Senior Leadership Guides Cats to Special Season
Dec 01, 2022 | Football, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman, whose team is a virtual lock for its first New Year's Six Bowl, has the 10th-ranked Wildcats humming as they near the program's first Big 12 Championship Game in 19 years.
But ask 55-year-old Klieman the key to success for K-State, 8-3 overall and 7-2 in the Big 12, and he points in particular to a handful of players in the Wildcats' locker room.
"It's the senior leadership — period," Klieman says.
K-State has a 28-member senior class, including six super-seniors, and four seniors who among those players named team captains prior to the season — nose tackle Eli Huggins, linebacker Daniel Green, wide receiver Kade Warner and quarterback Adrian Martinez — while other seniors help form the team's leadership council.
A few seniors in this 2022 class were instrumental in helping devise the program's four core values — "Discipline," "Commitment," "Toughness," and "Be Selfless" — in January 2021 following a challenging 2020 season hampered by the COVID pandemic.
A majority of current seniors were there to help the Wildcats to a 42-20 win over LSU in the Texas Bowl, which spring-boarded the Wildcats to their current perch as the second-place team in the Big 12.
K-State and TCU, 12-0 and 9-0, will decide the Big 12 Championship in Saturday's 11 a.m. kickoff at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
"It's about how (the seniors) handled coming off a bowl win, which brings energy to the program, to how they handled the winter, to how they handled the spring and summer — they've been building up to the season," Klieman says. "We had high expectations in that locker room and had some difficult times but found ways to be successful at the critical moments to win some big-time games.
"I'm excited for these guys to have this opportunity."
Huggins, a native of Cumming, Georgia, who has started in 31 consecutive games, the most of any defensive player for the Wildcats, remembers the road to get to this point.
"Throughout my time here, we've had a ton of good leaders and good seniors," Huggins says. "It takes years to build a culture to where it is now and I'm sure it's going to continue to improve down the road. We have six captains and multiple other guys who could probably be captains on this team. When you have guys like that on this team it makes it so much easier to be successful."
Klieman replaced Hall-of-Famer Bill Snyder following his retirement after the 2018 season. Klieman, who previously led North Dakota State to four FCS national titles in five years, owns the fourth-highest winning percentage (.759) among active FBS head coaches with a minimum of 10 seasons of head coaching experience, trailing Clemson's Dabo Swinney (.808), Alabama's Nick Saban (.801) and James Madison's Curt Cignetti (.761).
"The fact that (current seniors) went through a coaching change is never easy and especially when it was a legacy like Coach Snyder to learning a new way of doing things, and it will be successful if you buy into the new way, and credit those guys that bought in," Klieman says. "There's a lot of guys that didn't fit or buy in or whatever, that are no longer with our program because they chose another route.
"These guys stuck with us. I'm excited because there were some trying times in 2020 for sure, and you guys saw it and I lived it, but for those guys to stay the course together and help each other through those times, that's the culmination I'd say, it's more for those old kids."
Junior running back Deuce Vaughn, also a team captain, appreciates the leadership of the senior class.
"The player-led culture that we have right now was put into place as a standard and when I first got here some of these seniors were sophomores or juniors and now as seniors, they know exactly how Coach Klieman wants this program run," Vaughn says. "They understand how to be successful. I've learned from them how to be successful. It's a well-oiled machine. Everybody is in line to do things the way we should do it.
"I've seen the player-led culture grow from when I first got here to now and it's gotten better every single year I've been here, and this is by far the best since I've been here. The cohesiveness and the way everybody works together and loves each other and plays for each other is why we've been so successful to this point."
K-State has parlayed last season's 8-5 mark into nine victories this season and with the possibility of more to come. Following the Big 12 title game, the Wildcats will learn their bowl destination on Sunday.
"We're still building our program here," Klieman says. "This is a good step to be where we're at, but we still have in my mind a ways to go to sustain that. But for the guys who are in their last year, with what they've gone through between the coaching change to the 2020 pandemic to where we are at now, it's a remarkable feat."
Kansas State head coach Chris Klieman, whose team is a virtual lock for its first New Year's Six Bowl, has the 10th-ranked Wildcats humming as they near the program's first Big 12 Championship Game in 19 years.
But ask 55-year-old Klieman the key to success for K-State, 8-3 overall and 7-2 in the Big 12, and he points in particular to a handful of players in the Wildcats' locker room.
"It's the senior leadership — period," Klieman says.
K-State has a 28-member senior class, including six super-seniors, and four seniors who among those players named team captains prior to the season — nose tackle Eli Huggins, linebacker Daniel Green, wide receiver Kade Warner and quarterback Adrian Martinez — while other seniors help form the team's leadership council.
A few seniors in this 2022 class were instrumental in helping devise the program's four core values — "Discipline," "Commitment," "Toughness," and "Be Selfless" — in January 2021 following a challenging 2020 season hampered by the COVID pandemic.
A majority of current seniors were there to help the Wildcats to a 42-20 win over LSU in the Texas Bowl, which spring-boarded the Wildcats to their current perch as the second-place team in the Big 12.
K-State and TCU, 12-0 and 9-0, will decide the Big 12 Championship in Saturday's 11 a.m. kickoff at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
"It's about how (the seniors) handled coming off a bowl win, which brings energy to the program, to how they handled the winter, to how they handled the spring and summer — they've been building up to the season," Klieman says. "We had high expectations in that locker room and had some difficult times but found ways to be successful at the critical moments to win some big-time games.
"I'm excited for these guys to have this opportunity."
Huggins, a native of Cumming, Georgia, who has started in 31 consecutive games, the most of any defensive player for the Wildcats, remembers the road to get to this point.
"Throughout my time here, we've had a ton of good leaders and good seniors," Huggins says. "It takes years to build a culture to where it is now and I'm sure it's going to continue to improve down the road. We have six captains and multiple other guys who could probably be captains on this team. When you have guys like that on this team it makes it so much easier to be successful."
Klieman replaced Hall-of-Famer Bill Snyder following his retirement after the 2018 season. Klieman, who previously led North Dakota State to four FCS national titles in five years, owns the fourth-highest winning percentage (.759) among active FBS head coaches with a minimum of 10 seasons of head coaching experience, trailing Clemson's Dabo Swinney (.808), Alabama's Nick Saban (.801) and James Madison's Curt Cignetti (.761).
"The fact that (current seniors) went through a coaching change is never easy and especially when it was a legacy like Coach Snyder to learning a new way of doing things, and it will be successful if you buy into the new way, and credit those guys that bought in," Klieman says. "There's a lot of guys that didn't fit or buy in or whatever, that are no longer with our program because they chose another route.
"These guys stuck with us. I'm excited because there were some trying times in 2020 for sure, and you guys saw it and I lived it, but for those guys to stay the course together and help each other through those times, that's the culmination I'd say, it's more for those old kids."
Junior running back Deuce Vaughn, also a team captain, appreciates the leadership of the senior class.
"The player-led culture that we have right now was put into place as a standard and when I first got here some of these seniors were sophomores or juniors and now as seniors, they know exactly how Coach Klieman wants this program run," Vaughn says. "They understand how to be successful. I've learned from them how to be successful. It's a well-oiled machine. Everybody is in line to do things the way we should do it.
"I've seen the player-led culture grow from when I first got here to now and it's gotten better every single year I've been here, and this is by far the best since I've been here. The cohesiveness and the way everybody works together and loves each other and plays for each other is why we've been so successful to this point."
K-State has parlayed last season's 8-5 mark into nine victories this season and with the possibility of more to come. Following the Big 12 title game, the Wildcats will learn their bowl destination on Sunday.
"We're still building our program here," Klieman says. "This is a good step to be where we're at, but we still have in my mind a ways to go to sustain that. But for the guys who are in their last year, with what they've gone through between the coaching change to the 2020 pandemic to where we are at now, it's a remarkable feat."
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