summer has disappeared in a heartbeat.
7 of us here. sean snyder, bj finney, jake waters, tyler lockett, jon truman, ryan mueller. all quality young men, wonderful people.
D SCOTT FRITCHEN - looking at current team, after summer workouts, what kind of signs of optimism do you carry? my degree of optimism is negotiated daily. daily improvement, i'm happy, if we don't improve daily, i'm not. my major concern is always young people taking things for granted. i'm proud of so many of our YOUNGSTERS who have really invested themselves during the course of the summer. i would share a fairly high degree of optimism for today, but we'll see how tomorrow goes. i can't make projections for how good our team will be, i know what we're capable of. .... i didn't tell you anything did i?
"can you talk about how you've seen tyler lockett mature since coming to your program?" - tyler has matured a lot but he was mature when he came in. amazing family, dad/uncle. all three have been quality players but more importantly great people. tyler has taken the same road as aaron and kevin did, worked diligently at trying to be better people, players, students. tyler does exactly that he's an extremely hard worker. right now i'm so proud of his attitude, his value system, and part of that guides him to do anything and everything he can to get himself better each day. he's one of those guys who you leave the practice field you look out and tyler won't let the equipment guys leave because he's out there catching balls from the jugg machine.
"at the safety position, what did Ty Zim do for you, who are you counting on now?" - ya know ty was a QB in high school, father was his coach. ty was a starter as a redshirt freshman and really grew in the program, was very knowledgable, was a good director of traffic, quality leader, great value system. he always did the right things, tried to do the right htings, took on leadership roles. when i sway he was a good director of traffic he was one of those guys that made most of the calls for us. very valuable young guy.
"what kind of sense did you get from the team after you finished last year with the bowl win?" - ya know the hope would be we had learned lessons along the way. we were bad at the start, 2-4, and lost the very first ballgame to a very fine NDSU game but we were supposed to win. the result of that game was brought forth by taking things for granted, opponent for granted, etc. i thought the way that our young people finished the season allowed them to understand the value of not taking anything for granted, because they certainly didn't toward the end of the season. we talked about it a lot. and probably the period of time that i was most proud was the approach that they took for our preparation for the bowl game. i cannot recall a bowl prep that was as pleasing as last year's was. i was extemely happy and proud. very hopefuly that it would carry over to workouts, spring, summer. remains to be seen. i think during the course of the summer we've been pretty good.
D SCOTT FRITCHEN " in his first season Jake Waters recorded the highest passing rating for a non senior. what signs do you have for jake's progress into his senior season?" - jake has a great VALUE SYSTEM, works diligently to improve in LIFE and on the FOOTBALL FIELD. he had little time in the program last year, it was a new environment. as he has had more time he got better, finished the season extremely well. confidence has grown immensely. he's always going to do everything he can, the little extra. there's always the concern that since he's feeling confident that we start taking him for granted, but i'm confident that he has done anything and everything he can to help himself improve, confident he can continue.
"since you started at k-state, conference has had 48 other coaches, does that make you feel old? how do you fight against the age thing and keep coaching at such a high level?" - i don't pay much attention to the turnover ratio, there's a variety of reasons for that. the age factor, i can't negotiate that, it is what it is, i'm as old as time. probably the significant thing for me when i was a young coach started off at high school level and moved to a lot of diffferent places and i was always one of those coaches that wanted to be some other place than where i was, a level above. that went on for a considerable period of time. i was half in and half out. consequently i was not a very good coach, probably not a good person. i learned about 30 years ago that i needed to do it a little differently. my decision was simply put "be where you are." i chose to do that, that allowed me to become better at the things i was doing, never looked to move on, that wasn't significant to me, i valued where i was, where my family was, that's the approach i've taken and that's why i'm not one of those 48 you're talking about.
"what kkind of advice would you give charlie strong in his relation to his fanbase? he's said some things that irritated the fanbase." - i think the important thing is just be who you are. care about people, and i think charlie does. and if he cares about people, i think things will work out just fine.
