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!

I'm excited today because we are joined by our head cross country and track coach, Jim Robinson and our producer today is Steven Cutter, who is in the new chair. Coach Robinson, welcome. Thank you for joining us. We're going to talk about cross country, Lansing Community College and you know, your background a little bit. Start with that a little bit. What inspired you to get into coaching and what was your journey? A little bit.

Okay. So I've always been a runner. I love sports, every sport really, and got started when I was in junior high school. I was about as tall as I am now, a little over 6ft 6 one and a half. And when I was in junior high, I weighed 112 pounds. So I was tall, gangly, and got cut from every sport I went out for except track and field. They let everyone do track and field and I wasn't fast, so I gravitated toward the distance runs. But I describe myself as mild manner. I have a competitive streak and I think I have one attribute that's really good for distance runners and that is, I guess, stubbornness.

Maybe I already stole one of my questions from the day, but persistence.

So anyway, I just stuck with distance running, did it in high school, had the opportunity to continue running in college, and then continued to train and race really into my 50s. But I always knew I would enjoy coaching. I was in a different vocation and when my son graduated from high school, I don't know if you've ever been to a track meet, but he was involved in cross country and track and field. Track meets. I love track and field, but they go on forever. And I figured, okay, if I just used the time that I spent watching my son in track and field, I could use that in coaching and it would be about the same amount of time. So I started coaching. There was an opportunity. They needed a cross country coach at Portland High School. So I applied and that was my first coaching experience. Then went from there to here at LCC. First as a volunteer, then as the assistant coach for cross country. Chuck Block was the head coach, great mentor. When he retired, I was retiring from my day job. So that worked out really well. I just sort of slid into the head coaching job and I've been here for about a decade as the head coach. Been here for 20 years. Actually I started in 2005 as a volunteer.

That crazy to you?

20 years?

It seems like it is.

I mean it's hard to believe it's been 20 years, but I really enjoy, it turns out I really enjoy working with the college age athletes. So I'm glad things worked out the way they did.

And so are we. You are cutting yourself short in a lot of areas, coach, including. You ran in college, didn't you?

Correct. So again, this is pre Internet. I'm going to reveal something about how old I am. Maybe that's already obvious. I grew up in Pennsylvania, so I know I'm in Spartan country here. But I went to Penn State, good Big Ten school. I don't remember just how this worked out. Maybe when we were there visiting, doing the application process, they gave us booklet that had the information about athletics. But I wrote the head coach. I don't know how I would have even known who the head coach was without the Internet.

Research it online.

Yeah, you can't research it online. But I wrote the head coach and told him about my experience running in high school. I was an okay high school runner, but I was certainly not a D1 recruit. I knew obviously Penn State was a big school. They probably have a better program than some little private college. But I didn't really have an idea of the levels of competition. So I wrote him a letter, told him about my high school running and he wrote me back a card and told me when practice started.

Wow.

So I had the opportunity to run at Penn State even though I was not a D1 level athlete. But it was a great experience. The head coach, Harry Groves is in the coaching hall of fame. I think he was our. I mean he was accomplished coach. I think he was chosen as the head coach for one of our world championship teams. He was the distance coach for one of our Olympic teams. He's in the hall of fame. And again, I didn't know what I was getting into, but it turned out that I was there. I think during the golden era of distance running at Penn State, we had two American record holders on the team. I can't think of any other college team, not even Oregon, that had two American record holders that set the American record when in college. I mean, Oregon's had plenty of American record holders, but they've broken the records post college. So we had two American record holders. We had a third guy that wasn't an American record holder, but he was NCAA champion at the sixth mile.

Wow. So you're on an impressive team. I didn't know all that. I knew you ran D1.

No, I was on a team with some really, really good runners and we had five Olympians on the track team while I was there at Penn State. Won an Olympic silver medalist.

I didn't want you to cut yourself short, but now I'm even more impressed.

So I got to see what track and field and cross country running was like at the very highest level. And that's been helpful. Yeah. Even though I was saw it from behind.

Still. Again, that's a great segue into again, our cross country team here is very successful. You know, tribute to what you have carried on and, you know, national champions four years in a row. Two on the women's side, two currently on the men's side. Do you see any correlation between those two or.

Yes. I mean, I think there are a lot of pieces that have gone into the success here, but I think in terms of my experience, definitely having had that opportunity to run at Penn State and see what running at the very, very highest level, obviously American record holders and Olympians, national champion, Division one national champions, that's helped me. It's certainly helped me. Then the other piece of the experience is that people often say to me, oh, you ran at Penn State, you must have been pretty good. Well, actually, I wasn't very good. I was not even as good as I was in high school. I was there at Penn State for three and a half years. I was fortunate enough to graduate early, but in that three and a half years, I never had. So I know what it's like to be discouraged. And again, I already said one of my attributes is stubbornness.

I like it.

Most people would have quit by then, race after race having disappointment. But I was too. I guess I was just too stubborn to quit. Every runner at whatever level is going to have a period where things aren't going well. You know, running is not always upward and onward. There's valleys and hills. And I have seen what running at the highest level is like and what training it looks like to get there. But I've also experienced three and a half years of being discouraged every single race. So I bring that experience too. We have athletes, obviously that they have a race and it doesn't go the way they want. They get discouraged. And so I think I can be helpful to them.

That's a great point, because that is a good. Yeah. You don't get your personal best every race.

Yeah.

I mean, sometimes it's not to the end of the season, sometimes it is.

The early season, sometimes it's a whole season.

Right.

That just doesn't go well.

What kind of advice do you give to your student athlete on that? If they're. If you see them struggling or not reaching anything, well, just be patient. Okay.

Put in the work. You know, it's never wasted. The work you put in is never wasted. That was true in my case. You know, I showed up at practice every day for three and a half years. And then actually the spring after I finished at Penn State, I had the good fortune of meeting probably the preeminent coach of distance running ever, Arthur Lydiard, the New Zealand coach, who in the 60 Olympics had two gold medalists. And then in the 64 Olympics, he had four gold medalists, I believe, from a little town in New Zealand. And he revolutionized distance training. And he was in the lead up to the 76 Olympics. Again, the reason why I graduated early, I wanted to graduate early so I could work in the spring and then spend the summer traveling and going to the 76 Olympics, which was in Montreal. So Arthur Lydiard was on a tour of the US in the run up to the 76 Olympics, and he brought some of his runners along with him. And I lived in a little town in eastern Pennsylvania, Millersville, that had a college kind of like Ferris State. And he spent the afternoon, about three hours, just sitting on a hill by the track talking. Training showed us everything from even how to relace your shoes so you wouldn't have as much press on the arch of your foot. And it wasn't anything new. I mean, this is how we were training at Penn State. But just the awareness that, okay, this is why you do this and this is why you do that, and then realizing that the application had to be personal in terms of how much I was running and the periodization of training from, you know, interval.

So did you take some of your current practice techniques from your pen thing?

Almost. Almost everything. Almost everything I do is, you know, derivative of what Arthur Lydiard taught back then. Okay. But anyway, I put what he was teaching and what I had learned from Penn State and just the awareness of, okay, this is why we've been doing what we've been doing. And the fact that I had physically matured over those three and a half years. And I eventually started running some faster time. So again, I know that if you're patient and you put in the work it's never wasted, you'll eventually start getting the results. So that's a long answer to your question.

Good advice, though. It is never wasted. Hard work is never wasted.

How to be helpful to someone who's being disappointed.

Did you go to the 76 Olympics in Montreal?

I did.

Oh, awesome.

And I think I haven't only been to one Olympics, but. But I think the difference back then, first off, was the cost. I mean, you could buy tickets to the preliminary days in track and field for like $12. I'm sure there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. The other thing was access to the athletes. I mean, this is the Olympics after The tragedy in 72 where the Israeli athletes were kidnapped and, and the rescue attempt, a lot of them died. Still, given that you had a lot of access to the athletes, they had a practice track kind of on the other side of the stadium. And you could just go in and sit there and watch the athletes warming up. If their first event was, let's say, Friday, watch them do their last workout on Tuesday. So I got to see the then world record holder, John Walker from New Zealand training not with Arthur Lydiard as his head coach, but using Arthur Lydiard's principles. So this is. What would that be? Sixteen years after Arthur Lydiard came onto the scene in 1960, he's still influencing the people that won the gold medals. And John Walker won the gold medal in the 1500. But I saw him do his last workout where he did a set of. I don't remember whether it's a dozen or sixteen two hundreds in about 23 seconds. I mean, he's a miler and he was running repeat 2/ hundreds in like 23 seconds. So again, some of these things are helpful in coaching. You realize, oh, to be really good, you also need to be really fast. I mean, that would win most high school 200 races. And he was just clicking off repeat two hundreds at that pace.

Yes. So we'll talk about really fast in a second. But I do want to go back to one point that I want our listeners to point out is writing notes and initiating, because that's still true today. I mean, we get it through email now, but we get our share of emails of kids reaching out in the recruiting process. And I think that the lost art of writing things down. I have a family member that writes notes to people like in the business world, and he Buys things but he writes them first. And it's amazing how much that opens the door by writing a hand letter instead of email or texting. So I mean, you said it applied years ago, but I would still hope that it's a lost art, but it still applies now. So. But let's jump forward to LCC and the success we've had here. A lot of national championships, a lot of all Americans, you know, there's so many directions we can go here about your approach to the season, but the sustainable excess. So let's try to tackle those a little bit. Like what's your training approach? Because you know, the one thing I've learned from you over the last couple years is the mileage increase from high school to college can be significant. But again, we have a lot of success at a level. So what's your training approach? Heading for the season as a whole.

So again, going back to Arthur Lydiard, I think the thing that Arthur Lydiard discovered by trial and error, that sports science, again he was 1960 was before the modern era of sports science. But sports science has confirmed what he discovered by trial and error and that is that every distance event from the 800 up to the marathon, the key determinant is your aERObic engine, your heart, lung engine, and how that supplies oxygen to the primary muscles you use. Those are your leg muscles. And the best way to train that heart, lung engine and that energy supply system is by running. And the sweet spot for elite level running is about 100 miles a week. That's still true. If you look at, let's say Grant Fisher, who's currently the top American runner, he's probably running about 110 miles a week, maybe a little more. But for marathoning, that sweet spot has advanced again. We have better shoes now, so that might be a factor that you run.

Technology definitely help.

But you know, the elite level Marathoning is maybe 140 miles a week.

Okay.

But even the top level mid distance runners are probably running 100 miles a week, 90 miles.

So that what your base.

You're kind of praying again, if you take someone, let's say from a local high school who's been averaging 35 miles a week, okay, you can't throw them in at 100 miles a week. That's. That was the mistake I made in, in college because the coach said to us as freshmen, if you want to be a good runner, you got to run 100 miles a week. So I was trying to run 100 miles a week and just wearing myself down. So you can't just jump in at that level. But let's say you have a high schooler who's been running 35, 40 miles a week. So the goal is to increase that every year. So maybe as a freshman running 45 to 50, and then as a sophomore, 60, 65, I said, okay, junior 75, 80, as a senior, 90, 95. If they're red shirt one year and they're fifth year senior, what are they going to be at? 100 miles a week, there's that sweet spot. And then again, given how much talent they have, they'll be in contention. If they're running at that level and they developed over those four or five years, they'll be at the level to contend, to, do really, really well. And if they go on after college to, let's say, try to make the Olympic team, they'll bump that up to 110, 120 miles.

So that's again, so that's your model for your program.

And one of the things I tell people when I'm recruiting them is that I'm not going to coach you as if I'm just your coach for two years. I'm going to coach you as if this is a four year college and I'm going to be assuming a red shirt year. I'm going to coach you for five years. So we're going to do the first two years of what your training program would look like if I were going to be your coach for five years.

Okay, what's your favorite practice? If you're putting a practice plan together. What did that entail? You're smiling. So what?

Well, I just like seeing people run hard and run fast.

Okay, so that a distance run or the, a repeat?

Yeah, no, no distance run. I mean, if I could get on my bike and I'm out there and they're cruising along and I, I enjoy that. We do a lot of running at what's called tempo pace. And so those would be longer intervals, maybe thousands or miles. And I get to watch. Usually we're doing that in a loop so I can see them a lot of practice. Unlike other sports like baseball and basketball, the coach gets to see virtually everything that's going on. A lot of what happens in distance running, you know, I just send them out and they, they do it and they're really out. But when we're doing tempo running at thousands or maybe miles, I'll get to see them do their loop. And so, yeah, I just like seeing people run hard.

This is a bizarre question. Is music A part of practices now more than it has.

I'm not. I'm not a. I every now and then have a person. I'll see them. You know, they'll have their cell phone, they'll have earbuds in.

But not.

But I tell them, them I'm old school. I tell them, no, that's. That's. That's a hobby jogger habit. Okay. You know.

Yeah.

Me. Runners are listening to their. The rhythm of their breathing and their. And their heart rather than distracting themselves with music. So, I mean, you know, if you're going on an easy run on your own, then you can do it your way. But. But I practice. No, and. And the other thing is safety. If you're on. And even on a river trail, you can't hear anything going on around. You got earbuds on. But particularly if you're running on streets, you want to hear as much as your eyes alert you to what's going on. Your ears do in terms of, oh, there's a car coming up behind me, or there's a car zooming through this intersection.

Okay, let's switch over to recruiting. What's your recruiting philosophy? And, you know, what's, you know, at this level? Recruiting the base and foundation.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, you have to have people with some talent. First off, I have to give credit going way back to Denny Meyer and then my predecessor, Chuck Block. So we had a really good program, and LCC has been known as a really good distance program over the years. So that's made the job of recruiting easier. Any of the coaches that have been around this area for a while know that we have a really good running program and that preceded me. I'm just trying to.

And that helps with recruiting, Right, Right. Winning helps.

Yep. So I try to start in the greater Lansing area, but we get runners from really all over Michigan every now and then from out of state, but mostly Michigan. But in general, they come from schools that have previously had a runner go here.

Oh, interesting.

And so their coaches are familiar with the program or the kids themselves if it's more recent that someone's been here. Kids that are still in high school have heard from them, like, oh, yeah, I'm having a great time at LCC and I'm getting a lot better. So that's how, generally speaking, I initially make contacts. I mean, I do some cold recruiting. We'll go to some track meets and walk around, get out the performance list from the area and look down it and say, okay, Holt has a pretty good runner. Let's go see if we can find who he is. But most of our runners come from schools that have previously had runners showing they've had a good experience and a lot of siblings. I mean I really am proud of how many siblings we've gotten. You know, in some cases three or four kids from one family have come here. So again that speaks to the fact that yeah, yeah, the older brother or older sister has had a good experience. So you know, they, they tell their kids. But I think, I don't know how it is in the other sports here, but probably the number one sport thing that is a challenge in recruiting is the stigma that somehow community college is a lesser level of competition and maybe for not as bright students. Neither one of those are at all true. I mean I've had athletes have gone on and got PhDs in particle physics. I just got an email back. We're having an alumni event coming up. Got an email from one of our top runners from. She was here before I was the coach, but she's a physician in the area. So you know, she got her first two years here, got her undergraduate degree, went off to med school. So you know, we have, well, I think our women's cross country team. What were we the second in the conference or nation with our GPA?

First, I believe.

First.

Okay, 3.7.

Anyway, we've had a lot of very, very smart academically and athletically. And then in terms of athletically, particularly in our sport, I mean the way cross country and track and field are organized, except for our championship meets, the other meets we go to, most of them are hosted by NCAA D1 Schools.

So you're competing and we compete well against them.

So they get to compete against every level of, of cleaning.

Plus recruiting. That shows other coaches they can maybe run for their team too. What do you attribute to recruiting success? Is there one variable? Is it pipeline? Is it winning? Is it our location? Is it our tradition? What do you sell our kids on? Mostly that our campus, we get a lot of compliments on our campus.

You know, I think it's all above. I think one factor is the cost. We can get the cost down to zERO in terms of tuition for almost all of our athletes. And even if you're coming from out of area and renting an apartment here, it's still going to be significantly cheaper dorm and meal plan at a four year college. So cost is definitely a factor. I think the tradition of excellence, so the experience that they're going to have. We do have a beautiful campus. Whenever I have the opportunity to talk to trustees or administrators. I thank them for that because when people come and take a tour, they're impressed. I myself am a fan of architecture and I would not go to a school or let my kids go to a school that had an ugly campus. And then I've never had to tell a person, oh, no, don't come here. If that's the academic area you want to pursue. A lot of programs, we're really weak in that. You know, you're going to handicap yourself if you start here. I've never had to tell someone that. So our academics is a plus. But, you know, the main thing we're selling is that we have a great cross country program, great distance program. If you want to be a good distance runner, I think you can improve as much here as any school anywhere in the country.

Developing student, that's another big one too.

Good.

So, coach, I got a couple more. Do you got anything you want to.

Definitely hit in or just, you know, I was thinking you were talking about distance and tracking mileage and, you know, with technology today, it's pretty easy to track mileage, but how are you tracking it? When you were running in college at Penn State, or even prior to that, how'd you know how far you were running?

Yeah, yeah. So again, now, now the watches do it all. You know, it tells you, but, you know, going back to not wearing earbuds, listening to your body, so you got to know what pace you were running. So if I went for a 60 minute run, I knew what pace I was running. I could look at my watch. 60 minutes, I'm running at six minutes a mile. You know, I just ran 10 miles if I was running easier. Oh, I ran nine and a half. I was usually within a tenth of a mile. We had a guy on our team, he was really amazing at this. Again, we didn't have these modern watches, we just had a little stopwatch. But I remember once it was wintertime, it was cold, it was sleeting, we were supposed to run, I think 10 miles and we got back and the dining hall, that was about the only advantage you had of being on the team is that they, they let you go to the closest dining hall, regardless of where you lived on campus. And that one was open like a half an hour later than all the others. But it was like 10 minutes from closing. And again, we'd just run for an hour in the cold sleep. And George Christopher looked at his watch and he goes, I got another tenth of a mile to run.

Wow, that's impressive. I mean that you do utilize.

And he was probably right. Right. Knowing he had run nine year pace.

And that's what you try and teach kids is like, you know, even like when they do 400. What's a 60? What's a 65? I ran cross country in high school and so when I go back to my hometown, I always laugh. Like our coach would go out and drive before practice and see, this is two miles, this is two miles back. Or they'd always. With an orange wheel. It would be a measuring wheel that he would use. So like when I go home, I'm going, hey, when I get to Blackmore street. That was our two mile, four mile course. So using your car to measure course because you wanted to change it up and it's integrity. I mean, I can't say there weren't days we skipped and found a shortcut back through a course. No shortcuts, Cutter.

But that's the other thing. We would have courses that we would do routinely and some of them had been measured with a car or we just knew what that.

Funny when I laugh now and then this. And up until Fort by Eagle, you couldn't even wear a watch while you were running. Now everyone wears. I mean you don't even need a big clock up there because everyone does it on their, their watch.

Then again, I don't have. I actually did have a fancier watch that did all those things, but I've gone back to just a watch that used works as a stopwatch.

But stopwatches were big for coaches. They could tell by how far you were gone, you know, how long you did. So what's your favorite course, coach? Do you have a favorite course that you've either run on or coached on or been a part of?

I mean, you've got race course.

Yeah, race course.

You know, our grand woods course, we.

Get a lot of compliments on it.

I think that is one of the favorite courses of college athletes in Michigan.

Really?

I often have coaches tell me or athletes that, oh, you're the LC LCC coach. I ran at grand woods back when I was in college. It was my favorite course.

Okay.

I like having our team train there. And so again, I don't think I ever ran a race there myself, but I've run there a lot myself. It's a nice course.

In other parts of the country they have cross country designated Louisville Terre Haw Wisconsin.

Right. And now some of your top cross country colleges like Wisconsin have, you know, they built their own dedicated cross country course. I know Oklahoma State Has a dedicated cross country course, so that's becoming more.

Common, but not much. In Michigan, there's a couple shepherd and not much. So our home course is one of the favorite.

It is. I have certain routes that I used to run that some of them are favorites. I live in Grand Ledge and we have some nice parks in Grand Ledge. So I have a couple trails that lead from my house to a park and I'll do loops in the park.

But the far that you've run a race or.

You know. When I graduated from college, the pinnacle of distance running was to go to the Boston Marathon.

Okay.

So I've actually done the Boston Marathon 13 times. Oh, wow. And I had done it 12 years in a row. My goal was I knew I was never going to win or be top 10, but my goal was I can have a streak, you know, and so I had done it 12 years in a row. And then I got injured and I didn't do it. So I mean, what's the good of a streak if it's been broken? So I didn't go back. I didn't go back for years until the 100th anniversary in 96. And I wanted to go to Boston for the hundredth running of the Boston Marathon. So that was my last marathon. But I've run 26 or 27 marathons. Fifteen bosses, I run marathons. But two quick stories. One, when I was in college, I organized a group that went down and Maryland had this 24 hour relay where you could have 10 people on your team and you could run repeat. You ran repeat miles. So again, if you had 10 members on your team and they all ran six minute miles, your turn would come up once an hour. So over 24 hours, you run 24 miles. But our team started with nine. Well, I could only talk nine people into doing this. And as the night went on, several people dropped out. So I think toward the end we had six people. So my turn was coming up, you know, like every 35 minutes or every 40 minutes. But I ended up running 33 miles. Now, not continuous, right. But over 24 hours. That was probably one of my best athletic efforts ever. They did a prize for, you know, the fastest average.

Okay.

And you had to run at least 24. You could count your top 24.

Okay.

So you could, you know, not count several. And I'd done 33. But if you took my top 24, I averaged just over five minutes a mile.

Wow.

So that, that was one of my best athletic efforts ever. And I was worn out for like Three months after that. I mean.

You'Re training.

It took me a long time to recover from that because it was hot Muggies.

Oh, recovery is important.

We're not. And then, and then the other story is my very first Boston Marathon. This is a longer story, but I'll, I'll keep it shorter. I had a friend that went with me. He talked me into going and he was in a wheelchair and we ended up staying again. This is pre Internet, so I looked up in the yellow pages, the phone book, hotel chains, and I called the Best Western Boston. Well, the Best Western Boston actually ended up being the Wakefield Inn. And that's the last stop on the commuter train north of Boston. So it's not even in Boston. So anyway, I did, I did the marathon. 26 miles didn't go well, but then I had to get back to the Wakefield Inn to get our bags. We were taking the bus back to. I was in grad school in Rochester, New York. It didn't go well. I had planned this all out and I thought, well, it's not going to take me that long to run this and I'll have plenty of time to catch the train. And Patriots Day is a holiday. So when I looked at my watch, I realized, oh, the last train is like 20 minutes from now going out of North Station, where the Boston Garden is. So I ran. I figured I didn't have any other way to get there to make sure I could get there and catch that last train. So I ran two miles to North Station. Then I had to run like a mile and a half from the train station in Wakefield to the motel. And then I had to run back. With the bag. With the bag. These are old fashioned suitcases, you know.

Really, that's a post race, for example.

It added up to again like 31 miles.

Wow.

So that again was one of my. Even though the marathon itself didn't go well, that was one of my. In terms of stamina, one of my top athletic achievements.

Okay, okay. So would you rather run in the rain or the heat?

Rain.

Okay. I would think most would. That was a pretty easy one. Have you ever run barefoot?

Yes. Not for like a long distance, but I think one of, one of the common training techniques is if you have a decent track or some grass, running barefoot. Because again, one of the key things to improvement is to strengthen that sort of kinetic chain between your toes right up through your calf muscle. I mean, these new modern shoes really allow you to run more mileage, but it causes your feet to kind of atrophy. So running barefoot is a good counter. And I think it's one of the reasons why the Kenyans do so well is that they walk and run barefoot up until they make it big enough to get some sponsor to give them shoes. They're running barefoot.

What do you got to have on race day? Any superstitions, any routines, any possessions?

So I'm a big believer in routine. Routine is the anecdote for nervousness. So yeah, I had a very specific routine.

And the coach too.

Yes, yes. So we basically do our daily warm up. That's what we use for our routine pre race. And we do the same thing whether it's our first race in the season or time trial or the national championship routine.

I agree with you, we've said it differently, but routine is a. Is replacement for nervous system.

And I wouldn't say I'm superstitious, but you know, I had like a favorite pair of socks and I would just wear them in big races because I didn't want them to wear out. Even now I. Before the national championship, you know, they, they usually have. What do they call that? They have donuts and coffee for hospitality coaches. Hospitality. So I wear the same pair of khaki pants for every one of our national championships. Now I just wear them once a year because again, they're wearing out.

Well, hold on, we got a couple more to win.

So I wear the same pair of khaki pants that I go in and I eat my obligatory coach's hospitality donut and then we're ready to go.

All right, good, Good stuff. What about post race? Do you have a favorite meal after the race or favorite drinker?

I love Italian food. If I could only eat one type food the rest of my life, I'd probably choose Italian.

So we've had that question before on our podcast.

Spaghetti and meatballs probably.

Okay.

You know, Coke is actually a great replacement drink. Frank Shorter, when he.

What is.

Yes, it is Coca Cola.

Oh, really?

Frank Shorter, when he won the Olympic Marathon in 72, used D Fizz Coke. I mean, it has caffeine, it has sugar.

Huh.

That tastes good.

You're talking to two Coke guys, though. I like it any day, not just post race. But that's good to know.

But you're really tired on a hot buggy day. Like if you went for a run this afternoon, there's nothing better than an ice cold Coke.

All right, you just moved up on our list, Coach. We like. He likes McDonald's Coke the best. Right? Or any Coke in general. I drink a lot of Pop. This is. Now we're getting off subject here. My kids have got me on the Coke ZERO with less sugar. Still the caffeine. Have you guys tried that? Actually, I've been drinking it more. It actually tastes as close to Coke as I drink a lot of pop. So I'm trying to come back.

Yeah, it tastes reasonably good.

Yeah. Better than Diet Coke.

It's like, if you're gonna eat ice cream, you know, I don't want diet ice cream. If I'm gonna drink Coke, I like this guy. If I'm gonna drink Coke, Roger.

All right, I'm going back to regular Coke now.

I want to buy a Coke. I'd rather drink. Drink Coke every other day and drink a real Coke.

I like your advice, coach. I'm going back to regular cherry Coke. So what about the team? Are there any special? I mean, you go all over, so it's hard to go to the same place every time. But any.

We used to go to a lot of buffets, but increasingly difficult to do that. So, you know, we used to go to buffets. And I enjoy. I enjoy that. First off, in terms of the logistics, it works out really well. You don't have to worry about size of the team. You just give them a headcount, pay the bill. They have plenty of stuff to eat, right. Increasingly, particularly as we're coming out of the pandemic, we got in the habit of just, like, ordering Jimmy John's or Pete's.

That seems to be a popular one for our kids.

You know, having one of the parents go pick it up or having it delivered to the venue. And, you know, cost wise, I try to keep that in mind. You know, that's usually fairly reasonable, cost wise. So it's not as much fun for the team. So we still try to go, you know, like a buffet when we have the opportunity.

Sprinkle it in when you can. I like that our coaches try and put in a special one here or there. So anything else from you you want to share?

No, it's been a pleasure.

This went past, and there's so much more. We might have you back and dive into some of these.

I really enjoy being the coach here at LCC. I enjoy the staff we have.

Well, thank you. We do have a great staff. You're a big part of that. You represent LCC well. Your program is the pinnacle of community college cross country.

Oh, I know, I know. Something I want to say, we mentioned the national championships pre pandemic. This might not be as well known, but in track and field and cross country. They didn't have a Division 2. We're a Division 2 community college for our listeners. What that means is that we can give athletic scholarships, but we don't have dorms and we can't give scholarships to help with room and board. D1 can give scholarships for room and board. So they recruit a lot of international athletes. Particularly our main competition when we were D1, but up until the pandemic, we were D1 in cross country and track.

And field and still D1 in track.

And still D1 in track and field. But we won two women's championships. 14 and 15 is D1, and we won them with all local runners. I haven't taken the time to do this, but again, I've been around for 20 years, at least in the modern era, post 2000. I don't think there's any other school that has won a D1 cross country championship with local runners. So I'm proud of our Michigan distance runners. Right.

Well, again, we still run at a high level without. You've had some international students. We haven't even talked that. And again, we have local kids on our current team that have won a national title. And I would argue this year's team could compete at the D1 level. That is coming back. They're that talented and we look forward to following them. And we will have you back. But until that next time, we're going to sign off with Go Stars.

All right. 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!