Stars on Sports Intro: It's time for Stars on Sports! A podcast-radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College. LCC athletics has a strong tradition. 23 national championship wins! Over 170 All-Americans! 19 MCCAA all sports trophies! Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it. We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation and right here at LCC. This is Stars on Sports!

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined by our assistant AD Steven Cutter. And and today, Steven, we're going to be talking about surprises as we record this episode. We're getting ready to start another academic and athletic year. We're actually starting our athletic year today. You know, just in this business, you try and prepare for everything, and you can't always prepare for everything. And, you know, we started the conversation before we started recording this podcast about just where we're at as we start a new year and how busy it is and things thrown at us. And I was sharing with Adelien and Steven that I don't like surprises. Even my family know that I don't like surprises. My wife won't surprise me. She wants to hold something off, but she ends up telling me part of it because she can't keep a secret. But the other part is she knows I don't want to show up and be surprised. And I think that stems from my job. Just because when you host events, you just want to. I want to be prepared for everything. Anything that goes wrong, I want to have a plan for. And that's not always the case. And, you know, we've seen some significant emergency incidences in the past at athletic or other events. But surprises are, you know, something we deal with every day. And, you know, I was sharing with, you know, coming into the day, I try and plan out my day. I worked hard to put in a, you know, scheduling thing that I got to get done for the day on my calendar. I used to just write a to do list, but now I try and schedule them. But, you know, this week things were thrown at me before I even got in and didn't get to anything that I that I had on my list. So I think that's all part of why I, I don't like surprises. But you made an interesting comment regarding positive or negative surprises.

Yeah, I think in general, people just don't really like surprises. Sometimes they do if they're if they benefit themselves. But surprises really come down to change. And it might change your schedule, it might change your day, your hour, whatever it might be. And in, once again, in general, people aren't really liking change. You know, we don't generally like change and we generally don't like surprises. But more importantly, what happens when, with you, when you do get one of those surprises when the gym lights go off and you don't know how to, you know, I think you experienced one earlier this year when we were renting a gym that the fire, you know, alarm went off and then, and then you don't necessarily know how to turn it off. So it's more, it's more about how do you respond to those. And I'm sure that you've had a ton of those incidents is where you're like, holy crap, I didn't prepare for this by any stretch. But you know, what do we need to do? And that's where coaches and administrators and those people tend to be really good problem solvers because they have to be able to respond.

I agree. I think in our business there's a lot of good problem solvers and you just have to get the event going. No one wants to cancel the event. They want to play. That's what we came for. It's like the final exam of a class and you just break it down and you stay calm. And I, I've been fortunate. I've had enough experience in that. But I also try and learn, I try and watch someone that does solve it, that I know how to solve it the next time, so I don't need to call somebody. And there's a lot of good resources and you rely on a lot of other departments. And thankfully in my previous jobs and here at LCC, you have good maintenance people, good fire safety people, good police people. When we had the fire alarm, the fire person from Delta or Delhi Township was excellent to work with. But in previous jobs I knew where to go. We've had training. The other nice thing about education is we get trained in a lot of these emergency situations that help us prepare for incidences at events or even if we're at the mall or movie or something else.

But just out of curiosity, what made you transition from to do list? Because I think most people have to do lists, whether it's in their head or on paper or on their phone. But what made you transition?

Learning. Just people I've listened to, people that I respect, including you, that have showed me the benefits of it. I've always, I'm like in some of, you know, when I've done all those different strength tests, you know, accomplishing tasks is, you know, something that motivates me and excites me and stack wins and I just, I might get a lot done, but I might not be as haven't been as productive as I've liked. And just learning that putting it on my calendar so people won't maybe won't distract me at that time or part of it's memory to know to do it and you know, with to do lists, as I talked about, when something gets thrown at you and you don't even get to your three things until lunchtime, you just now you have another list where scheduling it just seemed more productive, more effective and just different people on podcasts, I've listened to it and I know you do that too. So I'm still in the initial stages of that and I'm not perfect and I still struggle. And the nice feature about my calendar, I can paste and move it over to the next day if I don't get it done that day. But it's, you know, goals for the new year, that's one of them. And I'm trying and I worry a little bit because, you know, a lot of people want access to your calendar and you know, by putting those on there, they might feel like, you know, a meeting that might need to take place over that. But I have it blocked off. So I'm still balancing that aspect of it. But I also hope it minimizes my surprises. It minimizes, you know, thing that, you know, I can maybe prepare a little farther in advance for to write the dillion.

I think with the surprises. I am not a huge surprise fan at all either. And it's one of those things where like you were talking about you got this to do list and then all of a sudden this surprise comes up in the middle of the day and you've got to go ahead and take care of something else. And it kind of just throws everything out of whack. But I have also looked at surprises as being a process and experience of learning to go with the flow. And I think that's very much important to be able to do that. You know, that's life in general. You've got to be able to. I remember earlier this year I walked out my backyard and a tree had fallen in my backyard and I had a plan for the day and I was looking at this tree going, well, I guess this is what we're doing today. And everything was thrown out the window. But I Also find it funny that Steve said something about most of the time, most people don't really care for surprises unless it's a positive one. I can tell you that I'm not always happy about that either. I've had three times in my life where somebody has given me a surprise birthday party. And it's one of those things for me, I'm kind of somewhere in between. It depends on the situation. I'm either an introvert or an extrovert. Just depends on the situation. But for me to be in that moment, I have to prepare myself ahead of time to know I'm gonna have to be with all these folks.

The center of the potential.

Yes. The center of attention. And it's funny because I can do it sometimes, but when it comes to that, it's tough.

So you wanna be prepared.

Yeah.

Unfortunately for you, you're very similar to me. I'm an introvert by nature, but my job expects me to be an extrovert.

Exactly. Yes.

And I don't like surprise parties either, where people in my family do. So we have them for them, but they know better than to have it for me. But I. I believe it is a life lesson, and I believe it applies to athletics where, you know, coaches try to throw surprises at other teams with strategies and maybe personnel. So coaches have to learn how to handle those surprises. When you call a timeout or you change innings, you know, maybe sometimes we over coach or over surprise people, but it is about challenges. And I agree it's not what you signed up for, but at the end of the day, it could be a pretty significant accomplishment because as we all know, change is. Happens out of our comfort zone and. And that's usually what a surprise will do to us, is take us out of our comfort zone. And then how do you respond to it? And that's something we're really trying to train our student athletes on. How you respond to things. You can't. You can't control what happened, but you can control how it happened.

And we do that from like a baseball standpoint where we'll have something on our schedule that we're going to have an inner squad scrimmage, seven innings or nine innings, whatever it might be, and that that's going to be it. And they get all done with that and think that's it gonna clean up the field and go home. And we say, well, let's do another one, because they need to be able to respond. Anytime you're in athletics or life, you're gonna get all these things thrown at you in all kinds of different directions. And just like you said, it just goes back to how can you respond to it. And the more times that you're put in situations where you have to respond. The military does a really nice job of that in their trainings. The more times you're putting. Put into that stuff, the stronger that muscle becomes and the stronger you become. And so, you know, our teams play a lot of double headers, so you need to get used to those. So that's just like one small example. It's, it's, you know, the military has done things like where they'll have people take a run and it's a super long run, and they tell them that they're done for the day and, and then they, as soon as they finish the run, they come back and say, all right, that was good. Let's, let's do it again. And they want, they want to see how people respond to that adversity because they know that that parallels life in general. Because we're going to get a ton of things thrown at us. You and I both probably had in the last 24 hours, just a lot of different things thrown at us that weren't on our calendars, weren't things that we were prepared for. And we are trying to respond in the most positive way that we can. And it's difficult at times.

It's challenging, very challenging. And there are different variables that play into that. I try to be positive throughout this, but to your point, Nadalian, if you're tired or if you didn't get enough sleep or if you're hungry, I mean, there's a new term, hangry out there, you know, which the kids in my family seem to excel at. But it is how you handle adversity, and that is life, and that is athletics and a great lesson that we can teach. And it comes down to practice. I was talking to a cross country runner this morning at their first practice, Owen from Birch Run, that's in our linemen program. And he talked about how going up that pole that first time was a challenge and difficult and not sure about himself. But by the next day he was getting it down and feeling more confident and reinforcing that this was something that he enjoyed and wanted to do. So practice handling challenges and surprises and having that right mindset because you've seen people on video that just respond so negatively, and it's almost funnier than the surprise of how they handle that. It just blows up or, you know, just turned into a whole negative.

I could See the Dalian doing that for one of his surprise birthday parties,

just losing it and just. It makes a good.

It is disorienting. And then of course, you have that amount of time where it's like, okay, I've got to deal with this. But that's part of going with the flow too. And of course, I had a good time by the time I was done every time.

But not everyone does. That was the point I was going to make. Someone trying to do something nice for you and it turns out to be. It could be a negative thing, it could be an argument, it could lead to it, but it backed out. How you handle it and taking a deep breath. Breathing nowadays is a big emphasis on how to handle things, to stop, think and breathe. Because if you don't, that emotions could carry on and it carries on to other people. I mean, we know that in a team that one negative attitude or how they respond to something could impact their friend or some other members of the team. So it's very interesting how a good surprise can even be a negative thing. But it's about the challenges we face and adversity and the people you're around. I mean, you know, it's good to have good people around you that know you or can help you. You know, kind of just re compass refocus and get you back to your a good place. Because I had some training at a conference this spring regarding, you know, people want their needs met, you know, whether. And most of them want to be heard and want it to happen now, you know, and that can't always happen, especially in our business. You know, we can hear them, but, you know, changes and take place overnight and. But that's what most people want when they come to you with an issue. But it's also when you handle a surprise. You know, how do you, how do you change and get back to a good mindset? And it's not easy.

No, it's terribly hard. And I know that in my own personal life, from a professional level of being a coach, I've gotten pretty decent at being able to handle those surprises and those changes. Where I've struggled at, at this point is in my personal life now, as structured as I am, I can, I can handle that stuff as a coach or as an administrator. But in my personal life, I suck at change. If, if my wife asked me, oh, I need you to, to pick up, you know, this or that. I'm like, what, why couldn't you tell me this yesterday? You know, I've got this, or I'VE got that, you know, and so I'm really working on getting better at that because that's what life's about, trying to get better.

And I think that's common where people treat work differently than home. And, you know, it's hard when you go home because you want it to be different, but sometimes it's not. And how different we are or handle. And I think that's huge in our profession. You know, having the uniform on and having uniform off and trying to be different. But there are some consistencies between the two. Any big surprises on the field that you remember over your coaching career?

You know, a lot of times it's weather dictated is usually the biggest one. And some of those surprises take place when you're loading a bus and games are canceled. Some of those surprises take place when you get to a field and the game is canceled. A lot of those are the big changes because then what do you do? And you have to respond to that because you have a lot of people that are relying on you for direction. And so those are usually the biggest changes. We experienced a ton of surprises this past season at the College World Series in Oklahoma, and we were there for about 10 or 11 days. And anytime you're at the World Series for a long time, that's a great thing. But however, we weren't playing games because the weather was just horrible and it was a lot of rain, a lot of wind, and those were a lot of surprises because we'd get ready to play and then the next thing you'd know, a cell would come through and we'd be sitting in one of the booths upstairs being protected. And we, at one point we, we sat for four hours waiting for a game before they finally canceled it. And the boys are just sitting there in uniforms just waiting. And so you get it a lot in sports. You have a little more of a controlled environment in the indoor sports, so that. Because most things are climate controlled in those environments. But. But the outdoor sports really seem to be impacted by weather a lot. You think about football and you got a big air attack team and all of a sudden it's. It's pouring rain or it's snowing or whatever, and they can't really throw the ball very well and they have to run at this point. I mean, you think about that happens

a lot in significant games. You know, tournament games or playoff games were better. You know, they say weather neutralizes games. And I agree. Weather is definitely one of our most challenging surprises in athletics. And some of it is because two Ways to minimize surprises is preparation and communication. And your season should prepare you for weather. We deal with it all the time, but it's still, you don't know when it's coming. And then the communication part is so huge in how you handle adversity and the plan you have in place. But with weather, the unknown, you don't. I mean you can communicate. We're going to start in an hour, but it might be two or three hours. So the two things that help you minimize surprises are difficult when you're, when you're dealing with weather and athletics. And you know, I believe preparation and communication are huge in any program and any program's success and how they minimize surprises and why maybe with those two you don't have as many surprises. So we don't get used to them or like them. But, but to your point, actually we do have more surprises in our game than we think and we're better at that than we are at home or in our personal lives in dealing with them for sure.

You mentioned preparation a little bit and I just wanted to touch on. I know we have the student athlete orientation coming up and you mentioned preparation and so what's it take to prepare for something like that when you've got 100 plus student athletes that are going to be coming in to learn more about, you know, the LCC athletic department, what's required, meet with success, coaches, advisors, you know, all of those things. What's it like to not necessarily walk people through what's happening, but what's it like to prepare for that? Because there's a lot of things going on in a few short hours span

and those are the fun things of the job for me. Those big events we host or the big events I've hosted in the past, the state championships, the, the mcc, a state championship, regional tournaments in cross country. I mean I get excited about that, but it takes a lot of work up front. Again, trying to prepare for everything, checking off boxes, communicating to all those parties involved, starting months ago and then with follow ups and making sure they have the right date, know what the timeline frame. Yeah. And again changing that, you know, reevaluating. Not just, it's like writing a paper, you start with it and then you keep revising it and you know, doing surveys after. We did a survey after last year's orientation. So it even starts, we started right after last year of writing down notes of what was good and what we could improve on. So it is a lot of preparation upward and communication, but it's just having an Outline, going through that outline and making sure. Getting things done by communication, you know, working on different documents, you know, not waiting to the last minute, which our society likes to do, which we did in college, you know, and writing papers and that. And you learn that just starting early, communication, preparing up front. But because you want to be a positive bit, I want no surprises when that happens. I want to try and cover everything. And we're unveiling some new, new software and such that I'm trying to have backup plans in place. So preparing for every. Think of everything you think can happen. And that same with the event. Trying to prep, you know, what can go wrong and how do we prepare for it and where are your. How important your PA announcer is for communication. So they excite me. That's a challenge to me. I want to put. I want it to be the best orientation tomorrow. You know, I've been working on it for the last two days, really, you know, digging deep and getting all those, you know, the detail that it's in the details, getting all those details and special things. So it's a good first impression. I'm a big believer in making a good first impression and having some humor involved, having some, you know, things to take away from. So it's a balance. It's like, you know, when I go to church, I want to hear a funny message, not just, you know, a spiritual message and trying to encompass all of those things in it. So I have a couple videos to keep people engaged.

Hopefully they laugh, I hope, but I'll laugh.

So. But in general, laugh at myself.

But in general, I almost feel like it's harder when you prepare really hard for something and you get the surprises. It's, it's a little bit harder than when you don't prepare as much and you get the surprises. You kind of internally, you might not say it externally, but kind of internally, you're, you're like, well, you know, I didn't, I didn't really prepare the way I should have. But when you, you put in that 100% and you really prepare for, you know, the orientation or whatever it might be, practice a game, whatever, and, and you get the surprises, it's a little bit harder.

That is a great point because I do get mad if it doesn't go perfectly at orientation or a big event, even though I would hope I had good preparation in that event. But there's just something that's going to go wrong and they're learned, they're happy mistakes, as Bob Ross would say. And it's how you handle it. And you're right, I might be upset internally, but I'm going to try and put on a good front and be positive and almost act like that was supposed to happen. And again, it's how you handle moving forward. If the video doesn't work in my play that power presentation 10 times to make sure I have it down.

But I can't believe there was a Bob Ross reference on this. That's incredible. That's incredible.

Yeah, well, you know, he's more popular now than when he was when he had his TV show on pbs. I had a conference for some of our conference ads in March, our national conference. And it was funny. There were a couple ad that had never heard of Bob Ross and they stopped back. They stopped at a Cracker Barrel on their way home and there was a whole Bob Ross display.

You know, I was just in

the store the other day and they had Bob Ross candy. It was like a dipstick.

Well, now Bob Ross has become a whole segment out of it.

I did not know that he had a candy there.

Yeah, incredible. Just incredible goals for down the road for us Stars on Sports candy.

But again, a guy that took a canvas and made a pretty sweet landscape by just like breaking it down that you won't, you don't, you know, like, and how is that going to become a tree? How is that going to become a river or a mountain? And at the end of the 30 minutes, that's what he did. And I'm sure there was a lot of preparation and practice up front, which I was also going to say how much practice helps with surprises. And, you know, dealing with a number of surprises, you expect it to happen, even though you're prepared for everything. But just like in life and just like I tell my kids, the more you practice, the better you get at something. So how important that is and how important that is in our field. Yeah, well, very good. Thank you, both of you for contributing to. There were no surprises, I think, on this podcast today with technology or anything, which is always a good thing. So until next time, go stars.

Stars on Sports Outro: Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Daedalian Lowry. You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand at LCCconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit LCCstars.com thanks for listening. Go Stars!