Kaitlin Maniscalco attends World Series and All-MLB Weekend

Former Wantagh resident Kaitlin Maniscalco has developed a platform to teach people, specifically women, the ins and outs of professional sports.

The 24-year-old has developed a 190,000-person following on her TikTok account, “AskKait,” where she speaks on topics from pop culture to technical terms in athletics.

“My last six months, my entire life kind of changed a little bit,” Maniscalco said. “I started posting a lot more consistently on TikTok, found a niche where I was struggling with views for three to four months, and I was just trying to find different ways to tell stories.”

Capital One invited Maniscalco to the World Series in Texas in the fall of 2023 on a brand deal, providing her access to on-field reporting opportunities. Upon arrival, she was told she would be conducting a meet-and-greet with Derek Jeter, former New York Yankee great.

“I worked with a lot of athletes before, but that was the only time I was completely star struck,” she said.

In addition, Major League Baseball invited her to attend All-MLB Weekend in Las Vegas in December, where she interviewed more professional athletes.

Maniscalco launched a series on her social media, titled “Baseball for Baddies,” “Football for First Timers” and “Hockey for Hotties,” where she goes in depth on each sport’s rules, terminology and players’ backgrounds.

“Those videos alone have just done extremely well, because again I think a lot of times women don’t want to ask their boyfriend for fear of sounding stupid, so I think I explain it in a way that’s very simple and easy to understand,” Maniscalco said.

Sports were a large part of Maniscalco’s upbringing — in Bellmore where she lived until her freshman year of high school and in Wantagh, she said.

She attended Kellenberg High School in Uniondale, where she played two years of varsity softball, and she and her three sisters practiced the sport on Wantagh’s Washington Avenue. Maniscalco was a student athlete at Ithaca College, playing softball and studying within the communications school.

After college, she accepted a position with the YES Network, jumping around from June 2021 to March 2023, serving as an associate producer, putting on events with YES, and working as a graphic coordinator, a production assistant and a researcher for pre- and post-game shows.

Chris Shearn, host and reporter at the YES Network, suggested Maniscalco practice for on-air using her social media.

“I saw that fire inside of her, that passion and love for what she wanted to do,” Shearn said.

Shearn added that he has since been impressed with her success.

“She’s created a niche in the sports world that I’ve never seen,” Shearn said. “She’s basically a trailblazer.”

Maniscalco now resides in Hoboken, New Jersey, and her parents, Joseph and Lisa, still live in Wantagh.

According to her father, she was always a “gregarious, outgoing” person.

“Her personality shines when she’s in this industry,” he said.

In addition, Maniscalco is a producer for Overtime, a six-year-old company aiding in college athlete recruitment, and she is also a part of Breaking Bats podcast, a baseball related show.

As for what’s to come, she hopes to continue humanizing athletes, she said.

“Eventually, I would like to have a platform where I can really dive deep with athletes, but doing so in a larger medium than just a podcast, maybe a show or something different than what you see traditionally,” she said.