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. 25 national championship wins! Over 190 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. Today, I'm joined by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter, and our producer, Daedalian Lowry. And gentlemen, as we record this podcast in the summer, I think it's a good time to reflect on 2425. We've talked a lot about reflection in this podcast before and how we think it's important to future success. I also think it's important to celebrate our successes. And we're gonna have to change our byline because one of our goals was winning the All Sports trophy, and we won it this year. And that's significant, significant accomplishment for our athletic department. It's something we put out there.

Can't hear you over the crowd, man. They're getting loud.

That's a loud crowd. Which is another accomplishment of the year with our fan support and such, how that continues to build and grow.

But I feel like our biggest accomplishment of the 2425 season would be left unspoken about. But I really think we should share that. Greg Latig is the athletic director of the year. An incredible accomplishment.

I have. Crazy. I've heard this. He's crazy. It's for our league, the mccaa, and it is a reflection of the year we've had. I can't win that without the success and the support.

You can't win it without the hard work. You're a guy that's in super late and in early and constantly working and supporting the coaches and also the student athletes and college. And so it's well deserved.

Yeah, there you go. That's what we needed right there. I just went to a conference these last two days, and that was one of my takeaways and that I am terrible at. And you just did it. You did this thing where you kind of like deferred and said, and by any means, you need to give credit to those that are supporting you, but also just say thank you.

That's a good point. I went to a conference for the same thing because I was not good at that before the conference. I deflected all the time.

So.

So, because again, in this role, it's a team. And that's why I like being part of a team. And that wasn't even on my list of successes here, Cutter. So you. You owe for sneaking that in there, but I think you owe him for.

Sneaking that one in there.

That's, that's.

That's a worthwhile. That's an awesome thing. Congratulations, Max.

Again. It is. And I am thankful that my colleagues who I get along with well and have challenged them to be better too. I've been very involved in our league and they've been supportive and understanding of my quirkiness and things that I bring to the table. But in the end, it is a reflection of the year our athletic department had. And we had quite the year. And it starts with the all sports trophy, because that does mean a lot to me, because that means all our sports did well. And they did. You know, we have nine sports, but seven of them participate in the mcca. Track and field is not a league sport. But of the seven sports, I believe five of them did win their division and the other two took second and third. So again, that's hard to beat that consistency across the board. And again, that's something we emphasize because we even talked last year, because we won it my first year here and we took second the last two years is that consistency. We've teamed, teamed, win it before and then fall. But thankfully here at LCC, we try to continue to stay at the highest level even when we don't win it. But winning it means a lot to me because we do compete for a reason. We can do compete to win. And again, we have a lot more academic accomplishments that we will share here. But it's nice to see that success on the field because there is a lot of hard work that goes into making this happen. So let's continue with our on the field success. We had two region champions. We had a national champion cross country, that is the program's fourth in a row. Women had won two in a row. And then the men have won back to back championships and you know, have a lot of freshmen returning and imposed to be there. I believe almost every one of our teams was ranked in the top 25 this year, which is again, recognition on a national scale. Two region champions, four region runner up. So, you know, there is consistency there. 10 All Americans too, which is, I think another neat thing across all sports. So actually that's one that stands out to Me probably more than some of those other ones that the individual success we have across the board because we do recruit locally and then branch out. So reflecting on which one of these, you know, besides the all sports trophy stands out, that is one of them. Now, to the. To the academic side, we had 68 MCCAA academic kids, which are the 3.0 or higher. That's really around half of our student body. We had 43 NJCA academic all students, which is significantly higher than last year. And that's a 3.6 GPA or higher. We had five teams earn academic, which is 3.0 or higher. We had 41 kids earn an associate degree. So we're getting it done academically, too. And as I think about goals for next year, academics still high on my list. I still think we can do better, and I still think we can work with LCC on doing better because our overall GPA is around the 3.0, which is the highest it's been since I've been here, but I don't think good enough. I still think we can do better there.

But that's impressive, though.

It is impressive because I was gonna say our goal, you know, I have four kind of pillars that I try and like, evaluate Our athletic department is, you know, do well in the classroom, do well on the athletic field, get involved in the college and get involved in the community. And in those first two, these numbers show we're making headway in those areas. And it's a team effort, unfortunately. And we had, you know, a history of this, you know, the 20th All Sports Trophy, lead the league in that. Some of these other things lead the league in that. But I still think we can do better, and I still think there's other things that I'd like to talk about that we reflect on are even better than this of when we reflect on the year. So, like, last year had nothing to do with national championships, had nothing to do with regional titles, had nothing to do with all academic teams. They had to do with student athletes. And, you know, last year, one of my favorite things was how our sports went out and supported each other. Athletic events, how students love being at LCC. And honestly, I believe that we sustained that this year and heard some of those same comments. And some of my favorite memories is last year we kind of organized students going to other events. This year we did less, and we still had it happen. It is good and we've got to do better at it, but it's still awesome that we had student athletes of other sports pretty much at every other athletic event in some capacity. Sometimes that's whole teams, sometimes it's individuals. And then the other thing is, you know, the one thing we did coordinate that was just fun for me was our volleyball team, which had another great year, went to the national tournament last year, didn't make it this year, but still sustained that success and took second in the regional. But we had our teams help out at their events and that just seemed fun to me, seeing each team down there helping out another team. And that's something I'd like to maybe even coordinate more in the future. But again, those are the off the field event that I enjoy and really think depict what we want our athletic department to be about. Coach Gutter, any quick things in the about the year in review for you?

You covered so many things and I think it really boils down to just a lot of hard work and things kind of roll downhill. And it starts with you and you've had a vision since you came in and you speak about the pillars and the importance of community and the importance of being together, but also the importance of being on campus and showing your school pride. And then of course the things like the education and the winning on the field and winning in life and a lot of those things have come to fruition in your four years and that's a big reflection on you and something that you really need to be proud of. And yes, you've had a lot of help and yes, there's been a ton of kids here that have just been great, great kids and they come from great families. But it boils down to just a lot of hard work.

And it does. And we've talked about hard work doesn't always equal success, but you got to have hard work to have success. And you hit on a couple other points that I was including in our podcast today and you're not. I appreciate all the accolades Cutter. So I don't know if he's trying to get a raise as next year. But to what you say alignment is important and we have worked hard on alignment and we have worked hard and aligning with our college too. And you know, one of my general statements is represent LCC well. That's what I want our athletic department to do. And most people judge us by wins and losses, but it those other things. Well, but having that alignment and I believe our department had that alignment with our we have a great coaching staff. They're part time coaches for the most part, don't get paid a lot for the most part, but they work hard, they Inspire me on how hard they work. They care about kids. Recruiting is the lifeblood of a college athletic department. There's a lot of work that goes into it. We've talked about it before on a podcast. You spend a lot of time on recruiting and you don't even know what the result will be. I mean, you recruit five kids and you might only get one of them, but you're putting a lot of time in all five of those kids. We're fortunate to have a beautiful campus that recruits like to come and see. We're fortunate to have a lot of local high schools that have statewide success. We're fortunate to have Michigan State University right next to us. Our kids like connecting with them and being so close to that college environment. So we got a lot that goes for us. But our coaches take advantage of this. And I wouldn't trade in our coaching staff for nothing because I think they work hard, too, and are aligned. They have high standards. I mean, we joke in our office about some of the things we encounter and think we don't want to be like that. But alignment is one of the things, too. The other two things you just mentioned I'm going to hit on too, since, hey, I appreciate you giving me some subject matter to this podcast is visibility. It is important to be visible. I'm a big believer in showing up. We've talked about intendance before and how important that is, but I like to be present at everything that I can be. And I know our team do, too, because again, the battle and we talked about percentage before of showing up. So we are trying to be more visible on campus. Your team has done an excellent job of attending almost every important event on campus. The Veterans Day events, back to school events, party with the president. And the school does a lot of events to get kids involved.

So that was a pillar of, you know, when we started as well, how important it was going to be for our student athletes to be visible on campus. And it was something that we just started going to and then eventually, because the team was seen in so many different places that now it's morphed into constantly being asked if we can help out at different events. So it's been great. It's not a, oh, we have to go to this. It's a, we get to go to this. And we get asked often to provide, you know, 5, 10, 15 people to help out for whatever college event is happening on campus.

I can only imagine how helpful that is to build that camaraderie on the field.

Yeah, it just makes A difference. And anytime that you're somewhat living a life where you're serving others, regardless of how many things you have going on in your own life, it helps you step back a little bit. And there is a certain feeling of like you're doing something that you're supposed to be doing. And student athletes, college kids, they don't get a ton of those opportunities yet. And so it's a really dynamic thing. And, and so those pillars that you talk about, those are super important. And when you can see them come to fruition and you can see them start to grow and start to morph into more important and gratifying things with a lot of success, that's kind of what the year end review is about. You want to see it grow. And then of course, in high growth environments, you're going to sit there and you're going to say, well, I think we can do better here. And that's why you're seeing consistency with the athletic department, because it's not just the, oh, this is great, now we can relax a little bit. We're going to keep pushing and we want to see the GPAs go higher and we want to see the kids have more fun and have more success, not only on the field, but off the field and make a bigger impact in our community and our campus.

And you're right on. I think we are making head waves and that's where I feel most satisfied with some of the impacts we're having on the college and some of the reciprocation we're getting in the college to support that impact, such as travel. Our teams are traveling even more because it's building memories. And again, one of my goals for 25, 26 is the student athlete experience. I think that's more important than ever. And a lot of it takes place off the field. Of course they remember the wins, but the community service they provide, helping out, the memory, the, the laughter, the things that go wrong that they remember. But it's that bonding and the thing that we're allowed to travel across the country to provide these one, an educational experience, to see a city maybe they haven't seen before, but to create appearances, to connect, to relate, to come together. So our travel has increased since we've been here and our college has been supportive of that. Our crowds are better, our parents, our community are supportive. But it is about visibility, it is about wearing that shirt, which branding is a part of that, that we'll talk about next. But you know, seeing five baseball kids or one or two women basketball Players or men that ball players helping out around college. We wear our shirts every day that identify us, and it's great to see that representation, that giving back to the college that gives us so much and that we ask so much from, from. And we even ask more and more from them because success has a price. But, yeah, that visibility has been huge, and your program has been a leader in that of helping out around campus and being involved in serve, because this campus does put on a lot of events. So it's fun to see, and you see them get along and connect through that, that you talked about the bonding experiences or taking them out of their comfort zone a little bit. But, you know, the other thing we've worked hard on is our brand, you know, making sure again, when we wear this shirt and uniform and we wear every day. So Dalian joined us today wearing that nice royal blue shirt, that it's important to us, and sometimes it gets us in trouble. You know, during COVID we got in trouble for not wearing masks because they could identify we were athletes. And even other instances on campus, you know, I always joke about, there was a story a long time ago, this dude, an athlete, got busted for stealing something out of a gas station because he had his varsity letter jacket on it, had his name on it. You know, whoops. Yeah, we have that, too. We're easy to identify compared to most other people on campus, but we also are held to a higher standard and need to represent them well. But being visible and having that brand mean something has been important and again, has taken another step, I feel, over the time that we have been here and this year, I think all this success kind of reflects a culmination of that. But again, it's not where we want to be because we still have a ways to go in those things that we want to do. So is there anything else that sticks out to you from the 24, 25 year that.

No. I think you've certainly covered a massive amount of growth and a massive amount of positive things here. So there's nothing else that I think stands out outside of just appreciation for what we have here and excitement for what is yet to come.

So, yeah, and as we look forward, there are a couple other individual characteristics I'd like. You know, we don't do a lot with individual success, but, you know, we had a local kid that led the nation in scoring him in basketball. We had a baseball player that was top two or three in batting average or in offensive performance, and they were both all Americans for us. Again, local or Regional kids for us. So, you know, we talk a lot about our team success, but we do have individual success and we do have other sport, you know, top five in cross country, kid. But so it's a combination of both. So as we look forward real quickly and we won't spend a lot of time on this because we can do this again in the fall. But some of my goals are again increasing that academic just more connection with the college on helping those kids that need it the most. I do believe the student athlete experiences is becoming a separator in the recruiting, you know, community service. We do a lot of it, but just more organized and structured. Quick example. I'm going to share this because I've shared with you before a big believer in when you give something, you receive more in return. And I had a small example happen this to me last week. I don't know if we're videoing today or not, but I have this little clip on my shirt here for my glasses because in my job I don't wear my glasses all the time. I usually put them on my collar. Well, when I pull out the bleachers in basketball, they fall off and they get scratched and that's. I found this clip. People pick on me like my grandma got that from the dime store in the 1940s. So anyway.

Oh good, you picked it up at the antique mall and you're good with it.

I bought them on Amazon. I don't buy a lot of Amazon. I bought a pack of eight. I've given out all eight of mine because when I wear them, people, oh, I want one of those at Texas Roadhouse around campus in store. So I ran out, but I gave one to Todd Rogers who works in our facilities department here. And he said it was a game for him. It's a life changer for him. He gave me mine back and bought me an even nicer one that's even stronger because this one doesn't work as well on sweatshirts, which I wear a lot of heavy sweatshirts on my job. And it just again, I give him one little thing and how little this is and I got more mine back and more now I can give it to somebody else.

Yeah, I might have to pick one of those up.

Yeah, I like it. If you don't like. Some people wear their glasses all the time. I'd wear mine about 50, 50, so.

So around the house I'll do what you were talking about where I'll put it in my shirt and same thing happens.

Actually, I lost this pair this winter and they got snow plowed in. I went back and traced my path. I found the frame. So I was able just to have to buy a new frame for them because when I was walking back, they must have fell off.

So it was a prescription then.

Yeah, right.

I wouldn't do that for readers. I'm just saying.

Yeah, right, true. You can buy those. Anyway, my point in all of this is to teach how important it is to teach our student athletes one, to leave things better than they found it and two, to give. And when you give, you'll actually receive more in return. And that, I mean, want to be a continued emphasis of our program moving forward.

I think the great John Maxwell says givers gain.

Yeah, agree. Last year in our interview, you quoted Mike Tyson. So this year, much better improvement. But they do. I truly believe that. And I have so many examples, that's why I like sharing them here, of when I give something, I usually get more in return. And that wasn't even my goal. I mean, these were like eight bucks for eight of them to get by to helping our student athlete do that moving forward. So anything else on your year in return? What about you, Dadalion? Real quickly, what do you think about for 24, 25 and you and your department?

Well, me and my department's a whole nother thing since I'm pretty much the entire department at this point. But we actually are looking at finding somebody new that'll be replacing Journey, who of course was with us for a good year and a half or so. And hopefully I'll have a little bit of help. But I will go back to. You know, I know you were joking a little bit about Cut bucking for a raise, but the one thing I know about Cut is he's not. If he doesn't have anything nice to say, he's not going to say it. And I know those were some sincere words. So congratulations, man. I think that's awesome.

Well, thank you again. But again, Cut and I are aligned. He is an excellent compliment to me. He's my accountability partner. He challenges me in a positive way. He's a positive representation for us. So that helps. Again, having good people around me.

And I do have a question for you now. Your voice seems a little strained today. So were you yelling at the coaches before you got here or.

No, I don't yell much. I do have a little.

I've never seen you yell either, so.

I've never seen him yell. And I think that's a strong attribute and that's something. Again, we've Tried to carry over into our athletic department because competitive can bring out the worst, and we. We don't want that. So.

So just a sore throat then?

A little bit. I. You know, I was in the sun a lot. I thought it was a tribute to the sun and getting burned a little bit, but I do have a little tickle. I think I'm over it now, though.

All right, good.

Can't keep me down. So, again, I'm excited about this question today. It's not one of my best ones, but I'm excited about it because pizza can't be the answer, I don't think. Okay.

All right.

Does it have to do with food?

It does. You know, I have a whole lot of other ones, but when I listen back to our previous one, the food ones make me laugh. So again, a year ago, when I listened to our year in review with pineapple on a pizza, and that's one of the few times you two disagreed on it. So we're in the summer season, so grilling seems to be a big thing. So what's your go to grill item in the summer? You're gonna grill outside? What is it?

Pizza?

I think I would lean towards steak. I really enjoy grilling things like steak and asparagus and potatoes on the grill. And. Yeah, it sounds incredible. So, yeah, definitely lean towards that kind of stuff.

I'd agree with the steak. I'd also throw some ribs in there.

Ribs.

I do like ribs on the grill. And, yeah, the throwing the veggies. I'm not really a huge veggie guy. As we've talked about before, I'm not really into veggies, but I will say throwing them on the grill really just adds something to it, especially when it comes to asparagus, corn, anything like that.

Yeah, Again, I would put, like, hamburgers or hot dogs is my number one thing, because they're easy, simple, and quick, and I like them. Steak would be that next thing. I love vegetables on the grill, too. Corn. And I'm not an asparagus guy, but.

I mean, steak's pretty quick, too. I mean, seven minutes is size.

It is. You're right. We in my. And, you know, my wife likes to grill, so actually, she does a lot of our grilling at home. And again, the other day, we were figuring out for dinner, and she threw steaks on, and we were in 10 minutes, they were ready, and they were. They were good. But I'm picky on steak, so I want to. You know, we talked about this before. Good steaks, but great steaks. And then we differ on what that definition is, but there's a difference.

But wait, is the great steak that with the fat or without the fat?

You got to trim that a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. All right, good.

We're all on the same page for that one.

So do you grow a lot in the summer?

Yes. Yep. Got a nice flat top grill and I'm able to use it for a lot of things. So yes.

So is it your go to kind of into the summer? Yeah.

Even I cannot say that I do. Even. We'll do some breakfast with, you know, bacon and eggs and things like that. So yeah, definitely gets used a lot.

We do more in the summer, but probably not as much as we should. But okay. Well, good stuff. And next time maybe I'll go with a non food question. But until then, 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!