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. 24 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!

eHello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter and our producer, Daedalian Lowry. And gentlemen, we're gonna be carrying on a conversation we've had with previous podcasts, but also the timing of this year. You know, in the middle of the post season for our fall 4th, wrapping up post season and talking to a colleague the other day, he said there are two kind of coaches, the coaches that play to win and coaches that are afraid to lose. And again, a couple weeks ago, we talked about coaching characteristics and that wasn't really one we hit on, but it's also one we deal with a lot in our business, especially, you know, me as a leader of coaches. And I haven't really digested if I totally believe in that. But we see a lot of situations where in games and again, I talk about the postseason because if you lose, your season is over. So, you know, different variables could go into those decision making. But it also happens during the regular season, probably in bigger games or games against stronger opponents, where people sit back and say, well, they played to win or they were, they played, they were afraid to lose. And

So like the prevent defense in.

Football, Ben Madon brake. Yeah, exactly. That is, you know, a good example at, towards the end of the game. And you know, sometimes when you have a big lead in any sport that you might change your mindset and stop being aggressive and be more cautious or reserved. And if that momentum changes, we've seen a lot that momentum is huge in sports that, you know, it can impact that game. And when I was doing research for this podcast about the differences of playing to inverse, avoiding to lose cautious and aggressiveness, risk taking were some of the big differences in the approach to those games. And, um, you're right, it could be any game. And, and in this, in my colleague's case, he thought it was, it was a characteristic that you have to like if, you know, a coach is. Is afraid to play, the afraid to lose that you got to work with them on, trying to get them to play to win. And you know, we've talked a lot about that on podcasts. It's your belief system, it's your default system. But. Or can they not change? Or are they always like that? And you know, I see some coaches that maybe play to win too much and aren't cautious and those wrists might bite them too. So in the end, I'm not sure it's a defining characteristic of a coach, but because as you mentioned, it could be even the change of style during a game. But I think it's definitely something we spend our share of time talking about when we're talking about coaches. And I don't want to say big games, but any games.

Definitely an interesting topic you picked this morning. So it kind of made me think of, you've got somebody that's playing to win and somebody that's trying not to lose or afraid of winning what, however you want to term it. And I think the playing to win is if you're going to coach people into playing to win, it's going to come down to process. And if you're going to work with fear of failure or losing, it's going to come down to focusing on results. And if you focus on the processes, you know, solid processes, and that doesn't change, it doesn't matter what the score is, you don't go into a prevent defense, you know you're gonna have more success. It might not always be immediate, but it will be down the road. And if you're fighting the other side of it, where you're just basing everything off of results, like we have to win this game, we can't lose this game, that kind of stuff that's so immediate that you're really gonna struggle and ride roller coasters of emotions which then you're gonna see it on coaches faces and players faces and everything else.

You didn't need to prep for this podcast. That's a key compone. I believe some of the most successful coaches is broken down by play. Win the play, do your job and not worry about the scoreboard. Unfortunately, we see too often where people do worry about the scoreboard because you're judged by the scoreboard and the scoreboard can determine your fate too, especially in the post season where that could be your last game, it could be the end of your season with that team, but you're right in looking at this. The coaches that demonstrate playing to win are more performance based approach and more achievement based approach. And the one that usually look like they're avoiding to lose are more result approach that the scoreboard is impacting their decision making. And whether they become again, the word cautious or minimal effort or, you know, but also excuses was another word that came in. A lot of those that avoid to lose and that's more a culture thing or a philosophy thing than necessarily an individual play or game thing because, you know, it's more after the fact that you make excuses of why you lost instead of ownership or accountability or risk taking or being aggressive. And you mentioned we've seen it before, it can change right in, in the middle of the game. But in the end it is about performance based or your goals and not, not the scoreboard. So do you believe you can change that? If a coach, you know, I mean, how do you work on developing those processes to become more playing to win than avoiding to lose?

Yeah, you know, the couple of words we use in our program a lot is stack bricks. And that is a process based thing. And it's, it's a lot of invisible growth. When you first start, when you put that first brick down or even the second brick down and takes, it takes a long time. And that's probably the hardest part about like trying to win in life or win on teams is it just, it takes much longer than you even could imagine. It's a heck of a process. But when you invest in the process and you believe in the process and you have people that are pulling on the rope together in the team environment, it looks different, it feels different. And that scoreboard takes care of itself more often than not. And there's not a fear of failure because you're just relying on the process that you built. You believe in that process and you're not worried about the wall falling over. You're thinking about how do I stack the next brick? And that's something that is, I think hard for everybody because at young ages, kids, they get kids turn into coaches after, you know, some of them after they're done playing. But at young ages, they get graded on their tests and the basketball players asked how many points did they score and did you win the game and all that stuff. So that's kind of where it starts.

And you are exactly right again, Mr. Cut him a gold star. Because it does start at the belief system. And we've talked a lot about stacking bricks on this podcast and stacking bricks is Celebrating the little wins. And if you celebrate those little wins, that helps you win more is on the line of building confidence and building in your belief system, which playing to win is big. But to the other side of that, you're right. Negative experiences when you're young or not embracing failure are a lot of other attributes that lead to playing to avoid to lose instead of playing to win. So, you know, having the eye on the prize or a threat versus a challenge and changing that mindset. But yes, negative experiences or losing big games or, you know, back to even when you were young, how you were taught to handle failure. And that's one of the nice things about educational athletics is you handle adversity. We talked about handling adversity before, but we still see many instances of people not being able to handle it well or quit and move on to something else. And, and from the things I saw, that plays in a lot to. In key moments, you revert to your default belief system. And that is, you know, are you afraid of failure or do you want to embrace it? You know, and I've used the Scotty Scheffler example on this podcast before, and I wouldn't even bring it up there, but, you know, when he was on the last day of the Masters, which a lot of pressure on him, you know, they asked him, how did you handle? And he goes, I'm going home and I'm going to be Scotty Scheffler when I win the Masters or not. And I think too often or not, we put too much emphasis on did we win the World Series? Did we win the national championship? Instead of, you know, doing those, stacking those bricks and building a program.

Most of, most of that stuff comes from extrinsic things. You know, fame, fortune, that it's all. And extrinsic stuff. And the process stuff is more intrinsic. And it comes down to it doesn't matter what team it is or what organization is, it comes back down to, you know, how bad to does do you want it? And you will find all kinds of excuses from people, teammates that don't want it that bad. Want really boils down to, like, how much do you love what you're doing? And if you don't love it that much, you'll have a lot of excuses of why, you know, things aren't going that way. But if you truly love something, you're gonna. You'll find a way. You will find a way. And that's what the great teams do. They find ways. And then people look at them and they're like, that's I don't know what they're doing, but that's just incredible.

You're doing a great job of Segwaying today for not even knowing what our podcast is, but it does nice effect. There's our number one producer for you. But, but it is habits. It's developing habits. And again, looking at those teams that play to win, it's commitment, it's it how bad you want it. Those are two good things. And another topic we haven't really hit on a lot on this podcast, but we have talked a little bit before and something I'm big on is self efficacy, the belief that you can achieve a certain outcome. And then collective efficacy is even bigger of a team believing in that they can do something, but working on those habits every day and being committed and having that desire. Another thing is recovering quickly from adversity. And one of the great things I've learned from a podcast with Brian Cain is what's your plan, what happened and what the next best decision. And you know, in sports you don't have a lot of time to respond or think, especially in the big moment. But if you simplify your process and.

Really life's the same, I mean you just don't have a lot of time. Things are happening at breakneck speed and you've got to figure out where you're at, what happened and how you're going to respond to it. And often, you know, and I've found myself going down these rabbit holes at times too where it's like I'm just not gonna respond, you know, and that's where you gotta get back into the brick stacking and process and respond. And that's what winning teams do. That's what winning organizations do. And that's why you see teams and organizations consistently win quarter after quarter, year after year.

Yeah, because and it is winning teams back to playing to win. Those are characteristics of what those teams that do win. And you know, and the other thing when recovering quickly, which again is how do you respond and what that next best position is taking risks. And I'm not a big risk taker. And I also wonder if that's something that our culture or program, I'm talking sports, you know, where coaches are like confident in a way. They do think that it's hard for them sometimes to take too great of risks or hard for them to deviate from their plan because they back to self efficacy. They believe in that plan. But in key moments and you know, again back to earlier thing I said Taking risks also helps you move forward because if you continue to do the same thing over and over, one, it's insanity, but two, you can't go from here to there. And in those moments of a game where you're either playing to win or avoiding to lose, those coaches that look like they're playing the win are the ones that like are continuing to still take risks that they're continuing to put themselves out there and they might fail. In fact it's okay to fail and they're confident and fail. And do you believe that having past excels help with that because it might have already given you a proven track record then it's the belief circle.

So yeah, for sure. You know, it starts with belief and then goes to action, then goes to results and it's a circle. So once you have some success, you're going to put in more action to have more of it. And then lo and behold, with more action you have more results, you know, so it's a constant circle and it can be positive or negative. Do you feel like at the high school level this shows up more than it does at the college level? Because you spent a long time at the high school level and you were at some different places. Was this prevalent?

Again, I think it's situational. I think it's back to, I'm not even sure this is right either that maybe younger or more inexperienced coaches might be in that plane to avoid to lose instead of playing to win. So I think I see it at all levels at the high school level again, maybe more postseason or again for league championships or something on the line. But certain coaches at that level do a nice job of playing the win and staying true to, to doing the thing that they need to win. So I think it's more back to that belief system or that experience than the level of coaching. Because coaching there's a lot of similarity that all three level than what it takes to be successful. It's more the in depth things that change from each level.

So experience certainly matters. We've talked about that before. But there's also that that external pressure that comes from the expectations of others and what people are saying and social media and all those type of things that play into it which then all of a sudden make winning seem like this great thing that we have to do. And then you lose sight of all the details of what makes up winning. Because to win it's not easy, but it's not that difficult either if you focus on a solid process.

But I think that is also a Key tribute in avoiding to lose or playing to win is if they've done it before, if you have won, you have that record and you have that maybe little flexibility to be more risk taking. But I also think there's certain personalities that just built into them because of maybe back to the confidence they've had or experience they've had in other fields or, or certain things. But it still goes back to, I think what you say is what defines you and our society defines our teams on whether they win or lose. Yet from the inside, there are so many more things that we use to define our program besides winning championships. Obviously we like to win championships, Obviously that's a goal to win championships. But there's certain more things that we're trying to teach and learn from that define us. But if you are defined by winning or losing, I can see where you might be afraid to take risks because you don't want to lose. You know, that's more afraid to lose than again, like I hate to lose more than I like to win. Yvonne Lindell said. But for some people, you know, that pressure of having to win, it's a.

Real thing in the coaching world for sure. And I think it's a real thing in the athletics world as well. Those expectations. You are expected to win and if you don't, then you know, coaches lose jobs and players get released and you know, it's a real thing. And so that's, that, that's an outside pressure. That is stuff that you absolutely have a ton of control over. If you can focus on process based, you know, put yourself into a growth based environment or growth based team, that kind of stuff, your processes matter, will affect everything that happens down the road.

And it sure will and it will affect the final outcome. Do you think like looser teams or team, I mean looser teams, like they're just more relaxed or more, you know, teams that have fun are in a better situation to handle that avoid to lose or play to win scenario.

I think I've researched a lot of, you know, what makes, what drives winning. How about we just leave it at that? And there's nothing like across the board that's like a slam dunk. Whether you know, it's a super loose team or a team that's really locked in. There's nothing really across the board that says this is who does best. It really is so much about anytime it's not about you, you know, you're with a team or a group, it's so much about that group being able to come together and come together in ways that is at a deeper level. And so with that deeper level there becomes some care and some love. And then once the love starts building, you know what else starts building the trust. And then you hear about it all the time on great teams, great organization. Man, there's just a ton of trust, ton of love here, you know, and, and that's what that's like the true secret sauce. And that stuff is so hard to build because everybody is going to be a little bit different. And so if you've got people sitting at our round table here and they're, they're not super in love with what they're doing, that's really hard to get them to pull on the rope with everybody else. And so you got to have some like mind individuals. And that's what the best teams and best organizations have.

Yeah, I think you're right. And then somewhere in there we talked about those tight knit groups can take those risks because they trust each other, they have each other's back. They're not going to blame, they're not going to make excuses. So accountability is a part of that. But also even like does it take getting there first to learn how to do it? Like we've even seen, even at our level of trying to beat that team that beaten you the last couple years or you're beating that team but end up losing to them and. But learning how to win kind of did that play into playing to win versus avoiding to lose.

Experience matters.

It does. It would come down to experience.

So even it caught up with the Fab Five. You know, they were, they were delusional enough to make it, you know, happen, but it still caught up to them.

But I don't think they ever won any championship, no Big Ten or national championship. So. And it does catch up to you. That's in the end, back to the process and the performance approach instead of result approach that if you focus on your performance, that's what you can control. I mean we control our attitude and our effort, which we've talked a lot about too. And winning teams, I think understand that. And no play is bigger than the other play. We always focus on the last play of the game or the last bad call of the game. But there were many other calls that went into to that play. So. So I thought it was a good conversation. I thought it was an interesting, I had with a colleague about that situation because as we get into postseason in a lot of sports, a lot of people want to sit back and criticize coaches for either playing to win or avoiding to lose. And in my role as an athletic director, I want to help them go from one side to the other to learn how to play to win. But it's helping them build that belief system, stacking bricks and being comfortable. It's okay to fail. You know, we'll come back stronger. We'll. Lear will embrace failure and be better from it. All right, good stuff. So as we head into our end of the podcast, I'm stealing this from another podcast I listen to, but I always start with a food question. So there's going to be a two part food question this one. So french fries, tater tots, or onion rings?

You can only have one.

Yep.

Okay. Well, I think I'd roll with the tater tots. Kind of brings me back a little bit to that, you know, elementary cafeteria incredible school pizza they'd have there is that square, thin pizza. That stuff was incredible.

Yeah, it's a no contest for me. It's tater tots all the way.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. If a restaurant has tater tots, I will always get tater tots before I will fries.

Okay, well, I'll even pay the extra.

Buck 50 or whatever it is.

What a trifecta. It is tater tots for me too. And I think tater tots.

Tater tots even better.

I agree. I think they're making a comeback. I seen loaded tater tots more on menus in the last year than ever, and they are excellent. I've seen some, like, larger tater tots too, instead of the little ones you see on the. The breakfast.

And the crispier the better.

I agree there too. But loaded tater tots is what's second then. Yeah. Are you guys onion ring fans or.

Yeah, I enjoy onion rings, but they're not all created equal. You know, that's the other thing. So you get excited when someplace has onion rings, but you know, it would.

Be fries for me after that. Onion rings do some stuff to my system. That is not something I want to talk about.

Me too. But I love all three. I mean, I love french fries. I can eat french fries at probably every meal, but I like the other two better. A change of pace.

I'm also a finicky eater. I think we've talked about this and. And slimy, greasy onions that just. I'm not remind me. The texture reminds me of worms and I just. I don't.

I don't disagree. I will. I like, I talked about how much I love cheeseburgers and I don't want onions on my cheeseburger, but I do like onion rings. The only thing about onion I like is probably onion rings. I would take onions off everything else.

And give me some raw onions. I'm okay.

Really.

Yeah, I'll eat raw. I just don't like cooked onions. Just can't. Don't care for them.

Well, I want to. Let's just kill this topic all at once. Let's go back to French fries though. Okay. Who has the best french fries?

McDonald's.

Are we talking fast food?

Anything?

I believe it's called Penn Station is my all time favorite. Is it Penn Station or Penn subs? I can't remember.

Penn Station.

Penn Station.

Yeah. Yeah, that's like the all time best. And the I don't typically will do vinegar with my fries. But those fries are so good with vinegar and even to take it an extra level, you take the fry, you break it in two so vinegar gets inside the fry and then you dip it into the ketchup and it adds this like just awesome flavor to it.

Well, good tip. Do you like vinegar?

I do. I feel like usually the best fries you can get are at the fair.

Oh, interesting. See?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah.

I like McDonald's fries too. Five guys I think has good fries and most people I know eat vinegar with the five guys one, they, they, you know, give you extra ones. I have not had Steak Shack fries, but the podcast I listen to all of them really like Steak Shack fries, but you know, there's just again in fries you can go curly fries, crinkle fries.

I was gonna say secondary would be Arby's, would be the curly fries.

Popular one too, so. Well, again, I don't know where I come up with this stuff, but French fries. I like french fries and it's lunchtime so thought we'd talk about it. So fair enough. Until next time. Go stars.

Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Daedalian Lowry and Jereny Robinson. 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!