Casey Alexander, sporting a lavender quarter-zip and a smile, grabbed the microphone on the 2026 Scott City Catbacker Nut Fry, and had the gang of a number of hundred Kansas State followers in stitches as Alexander opened his first style of western Kansas with quick-wit one-liners, revealing a jovial but laid-back character positive to win over audiences all through the Sunflower State.
Soon after, Alexander, who was employed as Okay-State males’s basketball head coach in March, took on a extra critical tone, expressing gratitude after the previous head coach at Belmont, one among simply 4 head coaches in school basketball to win not less than 20 video games in 10 straight years, will get his first alternative to information a Power 4 program.
“I’ve met great K-Staters everywhere,” Alexander mentioned. “It already feels like home. I’m proud to be here and to be one of you. It’s a special thing for me.”
Intrigue surrounds Alexander’s first season at Okay-State, as Alexander was met with only one returning Okay-State participant from this previous season — sophomore guard Andrej Kostic — whereas the newly-assembled Okay-State teaching employees labored to put collectively a roster for the 2026-27 season.
“It’s rare to start a new job and take over a program and have one player on your team and you’re basically starting from nothing,” Alexander mentioned. “We received prepared for the switch portal to open, and we had been prepared to meet with the proper folks and undergo that course of. Getting to the end line and having a roster collectively occurred faster than we anticipated however by no means can we really feel like we sacrificed high quality so as to get to that time.
“I’m really excited about the roster that we have, and I’m looking forward to having those guys in front of you.”
Although there isn’t any bonafide headliner on his first roster, Alexander is understood for disciplined, environment friendly offenses that rating a variety of factors whereas specializing in teamwork — substances that helped him to win 166 video games and 4 convention titles within the final seven seasons, together with the 2026 Missouri Valley Conference Championship.
The inflow of latest gamers on roster comes as Okay-State coaches and employees additionally start the method of settling into the Little Apple over the summer time months.
“We worked really hard to identify players who fit how we play,” he mentioned. “We’re assured that we’re going to put an excellent roster collectively and have a profitable season, however we have now a variety of new faces and have not coached any of them. We have one returning participant and everybody else is new. We have 10 employees members shifting to Manhattan and only some of these guys have ever been to Manhattan earlier than.
We have 10 wives and 20-something youngsters who’ve by no means been to Manhattan, so there are a variety of unknowns.
“But I do feel like the roster that we constructed is full of guys that you’re going to love watching play. You’re going to love how hard they play, what kind of people they are, and they’ll represent western Kansas — tough minded, committed to each other, and they’ll do what it takes. It’ll be fun to watch, and at the same time it’s a group that’ll be very well connected and cares about each other and that cares about K-State like you do.”
Klein: ‘I have not found out how to put 26 hours right into a day but.’
Okay-State head coach Collin Klein criticized one rule that school soccer groups throughout the nation should take care of in fall camp forward of the 2026 season, whereas the previous 2012 Heisman Trophy finalist reiterated the tireless efforts to bulk up winter conditioning and spring exercises in bracing for what guidelines dictate shall be a lighter fall camp.
“You can only have eight padded practices in fall camp, which is crazy, because you’re going to play a whole season and you only put your shoulder pads on eight times? That’s crazy,” Klein mentioned. “So, within the spring the foundations are rather a lot lighter, so we had been in a position to have 12 practices of full pads, taking part in the sport of soccer such as you’re supposed to play it, as a result of the one manner you get higher at taking part in soccer is taking part in soccer the best way you play it in video games. That’s just a little little bit of an old-school mindset and old-school mentality, however it was essential for us to lay that basis essentially that that is how we play the sport of soccer right here. Our gamers responded to that and that was the enjoyable half.
“Yes, we were pushing them to their breaking point, but all the sudden that light bulb went on, and they said, ‘I got better.’ Guys are playing the best football they’ve played in their lives. They see it. That relationship growing into them and that light bulb coming on that when you invest and sacrifice and work really hard you get to reap the rewards and feel that benefit of that tangibly day in and day out. That’s contagious because that starts that competitive fire in each one of those players. Players are really smart. They know if you’re getting them better and that feeling is contagious.”
Klein mentioned that he made his debut on the 2010 Scott City Nut Fry. Little might anybody predict the journey to come for Klein and Okay-State as they loved 10- and 11-win seasons and at one level vaulted to No. 1 nationally within the College Football Playoff rankings.
Then Klein, the previous Okay-State offensive coordinator who guided the Wildcats to two of their high 10 seasons in offensive manufacturing in 2022 and 2023, returned to Okay-State as head coach in December after main a Texas A&M offense to success for 2 years within the powerful SEC.
Catch phrases akin to “New Old School” and “K-State Family” and “Living in Physicality” are discovered tastefully written on the purple and white balloons that greet guests and recruits and households to the Vanier Family Football Complex.
This is not only a new period. It’s a motion.
And it is a greeting to a constructing — and a brand new old-school world — constructed on excellence.
“The best part of spring was getting around the guys and getting the guys who believed in what we were doing and wanted to be here and making sure how we built the roster — we had a couple guys leave, but we had a lot of guys stay and believe in the vision in what we were trying to do and how we were presenting it, and I laid out the map of how we were going to do in the eight months leading up to the season,” Klein mentioned. “That began within the winter. We expanded the winter program and made it a full eight-week session, and we grinded these guys and pushed them to their breaking level. I informed them they want to discover it. That’s what actual soccer and actual carry is, is discovering your breaking level and shifting it ahead, after which shifting it ahead once more, as a result of how laborious you’ve gotten to play to play this sport again and again, that is a behavior, and that is constructed within the winter.
“Learning how to finish through the line sounds overly simplistic, but the simplicity of having to finish through the line and exactly what that means — we filmed every single rep in our winter conditioning program, and watched every single rep as a staff to show that it’s important and to communicate to them and show them and hold them accountable to, ‘This is how hard we play every single snap, and this is what it looks like, and this is what it doesn’t look like.’ That was the foundation to the whole spring. It doesn’t matter what play you call, what scheme you have, if you don’t make that a habit and make that who you are, you have no chance. So that was the first part of the foundation.”
As Klein and his teaching employees go ahead, Klein tipped his cap to the teaching legend who he performed for at Okay-State and who stays a mentor.
“I’m not like Coach Snyder,” Klein mentioned. “I haven’t figured out how to put 26 hours into a day yet. But we’ve been grinding the last four weeks on the recruiting trail and every single day since the spring. After Memorial Day weekend, we’re going to work 35 straight days. We’ll have about 70 guys on campus for the 2027 class to be able to pick and get the right ones that we need and want.”
Mittie: ‘We have as powerful of a non-conference schedule as we have ever had.’
Jeff Mittie bragged that he had been to the Scott City Nut Fry 9 occasions as Okay-State head ladies’s basketball coach. Mittie, who ranks among the many high 20 in wins for energetic Division I coaches, enters his 13th season at Okay-State in 2026-27, and he remembered the meals, the faces and the HRC Feedyards on the sting of a metropolis wealthy in Okay-State fandom.
“Taryn Sides, her name continues to grow,” Mittie mentioned. “She’s the most effective shooters within the nation, and final week our workforce went out to Phoenix for 3-on-3 USA Basketball, and it was thrilling as a result of USA Basketball was very involved in Taryn presumably being added to a workforce later this summer time, and that’d be thrilling.
We have an excellent group again. Gina Garcia, our level guard, was one of many particular freshmen within the nation. Nastja Claessens is again, and Brandie Herrod began each sport for us. We have an excellent core group again. I like what we have carried out within the portal. We have to add a middle. We suppose we have now one added right here, and I’m not prepared to launch it but, however we’re a high 15 workforce if we add this middle and issues fall proper. I’m not there but, we’re nonetheless working, and I do not suppose proper now on this setting you are by no means not recruiting, however we’re shut.”
Meanwhile, Mittie lately closed one of many tougher non-conference schedules in latest reminiscence, and he boasted that “it’s as tough of a non-conference schedule as we’ve ever had.” He particularly designed the non-conference schedule with a NCAA Tournament look in thoughts.
“Minnesota was in the Sweet 16, then we play Missouri in Kansas City, then we play NC State — a Final Four team two years ago — and we play Villanova, and those two games are in Florida,” he mentioned. “We play an ACC college in SMU and a Big East college in Creighton, whose been to the Elite Eight.
“My philosophy with scheduling is we have to put ourselves into position to be a top seed every year in the NCAA Tournament. It was pretty special when we hosted the NCAA Tournament a couple years ago and we sold 21,000 tickets when we hosted it, and that was pretty special. So, you have to schedule tough, win the right games, and we’ll have every opportunity to do that.”
Geopfert: ‘We’re making an attempt to win a nationwide championship.’
Not a lot time has handed because the Okay-State males’s and ladies’s groups wrapped up their look within the Big 12 Outdoor Championships, and the strides by Geopfert and his teaching employees stay ever current as Okay-State monitor and subject staged arguably its finest yr at school historical past, which keyed by an unimaginable run when Okay-State males completed No. 4 nationally and the ladies completed No. 7 within the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Geopfert, who together with his employees authored one of many best turnarounds in Big 12 monitor and subject historical past, is raring for extra.
“We’ve been really, really fortunate, and it takes a team of people,” he mentioned. “We had some nice employees, nice help employees, and we have now some nice student-athletes who’re dedicated to Okay-State, a variety of athletes from the state of Kansas, and it is a good combine. What we had been in a position to accomplish this indoor monitor season, we had been seventh on the ladies’s facet within the NCAA Championships and we completed fourth on the lads’s facet of the NCAA Championships — it took lots of people. We’re making an attempt to win.
“It’s a gravitation toward excellence or it’s a gravitation toward mediocrity, and we want to gravitate toward excellence. We’re trying to win a national championship. That is the goal at Kansas State — trying to win a national championship. We’re getting after it on every front. I was told before I came to K-State that K-State was a special place, and K-State is a special place, and the support is tremendous, and it’s a wonderful thing to be a part of.”
Geopfert detailed efforts that, if backed by donations, might give Okay-State one of many high 5 monitor and subject amenities within the NCAA.
“We’re really fortunate that the indoor track and outdoor track are directly adjacent to each other,” Geopfert mentioned. “Our administration and Coach Cliff Rovelto did an unbelievable job renovating that soccer facility right into a world-class indoor monitor. With each of these amenities, out of doors and indoor, from a coaching perspective, has been sensible. We’re making an attempt to do just a few issues to convey extra occasions to Okay-State. This yr, when Kansas Relays was cancelled, we promptly picked it up and had the first-ever Okay-State Relays. We need each highschool within the state of Kansas to come and attend the Okay-State Relays subsequent yr. It’s going to be the third week in April.
“What we’re making an attempt to do with our indoor monitor, whereas it is an unbelievably good coaching facility and we have been in a position to entice a number of the finest athletes on this planet to Okay-State, we’d like to add seats. The solely college within the convention that’s in a position to host an indoor convention monitor meet proper now’s Texas Tech. So, we go down there each single yr to Texas Tech. We went down there final yr and misplaced the convention title by one level to Texas Tech. We’re uninterested in going to Texas Tech. What we wish to do is put 3,000 seats in that indoor monitor facility, and that’ll enable us to host the Big 12 Indoor Championships each different yr, rotating with Texas Tech. With our Okay-State fan base, I’ve little question we’re going to pack that enviornment.
“Next year we host the Big 12 Outdoor Championships in the second weekend in May, and we want everybody there for that, and then hopefully shortly after that, we’ll be hosting the indoor championships as well.”