Helping Build a Championship Culture

By: D. Scott Fritchen

To understand Trumain Carroll, it's perhaps best to start with the photo. There's Trumain, wife Jarne, and son Deuce, standing together on a field of confetti at AT&T Stadium. Kansas State has just beaten No. 3 TCU, 31-28, in one of the most thrilling Big 12 Championship games in history, and there's no holding back — it's all smiles.

"That Big 12 Championship, that is honestly the proudest moment I've had in my coaching career," Carroll says. "Everybody in the world doubted this team and they continued to believe in each other, believe in the process, believe in the staff, and everybody came together and put them into the best situations possible, and it came to life on December 3."

Carroll, or "Coach Tru," is the Director of Strength and Conditioning for Football at K-State. A 17-year veteran of the strength and conditioning field, Carroll is one game away from completing his second season on staff under head coach Chris Klieman.

An Oklahoma State defensive end from 2001-05, Carroll previously worked as either assistant strength and conditioning coach or director of strength and conditioning at Oklahoma State (2006-08), Missouri-Kansas City (2008-11), South Carolina State (2011-12), Oklahoma State (2013-14), SMU (2015-17), Arkansas (2018-19) and South Florida (2020). He earned his Master Strength and Conditioning Certification in May 2020.

Carroll has played an integral part in helping establish the winning culture that has helped the Wildcats reach one of their biggest games in program history.

No. 9 K-State, 10-3, prepares to face No. 5 Alabama, 10-2, in the Allstate Sugar Bowl at 11 a.m. on December 31 at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.

"To sit here and predict the score on December 31, I can't do that, but I can tell you every single day that these Kansas State Wildcats have an opportunity to prepare, they're going to put everything they have and more into that preparation," he says, "and we'll see where it lines up on December 31."

D. Scott Fritchen of K-State Sports Extra spoke with Coach Tru about the 2022 K-State football season and his strength and conditioning philosophy in this Q&A:

D. Scott Fritchen: When you hear the words "K-State football culture" what do you think about?
Trumain Carroll: Great question. First, sitting here now, we have a championship culture. That's exactly what it is. K-State is obviously led by Coach Klieman and the culture starts with him. Coach Snyder left a great foundation for us here, and Coach Klieman has really taken it and made it into its own — blue-collar, tough, hard-nosed. We have our four core values, which are discipline, commitment, toughness and selflessness. Those values go through every room in this building. They're not just his message and one department's message, no, it's everybody, and the most important part is the message in that locker room with those 114 guys now, and the message that they preach. It's their team. Being a player-led team is probably one of the greatest feelings that we have as coaches because it validates the fact that everything we're instilling into these young men are resonating within them, and they're holding each other to the standard that's been set. It's been a joy to see, especially with the way this year has played out.

Fritchen: What is the process to get to the point where it becomes a player-led team?
Carroll: It starts with identifying your leaders and who is already a great leader and who has potential leadership abilities and whose a guy who's really a magnet in that locker room — guys they are really drawn to as individuals. Once we identify them, then we have to obviously spend time with them. We have 21 guys on our roster that are a part of our leadership council. We meet with those guys every week throughout the course of the offseason. How that looks for us in particular with strength and conditioning is following Friday's workout – they workout Monday through Friday — we pile into this room or go outside and have a week of reflection — "What went well this week?" and "What could've made this week better?" I print out a sheet of questions that I hand to each leader every week and I made them answer those questions.

All I did was start the discussion of "How did you lead this week and how can you lead better next week?" They've found their own leadership style and they talk about it amongst their fellow leaders. Iron sharpens iron. Those guys really sharpen each other's leadership skills throughout the entire offseason, from winter to spring to summer, they meet every week and have these discussions. You saw it manifest and come to life throughout the season. They still have those discussions with Coach Klieman every Monday.

Fritchen: How much joy does that bring you to see this team win the Big 12 Championship and reach those goals?
Carroll: It gives everybody in our building great satisfaction and joy just because everybody is a part of pouring into these young men, and then seeing their results on the field every Saturday and in particularly on December 3, was just a joy for everybody in our program. To be honest, the culture extends to our staff just because this is the first staff I've been a part of — I've been coaching collegiately for 17 years now — and this is the first staff I've been a part of collectively, and not just strength staff, but I'm talking athletic training, nutrition, equipment, video, support staff as far as operations, and different things of that nature — we meet weekly to discuss everything going on within our program and to discuss players individually. To see all that come together as well as it has, I've never experienced that in my 17 years of doing it. When I say the culture is real amongst the player, it's also that culture within the staff. That Big 12 Championship, that is honestly the proudest moment I've had in my coaching career. Everybody in the world doubted this team and they continued to believe in each other, believe in the process, believe in the staff, and everybody came together and put them into the best situations possible, and it came to life on December 3.

Fritchen: It seems like whenever Coach Klieman speaks, he always mentions Coach Tru. I don't think that the average K-State fan really realizes everything that you mean to this program. Can you describe the energy and relationship that you have with Coach Klieman and how that translates to success?
Carroll: I'm humbled by that. When you talk about Coach Klieman, man, I love that guy because he gave me an opportunity coming out of a situation at South Florida where we didn't have very much success and we didn't really have success at Arkansas. The last real success was turning around the program as SMU. He really took a chance on not just me but my family. Going back to that whole interview process, when I was on the Zoom, I was on with my wife and our son, Deuce. He was on the phone with Mrs. Rhonda. That let me know automatically the type of person Coach Klieman was. Obviously, his resume speaks to what kind of coach he is. The two top winningest college coaches are about the square off in the Sugar Bowl. I'm happy to work for one of them.

As an employee of his, I consider him a great mentor and great friend and someone I continually learn from every single day. I want to do my absolute best to make sure everybody around us are doing their absolute best to make sure everything is aligned with his vision for our program. Essentially, that's my role and I take it and I embrace it, and I know that it's an important role, and I don't think I'm the most important person here. The kids are the most important people here. I'm ready to execute his vision, his assignment board, his message, and provide these student-athletes with the best experience that they can have during their time here at K-State. The constant is our staff, our support staff, and man, the collaboration here has been incredible. To say it's just me or our staff, no, it's a whole list, there are a lot of people and a lot of pieces involved in every decision that gets made. I just want to make sure we highlight that because this is a team effort.

Fritchen: You were hired February 24, 2021. What's the first thing you did?
Carroll: I dropped to my knees and prayed because without God none of this is possible. To be transparent, I didn't think I was the favorite for this opportunity, but when we think small and think less of ourselves, we don't know the plans God has laid out for us, so the first thing I did was pray. I remember going back to the interview, I didn't really have much time to prepare for it. I stayed up all night Friday night putting together my portfolio and presentation and pulled an all-nighter just because I was doing the winter training program at another place. So I didn't work on anything until I got off work on Friday because I didn't want to take away from any of the kids that I had the opportunity to train with there. I stayed up all night Friday through Saturday morning and finished up around 9 a.m. eastern time. I didn't have enough time to review my presentation. I had enough time to take a shower, put on my suit, circle up with my family and pray.

When I got on the interview, I don't remember what I said, because I feel like God took over in that moment. When we prayed, I distinctly remember saying, 'God, if this is for us, you're going to make it happen.' When I got the call from Coach Klieman, my wife and I immediately started praying and thanking God. That's all I can remember from that experience. I told Deuce, "We're getting ready to move to Kansas. We're going to be Wildcats!" Now Deuce understands what Wildcats are and he loves Deuce (Vaughn) because his name is Deuce. He's all in. He loves when they yell "Deuce" in the stands, because he says, "Why are they calling my name?" From my standpoint, I enjoy it because I'm living out my dream job, but it wouldn't truly be my dream job if it was a nightmare for my family.

The beauty of K-State and Manhattan is my family enjoys this opportunity as much as I do. That means more to me than job satisfaction. This is a family-oriented place. I get to take Deuce to school and drop him off and pick him up from school at least twice a week. Being in this profession as long as I have, that's not normal. I'm just so grateful for this opportunity and grateful for Coach Klieman and everything that he's done for my family, for our staff's family, and for the K-State family.

Fritchen: What is your strength and conditioning philosophy?
Carroll: It changes every single year. It's basically devised on needs assessment. What we're doing right now and around this time every year is we see within the landscape of college football that there's attrition every single year, whether that be with the transfer portal, guys coming in, guys going out, and guys graduating, and guys who potentially are coming back for the COVID year, and you have to assess all of that and what the roster is going to look like going into the offseason. Then we pair that with the things that you have to clear up from a surgery standpoint and from the wear and tear from the course of the season. We started this thing back in the beginning of August and we're not finishing until the end of the year. That being said, there's a lot that has happened within that timeframe. What worked last year won't necessarily work this year. Once we sit down and we see, "Who's going to be in that locker room from the time we start this off in January and what are our needs?"

Rewinding to February 24, 2021 when I was hired, speed was the No. 1 need. So we had to go all-in on developing speed at K-State. We went through that entire winter and had four guys that could run over 20 miles-per-hour. The reason we know that is because we took a step forward by purchasing the Catapult GPS. That was the first step. They made the investment because the Catapult GPS is not cheap. I'm here to tell you that I'm thankful that they made that investment because that helps us with our job and helps us to help the guys progress and keep them safe. In winter 2021, we had four guys who could run over 20 miles-per-hour. Fast forward to winter 2022 and we had 30 players run over 20 miles-per-hour and we had 11 guys run over 21 miles-per-hour. You're talking about going from four to 41 guys who can get over that 20 mile-per-hour marker. This past summer, and some of it is recruiting, but we had 66 players over 20 miles-per-hour, 31 players over 21 miles-per-hour, and four players over 22 miles-per-hour. That essentially was our focus in 2021.

Fast-forward to this year and we wanted to make sure the guys were able to move out in space and clean up some of the injuries we had to deal with over the 2021 season. We wanted to progress guys. Getting bigger this past winter was our biggest focus. We had 88 guys on the roster who put on 500 pounds of muscle in five weeks and three days of winter off-season training. That was our focus. Fast-forward to winter of 2023 and that's yet to be determined just because we have to see who we have coming back and who's coming in and what our needs are at that point. That's how we'll go about establishing our training philosophy.

Our training philosophy has to be adaptable because in this day in age, if you have a cookie-cutter program and we're going to do it this way year after year you're not going to sustain success. We created success with the 2022 Big 12 Championship but the only way to sustain it is to say, "OK, we did these things well to help us have success this year, and we're going to keep these things in, but these are areas we can drastically make improvements, and here's how we're going to go about it." We have to identify those things in order to move forward.

Fritchen: I can't help but notice that you're wearing a ballcap that reads, "Kansas State Offensive Line BEEF." These are guys who take off their shirts on the field after every game. These guys seem to be rockstars. How much fun is it to be involved with this group?
Carroll: It's fun to coach all the guys. We have a close group and a close locker room, but that corner of the locker room, that offensive line group, they're extremely close. They take a lot of pride in what they do and hold a high standard. Coach Riley, he's done a tremendous job not just in the way he coaches those guys. I'm out there learning from him. If you ever see me out in practice, nine times out of 10 I'm watching him coach those guys. I played defensive line at Oklahoma State, so obviously I was against those guys back when I played, but what I've been able to learn from Coach Riley, and how he holds those guys accountable, and more importantly how he loves those guys, it's been just a big factor in what you see when you watch those guys play on Saturdays. These guys don't want to let their brothers down. They want to keep Will Howard clean. They want to make sure the running backs have great holes. They want to make sure Adrian Martinez is able to pop out there and do what he does. It's been incredible to just watch those guys. I wear this hat with pride.

Fritchen: What is the biggest challenge within your role?
Carroll: I'm glad you asked that question. One of the greatest things is that administration support and alumni donors have really invested in the sports science and Catapult piece. To be completely transparent with you, we're about seven years behind the eight-ball on that. We're still playing catchup here at K-State from a sports science standpoint. Obviously, this place is built upon blue-collar work ethic, toughness, discipline, commitment, and being selfless, but now the game is transitioning to where the sports science piece is really making it to where you can sustain success just because you're making sure guys stay on the field.

One of the greatest challenges is 1) catching up to the other programs, not just in our league but around the country that have been doing this model for the last seven or eight years, and getting those pieces in place as far as technology and what's out there, and 2) having the staff in order to manage it. We spend a tremendous amount of time with the guys on the floor and on the field and in the rehab area and in nutrition, but just being able to have the hands and the people in the staff to be able to make sure that we have time to do the other big tasks also. That's the biggest key in order to sustain it.

We talk about winning the Big 12 Championship, and yeah, that's great, but that was December 3, 2022. What do we do moving forward to make sure we're there year after year after year. We have to get our logo in the College Football Playoff as well. Let's be honest, that's the next step. In order to take that next step, we need to evaluate what we've done and see where there's opportunities for us to do better, and we have to seize those opportunities, and not just close that gap, but we need to get out in front. We have a lot of momentum right now. Nobody thought we'd be sitting here as Big 12 Champions. How do we capitalize on this momentum that we've created and take the next step further? As the Big 12 continues to figure itself out, we know exactly who we are. How do we jump out in front of everybody else?

Fritchen: You're going to go up against a team in the Sugar Bowl that's had sustained great success over the years. What are your thoughts?
Carroll: We're ready. We're ready. I talk to the guys every single Monday and we have the strength staff give their synopsis on the game and give our message. Our message this entire year, I'll share it with you, I'm proud of these young men not because of what they do on Saturdays — the world is proud of them for what they do on Saturdays — but what they do on Monday through Friday. These dudes prepare diligently, they take care of their assignments, they take care of their things outside of this building and outside of football, and they stay humble and come to work each and every day with the mindset of "I'm going to give it everything I've got because I know separation comes with preparation." If you want to separate yourself to have success on Saturday, it comes with preparation throughout the course of the week. These guys have bought into that and have kept that this entire year.

To sit here and predict the score on December 31, I can't do that, but I can tell you every single day that these Kansas State Wildcats have an opportunity to prepare, they're going to put everything they have and more into that preparation, and we'll see where it lines up on December 31.

Fritchen: How excited are you for this opportunity to play against Alabama given the DNA of this K-State team?
Carroll: It's the most important game of the year because it's our next game. Speaking from a program standpoint, let's just face it, Alabama traditionally has had the success that we're trying to replicate year in and year out. To go out and have this opportunity to go up against one of the best, which has stood the test of time, is going to be a tremendous honor and a tremendous test for our program. I'm very excited about that opportunity because all year everybody has doubted us, so, man, it's only right for us to have one more game where everybody in the country is going to doubt us except for the people in our program.

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Will Howard

Adrian Martinez

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