Kansas State University Athletics
SE: Not Your Average Student-Athlete
Mar 04, 2020 | Volleyball, Sports Extra
Story by Corbin McGuire, Photos by Scott Weaver
Brynn Carlson is not your average college student. Let alone, student-athlete.
Carlson is a triple-major, pursuing bachelor’s degrees in dietetics, kinesiology, and nutrition and kinesiology. K-State volleyball’s redshirt junior will finish all three majors next fall, the first semester of her fourth year at K-State. She’s also concurrently working on her master’s degree in dietetics.
A 4.0 student, Carlson has been a member of a member of K-State’s honors program since the spring of 2017 and a member of Kappa Omicron Nu National Honor Society — specific to Health and Human Sciences — since that fall.
Just wait, there’s more.
She’s part of the university’s student government association (SGA) and sits on the executive board of K-State Athletics’ Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC). The latter earned her a position on Division I SAAC as the Big 12 Conference’s representative — a prestigious position in the student-athlete governance realm. Because of this position, she spent three days in January in Anaheim, California, where the annual NCAA Convention was held.
She’s a sister to three younger brothers, one sister and a different kind of sister to more than 100 women as a member of the sorority Alpha Delta Pi. She’s K-State volleyball’s first Academic All-American since 2010. She’s an ambassador and mentor. Oh, and she led her team in kills and points last season.
I know what you’re thinking: How?
And there are a lot of different answers to that question.
She’s a high achiever but humble. She’s driven but down to Earth. She’s Type A but mature enough to work through some of her personality’s drawbacks.
It’s nature and nurture working together. It’s habitual without complacency. It’s failing with grace, faith and forgiveness. It’s an identity far beyond any one area of her life.
“The sky’s the limit,” Dr. Sara Rosenkranz, associate professor at K-State, said of Carlson. “Every door is open. Every possibility is there for her.”
***
Carlson can’t really pinpoint when or where her pride in academics originated. In her mind, it’s always been there. As she thought about it more, though, she said it’s tied to something bigger, namely a desire to “achieve at the highest level in all aspects of life,” from the volleyball floor to the classroom.
A Minnesota native, Carlson was placed in a gifted program from third grade to fifth grade. She said, “That atmosphere really pushed me to be at my best at all times from an academic perspective. I think that’s probably what jumpstarted it.”
She added: “But, I’ve just intrinsically always really cared about my grades and always wanted to do my best. I think I’m someone who has really high goals for myself in all aspects of my life. So, for me, a 4.0 — that’s what I want. I’m going to do everything that I can to achieve that.”
Like anyone, her parents played a significantly positive role in this. Marc, her father who played basketball at Iowa State, is the CIO of Land O’Lakes. Sheri, a hall of fame volleyball player at St. Cloud State, now stays at home but used to be a health and physical education teacher. Carlson said they laid the groundwork for her success.
“They definitely pushed me toward academics success when I was younger, especially because they saw that I had that ability within me,” Carlson said. “They knew that if I wasn’t getting good grades, it wasn’t because I wasn’t understanding, or because I was working as hard as I could and I just wasn’t doing well because it was hard for me. It was just because maybe I was being lazy or I wasn’t putting in my best effort.”
So, the opposite became a habit.
Carlson created a drive that her best was the only outcome, that more and better were always options, that she was the only thing that could limit her life’s possibilities. Those roots planted Carlson on a path to become a 4.0 triple major student-athlete who’s also working on a master’s degree.
Now, however, Carlson said she’s reversed roles with her parents. They’re the ones cautioning her to pump the brakes, to ease up and forgive herself when the exact outcome she wants does not come to fruition.
“They’re obviously really proud of me and super excited about this but they also are telling me it’s OK to work as hard as you can and not get the grade that you want. That’s something I think I have grown in since I got to college,” she said. “But it’s kind of funny things have changed and how they, maybe, pushed me harder when I was younger and now I’m pushing myself harder and they’re kind of telling me, ‘You can lay off a little bit. It’s OK if you’re not getting 100 percent on every test.’ I think I’ve taken their advice and given myself a little more grace on some things.”
Carlson, when asked about an academic failure she’s learned from, surprisingly named two. Though, her definition of failure is much different than most.
Her first example was an elective class a few semesters back. Carlson said she “really struggled with it.” Her 4.0 looked in serious danger. So, she went in and talked to the professor — over and over. They went over exams, her answers and she talked through her reasoning for them. Ultimately, she earned extra points back through this commitment and left with an A. But the grade is not what she values now.
“I think that experience taught me a lot about the value of relationships with professors. Regardless of whether or not I would have gotten an A in that class wasn’t what was important,” she said. “Obviously, I was excited that I was able to, but I have a relationship with that professor now that I wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t active and going in and trying to talk to him and learning, ‘What do I need to fix? How do I need to study differently? How can I read these questions in order to interpret them better?’ Things like that. That really taught me the value of going in for office hours, talking with professors, building relationships.
“That was like three semesters ago and I still see this professor all the time. He’s great. I’ve taken his class again. I really enjoy working with him and I think that’s because we both were able to invest in time in making a relationship.”
Her other academic comeback occurred last summer. Carlson was in biochemistry during a summer that included some personal travel, a foreign tour with K-State to Brazil and a trip to Anaheim to train with the USA Volleyball's Collegiate National Team.
She took her first biochemistry test at 11 p.m. in a “random hotel room” in Anaheim.
“I completely bombed that test. I bombed it so hard,” she said. “I have never failed a test so hard in my life.”
The curve on the test gave her a chance to fight back to an A by summer’s end, which she did through sheer determination. Carlson said she basically locked herself in tutor rooms at the Student-Athlete Enhancement Center inside the Vanier Family Football Complex. She ran the ink dry on white erase markers.
Carlson walked away with another A and a few key lessons.
The first: Invest time early, especially in upper-level classes. The second: “Anyone can bounce back from a bad grade or a bad test.” Lastly: Self-forgiveness.
“I just think my mindset kind of shifted from something like that being the end of the world to it being it’s just a test, it’s one thing,” she said, “and I can move onto the next thing and do well and bounce back from it.”
***
At first, it was dietetics. Then, it was dietetics and kinesiology — a combination of her academic passion and love of sports. Then, it was dietetics, kinesiology, and nutrition and kinesiology — the last degree added only one more class to her plan. Lastly, it was all three in concurrence with pursuing a master’s degree in dietetics, a competitive program at K-State that Carlson was recently accepted into.
Carlson’s collection of majors followed what Lindsay Larson, her academic advisor on campus, learned about K-State’s top outside hitter the first time they met. She’s always looking to challenge herself and add to her college experience.
“She just had such a cool vision for what she wanted to accomplish and what she knew she was capable of,” Larson said, “but, all the while, being one of the humblest people that I’ve had the opportunity to work with.”
From the start, Carlson’s vision for her time in college went beyond the scope of practice, games and classes. She wanted more out of it.
At Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, Carlson said she was “super involved.” Of her closest high school friends, she said none of them are college student-athletes.
“I really valued the relationships that I built, the experiences that I had, the things I got to do through being involved in things outside of sports when I was in high school,” she said. “So, I knew that I needed to do that in college also to have the most full experience and to really feel like I was participating in the environment of K-State.”
From the time Carlson stepped onto K-State’s limestone-laden campus, she started finding ways to get involved.
Carlson wrote communication materials for her college for about a year. She spent two years on the College of Health and Human Sciences College Council. She still sits on the Kappa Omicron Nu National Board of Directors. She’s an ambassador for the university’s honors program, as well as an SGA senator who sits on the Travel Allocations Committee and serves as her college’s caucus leader. Last spring, she was initiated into the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.
All of this, on top of being a committed teammate and involved student-athlete. Carlson went on a Cats Across Continents trip in 2018 to the Dominican Republic. She participates in many of the K-State SAAC community service initiatives like National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Special Olympics, Cats in the Classroom, Adopt a Family and Cats for Cans.
“A lot of times, student-athletes, especially if they are really committed to their academics, they don’t carve out time to get as involved outside of those two arenas. It’s been really impressive, for me, to see her get outside of that also and really find ways to engage with campus,” Larson said. “I’ve been really impressed with how she’s been able to work that in also on top of three majors, on top of being an exceptional athlete, being such a dedicated student, such a dedicated teammate. I’ve been so impressed how she’s really become even more involved on campus than even I thought she would be able to. Sometimes I look at it and I’m, like, ‘Do you sleep? I don’t know how you fit it all in.”
Shawna Jordan, assistant dean and assistant professor within K-State’s College of Health and Human Sciences, shared a similar take on Carlson.
“She has always asked of ways to be involved and really have opportunities to grow in her leadership, in her involvement. She just really wanted to learn more about campus and ways to connect. Honestly, in my opinion, she wants to embrace, really, that bridge of being a student-athlete with truly getting to experience college as a student,” Jordan said. “As a faculty member, advisor, we don’t get to work with these types of students very often, but when they cross your paths, the word that comes to mind is you’re just truly in awe of her goals, what she’s wanting to do and really looking at how she can combine all her passions and her goal of being a sports dietician and still having that best college experience. Really, we joke because every time we meet, we talk about adding another major, adding some other classes, but it’s really because of what her interests are and what her goals are.
“What I love about it is she sees no limitations for herself. She only sees opportunities and goals that she puts out there that she can strive to get to.”
***
All of this still begs the question: How does she do it? How does she successfully juggle everything?
Again, there are several answers.
The obvious ones: She’s organized, prioritizes well and works hard. Carlson said her Google calendar and planner “rule my life.” Within it, she’s able to logistically prioritize each week by what’s most important to her, starting with church, followed by school and volleyball, with everything else fitting in from there.
Like a pyramid, her priorities are built from the bottom up. She said her faith has allowed her to build up the rest.
“Honestly, my relationship with God and being involved in my church has been the thing that’s grounded me throughout college and really given me the ability to be involved in so many things because I’ve known that it’s what I’m meant to do,” she said. “I just think when things are crazy and up and down and you’re winning and losing and school’s swirling and there’s so much going on, it’s been great to have something that’s constant, never changing. That’s what my relationship with Jesus and my involvement in my church has provided me, a home away from home, and I’ve really enjoyed that.”
Carlson was also quick to point out how many people she has in her corner. Without them, she would not be in her current position.
Larson, Carlson said, has been a “blessing” as an academic counselor. Larson put together all the long-range planning and worked out the logistics that go into pursuing three majors. Larson’s husband, Christian, has also been vital. He is an instructor and academic advisor in the Department of Kinesiology who Carlson has taken multiple classes from. Carlson also bragged on Jordan, who’s walked her through every opportunity she wanted to seek out.
“Between the three of them, they’re my little dream team. They get everything done for me and really help me figure out a way to maximize my time,” Carlson said. “I think one thing I wanted to do was when I came into college…I was, like, ‘If I’m getting my college paid for, I’m going to get my college paid for. I’m going to milk every drop out of it, everything I can get out of it and really try to maximize the opportunity I’ve been given.’ They’ve really done a great job of helping me with that and navigating all the little twists and turns.”
Another critical figure in all of this, Carlson said, is her head coach, Suzie Fritz. Because of Fritz’s flexibility and the trust Carlson has earned from her head coach, Carlson has experienced more than the average student-athlete.
“I think she’s allowed me to do it because I have, slowly, over time, proven that I can handle volleyball and I can handle school and if I add other things, it’s not going to take away from those two things. She’s also allowed me to have the class schedule that I want to have. At this point, I’m the one who dictates the practice schedule,” Carlson said, with a laugh. “Suzie’s been super understanding of that and really allowed me to push myself academically because she’s been flexible with our schedule. So, I’m super thankful for that because if she wasn’t willing to do that, I would be getting probably one degree.”
But here Carlson stands: A 4.0 triple major student-athlete and student senator. Busy, but happy. Set up for future success, yet grounded in the present.
“She’s incredible,” Larson said. “She’s an excellent representative of K-State, just as a student, as an athlete, all the above, it’s been an absolute joy to work with her.”
“She’s a great representation of not only College of Health and Human Sciences,” added Jordan, “but I think K-State as a whole.”