in my class.

The best part of high school was ‘Swanny’s’ runs. There was a bakery down where the mall sits now. I was in Wide Horizons and throughout enjoyed that and it’s part of the reason why I’m a teacher now. I had really great teachers. We would leave class on the downlow, get doughnuts and come back up.

The worst part was the typical clique stuff. Sometimes there were stereotypes.

When I first showed up here as a teacher it was a little weird being with people who were my teachers before. You have that view of them and then you start to realize that they are real people. It’s fun to see the other side of things and to be involved in things like Tribe and Scholars Bowl.