Before Alan Probst ever played an inning for Mansfield, he saw the wall.

He had traveled to campus to meet legendary head coach Harry Hillson and watch the Mountaineers play a doubleheader at Shaute Field. Behind the third-base dugout were the names of former Mansfield players who had signed professional contracts or been selected in the Major League Baseball Draft.

Probst studied them. He did not know every name, but he understood what the wall represented.

Opportunity.

"I saw the dugout with all the names on the back of that wall that had signed or been drafted into professional baseball," Probst remembered. "Seeing that wall really authenticated my drive to be there."

Probst, who grew up in Avis, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Jersey Shore High School, had other options. But after watching Mansfield play, something about the program, its history and the possibilities represented on that wall stayed with him.

"I just really wanted to come there," Probst said. "History proved that him giving me the chance, and me making the opportunity for myself to go there, was a good choice."

His goal was simple. Someday, he wanted his name on that wall.

By the time he finished at Mansfield, Probst had done far more.

He hit .479 during a historic 1992 season, earned First Team All-American honors and helped lead the Mountaineers to the NCAA Division II National Championship game. His .454 career batting average became one of the most remarkable offensive marks in program and PSAC history.

Then came professional baseball.

The Houston Astros selected Probst in the 17th round of the 1992 MLB Draft, beginning a professional career that lasted 10 seasons and eventually reached Triple-A.

The young catcher who had once stared at those names behind the Mansfield dugout had earned the right to place his own among them.

More than three decades later, however, ask Probst what Mansfield gave him and the conversation eventually moves away from batting averages, draft rounds and records. It comes back to the people who believed in him, teammates who became family, a father who never stopped pushing him forward and a small university that gave a young man an opportunity to discover what he could become.

"I loved Mansfield," Probst said. "It's part of who I am. It's part of what made me who I am today."

An Opportunity That Had to Be Earned

Like a lot of kids, Probst grew up wanting to become a professional baseball player.

Unlike most, he never completely stopped believing he could.

"From the age of 11 or 12, every young boy wants to be a professional baseball player," Probst said. "People would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and it was always, 'I want to be a professional baseball player.'"

Probst arrived at Mansfield with confidence.

What he did not immediately have was playing time.

His first year and a half were difficult. The opportunities were limited, and Probst had to decide whether frustration was going to defeat him or drive him.

"If you don't let it break you, it can make you stronger," Probst said.

When his opportunity finally arrived, he made it difficult for anyone to take away.

By his sophomore season, Probst had become Mansfield's Spring Athlete of the Year. All-PSAC and regional recognition followed, along with growing attention from the baseball world.

That summer, he played in Horseheads alongside Mansfield teammates under Jeff Manwaring. Another successful season gave Probst further evidence that the dream he had carried since childhood might actually be within reach.

Still, his development was never simply an individual story.

There were teammates who encouraged him and people throughout the Mansfield community who supported him, including campus police officer Doug Thomas. There was also an internal drive Probst believes every successful person eventually has to find within himself.

And there was Hillson.

Probst is the first to acknowledge their relationship was not always easy. Hillson challenged him, pushed him and held him accountable. Decades later, Probst understands the value in all of it.

"There was nothing easy about my relationship with Harry," Probst said. "He was on me a lot. Maybe the reason was to push me to be better. Whatever the reason, it drove me."

For Probst, one of Hillson's greatest strengths was not something that could be found in a baseball manual.

It was accountability.

"If you missed study hall, if you didn't get good grades, if you didn't hustle, you were held accountable," Probst said. "Baseball is a tough game. You're going to fail more than you're successful, but the effort always needs to be there."

There were no separate standards for stars and reserves.

"If you screwed up, you were going to pay a price for it," Probst said. "What that showed everybody else was, 'We're all in this together.' At the end of the day, you were going to be held accountable for what you were doing."

That expectation helped create something larger than a winning baseball team. It created an identity.

"There was a sense of respect for the uniform," Probst said. "There was an aura about putting on that uniform."

On spring afternoons at Shaute Field, that feeling extended far beyond the dugout.

Fans lined the field. Students slid down the surrounding hills on cardboard. Longball Lounge came alive with student-athletes from other Mountaineer teams. People found seemingly every available spot from which to watch. Probst remembers crowds stretching around the field and spectators watching from high above the diamond.

"It was more than just a baseball game," Probst said. "It was a social environment. That was the place to be."

It was one of those experiences that helps explain Mansfield better than enrollment figures or campus maps ever could. The campus was small enough that the people surrounding the field were classmates, professors, friends and neighbors. The team belonged to the community, and the community made sure the players knew it.

For opposing teams, Probst remembers Shaute Field a little differently.

"I pitied the teams that had to come and play us there," he said. "Even if they were competitive with us, we believed we were going to beat them on that field."

The Team That Became a Family

If there is one word Probst uses to describe the 1992 Mountaineers, it is not talent.

It is family.

The team eventually played for the NCAA Division II National Championship, but Probst believes its greatest strength was built long before Mansfield reached Montgomery, Alabama.

"A big part of performing on the field is having confidence and knowing your teammates are in your corner," Probst said. "That team had the family aspect. You were accountable to your teammates."

They did not simply want to succeed individually. They did not want to let one another down.

If Hillson called for a pinch hitter, the player leaving the lineup stood on the top step cheering for the teammate replacing him. If a pitcher was removed because another matchup gave Mansfield a better opportunity, he became the next pitcher's loudest supporter.

"The family aspect carried over into almost every part of that run," Probst said. "That's why we were successful."

Within that family was a personality Probst still credits as the emotional engine of the group.

Tim Fausnaught.

Fausnaught was Probst's college roommate and Mansfield's leadoff hitter. Probst and Tim Fenton served as captains and often led through their play.

Fausnaught brought something different.

"Timmy could ignite a fury within us that no other team could compete with," Probst said. "It could happen from the very first pitch of the game."

Whether Fausnaught opened a game with a home run, reached base or even made an out, the intensity never disappeared.

"When you have a guy who is that focused and intense, even when he fails, everybody else rallies around it," Probst said. "That team was Tim Fausnaught's team. We rolled as he rolled."

By the postseason, the Mountaineers began realizing exactly what they had.

Probst remembers the regional tournament in Shippensburg as the point when confidence turned into certainty.

Mansfield faced a heavily favored Longwood team featuring Michael Tucker, one of the country's top professional prospects.

The Mountaineers beat them.

"That first game against Longwood solidified how good we were," Probst said. "It was, 'Yes, this is ours to lose. We can get this done.' That was when the team finally recognized who we were."

Mansfield captured the regional championship and advanced to the NCAA Division II World Series.

By then, Probst was playing some of the best baseball of his life.

That would have been difficult to imagine earlier in the spring.

The season remembered now for his .479 batting average actually began with Probst struggling in Florida and continuing to search for his swing when Mansfield returned north.

The possibility of being drafted had begun creating its own pressure.

"I think I was putting too much pressure on myself," Probst said.

Then came a doubleheader at Bloomsburg.

Probst remembers hitting three home runs between the two games.

Something changed.

"People don't remember how you start," Probst said. "They remember how you finish, and I finished really strong."

He carried that surge through the postseason and hit .450 at the World Series. In Montgomery, Probst also accomplished a personal goal when a towering drive to center field broke Mansfield's single-season home run record.

His strongest World Series memory, however, came in the national championship game.

Mansfield scored four runs in the top of the first inning. Behind the plate, where a catcher's mind is trained to constantly think a pitch or an inning ahead, another thought entered Probst's head.

He refused to say it aloud.

They were going to win the national championship.

Tampa answered with three runs in the bottom half, and the fight continued.

Mansfield ultimately fell short, finishing as the NCAA Division II national runner-up.

More than three decades later, Probst does not pretend the loss has stopped bothering him.

"It's not that we lost, it's how we lost," he said.

The Mountaineers had one final opportunity. With runners aboard, a ball was driven deep toward left-center field. Off the bat, Probst thought it was gone.

It stayed in the ballpark.

The game was over.

He remains convinced that if the ball had cleared the fence and tied the game, Mansfield would have won.

The disappointment remains, but so does something stronger: pride in the people who made the journey with him.

"There may have been Mansfield teams after us that had more talent," Probst said. "But there was no team that gelled or cared for each other more than that 1992 team."

For Probst, that is what separated them.

"How we treated each other and how we cared about how each guy did on that team, that's who we were."

The Call He Had Waited His Whole Life For

The dream Probst had carried since childhood eventually came down to a telephone attached to the wall of his family's home.

Several professional organizations contacted him before the 1992 MLB Draft with essentially the same question.

If we take you, will you sign?

There was no hesitation. All Probst wanted was the chance to play professional baseball.

Then the draft began.

The first day passed without a call. His father, Charles, came home from work and asked whether he had heard anything.

He had not.

The second day became even more difficult. Newspapers and television stations called the house looking for updates, and Probst still had none to give.

Eventually, the pressure became too much.

"I told my mom, 'I need your car. I've got to go fishing,'" Probst remembered.

For a few hours, he went back to something that had given him peace long before baseball became the center of his life.

He went fishing at Hyner Run.

Probst returned home around 10 p.m. His mother told him nobody had called.

Then, at approximately 10:45, the phone rang.

His mother answered.

"Alan, it's for you."

A Houston Astros scout was waiting on the other end.

"How would you like to be a Houston Astro?"

After two emotionally exhausting days, Probst's answer was wonderfully understated.

"I would like that."

The Astros had selected him in the 17th round.

There was only one detail Probst could not understand.

They had drafted him that morning.

"I asked him, 'Why didn't you call me at nine o'clock?'" Probst said.

For most of the day, Probst had convinced himself that the opportunity might be disappearing when, in reality, the dream had already come true.

The young player who once stood at Shaute Field staring at Mansfield's professional baseball wall had earned his place on it.

Another Fish in the Sea

Getting drafted fulfilled a dream Probst had carried since childhood.

It also took only a few days for professional baseball to remind him that the work was just beginning.

At his first minicamp, Probst looked around and realized nearly everybody on the field had a story resembling his own. They had been stars in their hometowns, stars in high school and stars in college.

Now they were all standing in the same place.

"You quickly went from being the best to being another fish in the sea," Probst said. "Everybody there was there because they were the best where they came from."

His first professional assignment drove the point home.

Three catchers were competing for playing time. One had been the starting catcher at the University of Michigan. Another had started at the University of Southern California.

Then there was Probst.

The catcher from Division II Mansfield.

His father, Charles, saw the competition and privately wondered how his son was going to fare.

Within approximately three weeks, Probst had won the starting job.

Years later, Charles told Alan that watching him beat out those two catchers had been one of the proudest moments of his son's baseball career.

For Probst, the experience reinforced something that would become a defining belief.

"There were people who had more talent than I did," Probst said. "But there were guys who just worked harder, and the guys who worked harder were the ones who moved up the ladder."

Probst would spend 10 seasons in professional baseball, including his final four at Triple-A, while playing in the Houston Astros, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Mets organizations.

Getting there was difficult.

Staying there was harder.

"It's hard to get to that level, but it really is true, it's harder to stay there," Probst said. "You have to eat, live, breathe and sleep it. It's your job."

That meant early batting practice and staying late. It meant workouts after the day's scheduled work was finished. It meant paying attention to details that could separate two players with similar ability and learning to control the emotions that come with playing a sport built around failure.

But there is one part of his professional career he remains certain about.

"I never got outworked," he said.

The offensive numbers that helped make Probst an All-American at Mansfield had opened the door to professional baseball.

His defense helped keep him there.

As a college catcher, Probst considered his arm one of his strengths. At the professional level, he quickly realized it was closer to average, which forced him to find other ways to gain an edge.

He improved his footwork. He worked on blocking pitches. He learned pitching staffs. He focused on controlling the running game and developed the relationship between pitcher and catcher that becomes increasingly important the farther a player advances.

"The defensive side of my game is actually what gave me the longevity in professional baseball," Probst said. "My role was to handle the pitching staff, play good defense and call a good game. What I did hitting-wise as time went on was just a bonus."

It is one of the more revealing parts of Probst's baseball journey.

The hitter who left Mansfield with a .454 career batting average had to reinvent the way he provided value once he entered professional baseball.

So he adapted.

Four seasons at Triple-A eventually placed Probst one step from the Major Leagues.

"You're close every day at that level," he said.

For a catcher, however, opportunity could depend on circumstances almost entirely outside his control. The right organization had to need help at the right time. A roster spot had to open. Sometimes another catcher had to be unavailable before the phone rang.

That particular call never came for Probst.

He understood the reality of it.

"You don't want to wish for somebody else getting hurt to get your opportunity," Probst said.

So he kept doing what had gotten him there in the first place.

He worked.

Ten seasons in professional baseball gave Probst one of the longest professional playing careers by a Mountaineer in the modern MLB Draft era. Only Tom Brookens and David Shepard logged more professional seasons.

For the kid who once stared at the names behind the dugout at Shaute Field, longevity became an accomplishment of its own. Along the way, Probst learned that talent might get someone noticed, but talent alone did not guarantee staying power.

The lesson became bigger than baseball.

"If you get up every day and you work toward that goal and you work toward being better at what you want to be better at, you're going to have some sort of success," Probst said. "It comes down to hard work, dedication and committing yourself to that goal."

Eventually, his body made a decision his competitive mind probably never would have.

Years behind the plate had taken their toll. By 30, Probst had undergone multiple knee operations, and continuing to catch at the professional level was no longer sustainable.

Opportunities came for him to remain in professional baseball as a coach.

Probst turned them down.

After a lifetime spent chasing the game as far as he possibly could, he knew that chapter was over.

There was another life waiting for him.

The Other Life His Father Gave Him

On a warm August 28th morning, I pulled away from Mansfield in my black Nissan Sentra and headed southeast toward Probst's warehouse outside Wilkes-Barre. I was leaving behind the campus and Shaute Field, where so much of his story had unfolded more than three decades earlier, and heading toward the life he had built after baseball.

The drive gave me plenty of time to think about what an experience like this represented. When I began Once a Mountie, I hoped to give former Mountaineers a place to reflect on their lives and the journeys that began, or were forever changed, at Mansfield. I never imagined where those journeys might take me.

That morning, Mansfield was giving me an opportunity of my own: the chance to sit across from one of the great players in the history of its baseball program, listen to where life had taken him and do something I have come to truly love, helping people share the experiences, relationships and moments that shaped who they became.

In a way, that is part of what makes Mansfield special. Opportunity does not always look the same from one generation to the next. For Probst, it once meant the chance to put on a Mountaineer uniform and pursue professional baseball. For me on that August 28th morning, it meant getting in the car, making the drive and having the privilege of sitting down with a Mansfield great and helping share the life that followed.

Mansfield Director of Athletics Andrew Petko met me there, equally interested in seeing Probst's operation firsthand.

Before the interview began, Probst walked us through the warehouse, the place where North American Trapper products come to life. Shelves lined with products and the unmistakable workings of the outdoor industry surrounded us. It offered a glimpse of the other side of Alan Probst before we ever sat down to talk about the baseball player.

Then we started the interview.

It did not take long to understand that baseball and the outdoors were never completely separate chapters of his life.

Long before professional baseball, another part of Probst's identity mattered just as deeply.

That passion came from his family, especially Charles.

"We were always in the woods, whether it was hunting, fishing or trapping," Probst said. "My dad completely instilled that passion in me."

Even while living in Florida and playing professionally, Probst returned to Pennsylvania around Thanksgiving whenever possible to hunt, fish and trap with his father.

He called those trips "getting my fix."

When baseball ended, that other part of his identity was waiting.

Probst had always possessed an entrepreneurial side. After pursuing business opportunities in Florida, he returned to Pennsylvania in 2003 and began building a career centered around the outdoors.

More than two decades later, that career has become North American Trapper and a life spent working with farmers, ranchers, hunters and homeowners on responsible wildlife management while promoting trapping, conservation and outdoor traditions.

Probst can laugh at how different that world looks from professional baseball.

"Here we are 20-some years later," he joked as we sat in his warehouse, "and you're standing in my warehouse smelling skunk urine and coyote glands."

It sounds like an unlikely next chapter for a former professional catcher.

For Probst, it makes perfect sense.

His Mansfield education was rooted in biochemistry and fisheries science. He had chosen the academic path in part because even as a young man, he knew he was unlikely to be happy spending his life confined to a cubicle.

He could not have predicted exactly how his education, the outdoors and his future career would eventually intersect.

His television work later provided opportunities to reconnect directly with Mansfield's fisheries program. Probst dedicated programming to the department and returned to film projects involving fisheries work, field education and conservation.

"What it really comes down to is the home feeling, the hometown atmosphere that I still have with Mansfield," Probst said. "I loved Mansfield. It's part of who I am. It's part of what made me who I am today, what I learned there and the friendships I cultivated."

Today, the outdoor legacy handed from father to son continues in another form.

The Charles Probst Memorial Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization created to honor Charles' life and passion for the outdoors, supports education, conservation and participation in outdoor traditions.

Its work has included outdoor education scholarships, hunter-safety initiatives and conservation projects. The fund has supported a standing telescope at Little Pine State Park, scholarships to FTA Trapper's College and equipment for Pennsylvania Game Commission Hunter Safety participants.

In 2026, that mission came back to Mansfield.

The Charles Probst Memorial Fund is awarding a $3,000 scholarship through the Mountaineer Foundation for a Mansfield student, bringing together Charles' legacy, Alan's own experience and a place that has remained part of the Probst story for decades.

The connection is difficult to miss.

Mansfield once gave Alan Probst an opportunity. Now, in his father's name, he is helping provide one for somebody else.

An Honor Greater Than Himself

In 2023, Probst returned to Mansfield to be inducted into the Mansfield Athletic Hall of Fame.

That was not the first time Mansfield baseball had recognized what Probst represented beyond the numbers.

In 2017, Probst became the inaugural inductee into the Mansfield Baseball Legacy Club, an honor created to recognize former players who embody the qualities of a Mountaineer baseball player through character, scholarship, culture and service. Each Legacy Club honoree is also connected to a current Mountaineer, who wears the inductee's former number in recognition of the legacy left behind.

By then, recognition meant something different than it might have earlier in his life.

Probst had spent decades moving farther away from measuring himself by batting averages, awards and records, and closer toward understanding the people responsible for helping him achieve them.

No one mattered more than his father.

During Probst's playing career, handwritten three-by-five index cards would arrive in the mail from Charles every week or two.

They were not long letters. They were short reminders.

Work hard. Stay focused. Keep moving forward.

"They were these little sayings that kept me in the right mindset and kept me working hard when there were times you maybe wanted to quit," Probst said.

That is why Probst's Hall of Fame induction was about more than seeing his own picture placed on a wall.

It gave him another opportunity to honor the father who had been behind him through all of it.

The night also changed the way Probst looked at the Hall itself.

He saw former Mountaineers he knew personally. He knew some of their stories, their struggles and the amount of work represented by the photographs surrounding his.

"When you see everybody else who has been inducted and you know some of those people personally, you start to understand the honor," Probst said. "You're being recognized for the hard work and dedication it took to get your picture on that wall."

It was another wall at Mansfield.

As a teenager, Probst had looked at one and imagined where baseball might take him.

Decades later, he looked at another and thought about everyone who helped him get there.

Still Giving Back

There would have been an easy way for Probst's Mansfield story to end.

He could have graduated, played professional baseball, built a successful life and allowed those years to become memories.

He never did.

"The friendships, the professors, the good times, the bad times, the successes, the failures," Probst said. "There's not one thing that stands out. It's everything associated with my time there that continues to draw me back."

That connection includes Mansfield baseball.

Probst has taken an active role in helping get The Mountie Club off the ground, an alumni-driven effort aimed at reconnecting generations of Mansfield baseball players and strengthening support for today's program.

For Probst, the people involved make that effort personal.

Among them is Fausnaught, the former roommate and teammate he still describes as the driving force behind the 1992 national runner-up team. Jason Manwaring has helped bring the 2000s era of Mansfield baseball alumni back into the fold.

And then there is Steve "Mr. Mansfield" McCloskey.

Few nicknames have ever fit a person more naturally.

In a place where names, stories and relationships matter, McCloskey has spent a lifetime making sure they are not forgotten. For nearly three decades inside Mansfield Athletics and long after his retirement, he has been a keeper of Mountaineer history, a mentor to generations of students and young professionals, and a connection point for countless athletes whose relationship with Mansfield did not end when their eligibility did.

To generations of Mountaineers, "Mr. Mansfield" is more than a nickname. It reflects the place McCloskey will forever hold in the lives of so many people who have called Mansfield home.

Probst is now part of that larger effort to connect the past with what comes next.

The point is not simply to gather former players and tell stories about how good Mansfield baseball once was. It is to make that history useful, reconnect people, support the athletes wearing the uniform today and create conditions where Mansfield baseball can build something new without forgetting what made the program special in the first place.

Probst believes modern college baseball requires investment. Recruiting is different. The transfer portal has changed roster building. Facilities and resources matter when a student-athlete is deciding among multiple programs.

But money alone cannot recreate what Probst remembers.

Culture matters.

So does accountability.

"You have to recognize where you can improve, and then you have to build the culture," Probst said. "When players hold themselves and each other accountable, that lays a foundation that can carry you to bigger and better things."

It is the same principle Probst learned from Hillson more than three decades ago.

And there is something fitting about Probst and Fausnaught finding themselves together in this chapter.

They were roommates, teammates and part of a baseball family.

More than 30 years later, the connection to that family remains.

What Mansfield Really Gave Him

There are plenty of numbers that can be used to tell Alan Probst's story.

A .454 career batting average. A .479 season. First Team All-American. NCAA national runner-up. Major League draft pick. Ten professional seasons. Four years at Triple-A. Hall of Famer.

But none of those numbers answer the question of what Mansfield ultimately gave him.

"Mansfield took me as a young boy and started my progression into becoming a man," Probst said.

That progression included responsibility, commitment, self-awareness and learning how to live with both success and failure.

Those are the parts of college that never appear in a record book.

For Probst, reminders of those years still exist almost everywhere when he returns.

The smell inside Decker Gymnasium can send his mind back to 6 a.m. workouts and ground balls bouncing off the gym floor. There is the road climbing toward Shaute Field. There is his name on the wall. There are memories of running through a Pennsylvania winter with Tim Fenton.

"There's not an inch of Mansfield, the university, the town or the outskirts, where I don't have some memory of the value of that community and what I experienced there," Probst said.

That may be the part of Mansfield that is hardest to explain to someone who has never experienced it.

It is a small place capable of leaving a remarkably large imprint.

Mansfield cannot promise every student Alan Probst's journey. It cannot promise an All-America award, a national championship game or a professional baseball contract.

What it can provide is an opportunity.

The opportunity to compete and learn. To fail and get back up. To find mentors, teammates and friends who may still matter decades later. To discover something in yourself that perhaps even you did not completely know was there.

For Probst, one opportunity became professional baseball. It became an education, teammates who became family and lessons that followed him far beyond the baseball field. Eventually, it also became the foundation for a career built around a second passion first handed down by his father.

And with age, Probst's definition of accomplishment changed.

Today, when asked what he is most proud of, he does not begin with baseball.

He begins with his son, Hunter.

"I'm most proud of being a father to my son," Probst said. "That's my favorite job."

Hunter Probst enters his sophomore season with the Piedmont University men's golf program after a decorated career at Stroudsburg High School that included four trips to the PIAA State Championships and back-to-back Eastern Pennsylvania Conference individual titles.

Alan's own calendar rarely stands still. There is North American Trapper to manage, a weekly television series to host and outdoor expos and speaking engagements that can take him far from home.

But Probst told me there is one commitment that does not move on the calendar.

If Hunter has a golf match, his father plans to be there, regardless of where it is.

For a man whose own father showed up through the victories, disappointments, professional contracts and everything in between, that priority makes sense.

"And on the other side of that is the value of my dad being proud of me as his son," Probst said.

There is a straight line connecting those generations.

Charles introduced his son to the outdoors, mailed him index cards when he needed encouragement and watched proudly as the catcher from Mansfield fought his way through professional baseball.

Alan is now giving Hunter that same kind of presence, support and opportunity.

The Charles Probst Memorial Fund carries his father's outdoor legacy forward by opening doors for others. His work with Mansfield baseball helps keep generations of Mountaineers connected to the program that once opened a door for him. And a scholarship in Charles' name will give another Mansfield student a chance to begin a journey of their own.

When Probst was asked how he hoped people would remember him beyond baseball, his answer ultimately came down to something much simpler than any statistic.

A good father.

A good son.

Someone who tried to give other people opportunities like the ones he had been given.

Maybe that is the best way to understand the Alan Probst story.

He first arrived at Mansfield and stared at a wall filled with names.

He saw possibility.

Mansfield gave him a chance to pursue it, and Probst took that chance all the way to a national championship game and professional baseball.

But somewhere along the way, Mansfield gave him something larger than the dream that originally brought him there.

It gave him people, lessons and a place that, more than three decades later, can still feel like home.

Most importantly, it showed him what an opportunity can become when someone is willing to make the most of it.

Alan Probst never forgot the opportunity Mansfield gave him.

Now he is helping make sure the opportunity does not stop with him.

Once a Mountie, Always a Mountie.