Passion for sports bonds Mariners manager Scott Servais and daughter Jackie, a media official on Champions tour

Mariners manager Scott Servais was visibly harried.

It was a few hours before game time, and he just received word that his starting pitcher was not going to be able to pitch, and the team was scrambling to come up with a replacement.

“OK, but only two minutes,” Servais said, when asked if he could answer a couple of questions.

But the topic, his daughter Jackie, got the manager to loosen up immediately.

This was no longer a manager speaking, it was a proud dad.

He has reason to be. Jackie, 23, is working this week at the Boeing Classic at the Club at Snoqualmie Ridge, where she is handling media relations for PGA Tour Champions. The former college volleyball player began working for the tour about six months ago after finishing her master’s degree at Ole Miss.

She has used the energy and passion that drove her to succeed in volleyball in the field of sports PR.

“Jackie is very competitive,” Scott said. “She got into volleyball big time in high school and club and wanted to play in college, which she did. She wasn’t always the best player on her team, but she has a really good work ethic. And I think it’s paying off for her now in her real life.”

Jackie said she will end up working 20 of the 26 events on the Champions tour this year, but this one is special. She arrived a week early and has been staying with her parents in Bellevue, and going to a few Mariners games.

“This was going to be my home game,” said Jackie, who likes to joke that she got her athletic ability from her father and her academic prowess from her mother, Jill, who earned an English degree in three years at the University of Wisconsin.

Jackie, the middle child among three Servais siblings, played two years of volleyball at UNC Charlotte, but decided against playing her senior year after getting a summer internship with the Los Angeles Angels, and started to focus on her career.

She took a 10-month internship with the Carolina Panthers while completing her bachelor’s degree. Since then, she has also had internships with the Seahawks, and with Major League Baseball in New York.

“She’s always got a million irons in the fire,” Scott said.

The Panthers reached the Super Bowl the year she worked for them and each staff member was allowed to take a guest on the team’s charter plane to the game.

Jackie took her dad.

That’s symbolic of how close the family is. When Jackie went to Ole Miss to work on her master’s degree, she lived with younger sister Victoria, who turns 21 later this week. Victoria is majoring in accounting and was a cheerleader for the Rebels.

Tyler, 25, played baseball at Princeton and had a short career in the minor leagues. He is working for a startup tech company in Seattle.

“(Scott) just wants us to do what we are passionate about, and I am passionate about sports just like he is,” Jackie said about her father. “I think Scott was happy one of his kids decided to stay in it.”

Jackie, whose working base is Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., said her father has found his calling as a manager. She said it suits his strengths more than working in the front office, which he did with the Rangers and Angels before becoming the Mariners’ skipper after the 2015 season.

“He’s a players’ guy, and I don’t think he was able to shine and utilize that talent when he was in the front office and not interacting with the players as much,” Jackie said. “And now that he is, he is much more enjoyable to be around because he’s loving what he is doing. And if you’re loving what you are doing, you will be more fun to be around.”

During Scott’s first season with the Mariners, Jackie would watch tapes of her father’s news conferences and call him with advice.

“All of the kids did,” Scott said, joking that he “took it all in with a little bit of a filter.”

“They support you more than anybody, but they are always going to say different things to try and help you along,” Scott added. “Jackie is very vocal in her opinions. That’s just kind of her niche, and she has spent so much time in the media, and on the PR side of the thing.”

Jackie said she would tell her father to speak in complete sentences, “because I was thinking about the transcriptionist. I’ve had to transcribe millions of hours of press conferences, so I want to be considerate to those people. Or telling him not to say um every other word and that type of thing.”

She said her father has also learned to reel in his emotions in front of the media. Jackie said that is something she is trying to emulate as she said she is just as passionate and emotional as her father. She got to see the emotional side of her father firsthand when he was ejected from Monday night’s game against Houston.

It seems that Scott has a habit of getting kicked out of games when Jackie is watching, going back to his playing days.

“She has been there for a few (ejections),” he said. “One time as a player at the end of my career (and Jackie was about 8), I was playing in AAA in Colorado Springs. My wife brought the kids down and it might have been a Mother’s Day game, and I got kicked out of that one. For whatever reason, she has probably been to a few of those.”

But don’t be fooled by that. Both Scott and Jackie have jobs they love.

Jackie said the Champions tour players have been great to work with, and she is enjoying every part of the job, including the travel. She said her father, who loves golf (“he’s a good player, but he can’t putt”), sees it as a dream job.

“She’s getting a lot of experience doing it and she’s very young,” he said. “To get an opportunity to work for the PGA Tour and the Champions tour has been great for her, a lot of exposure and a lot of travel. She’s young, she’s single and she’s having a good time.”

Scott, meanwhile, is trying to keep the Mariners in the playoff race, and loving every minute of it,  according to Jackie.

“It’s his dream job, and to be able to see a parent live that inspires to me to pursue the things that I have always wanted,” she said.