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. 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!

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I am joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter, and our production manager, Daedalian Lowry's Back in the cheer. So today we're going to be discussing a couple of things and I just want to talk. But, you know, we're going to talk about the butterfly effect and that in sports. But also, you know, as we record this episode, it's our end of the year. So just kind of the thing that go into that. And coach for you, it's also, you know, heading toward the end of the season. So we may 3rd. It's, yeah, crazy where this year goes, and it's been a good year for LCC athletics, as usual, but it's just crazy where it goes. And the butterfly effect is a part of that because it talks about effect and small things that happen that change what's moving forward. And it's so prevalent in sports, it's prevalent in life, which again, we think sports is a microcosm of life. But one thing happened that just totally changes and leads to something else in sports. You know, the one. The one. One of the ones I remember most about here in athletics, and I'd like to get your perspective is my first year here, our basketball team was on a roll. I mean, we were competing for a region championship, a conference championship, and a kid gets hurt. Our second, one of our best players gets hurt, and it just changed the rest of the season. And if he didn't get hurt, I mean, I think we could have contended for a national championship. I mean, he, you know, and, you know, just little things like that. And researching this top, you know, you know, pro player that got hurt, that like Drew Brees, you know, he got hurt or something, and then it led to him getting traded to the Saints. And if he never got traded to the Saint, they won a Super bowl with him and such. And that's, you know, a true butterfly effect. It's actually a movie with Ashton Kutcher. I Have not seen the movie. Have either one of you seen the movie? No, I have.

I do not recall it.

Yeah, I don't either. It had something to do with blackouts and him going back and changing things, but. But the butterfly effect actually is, I think, a real thing about a butterfly. Butterfly can flap its wings and create enough wind that like for a tornado or a hurricane, that's kind of where down the air.

That's kind of where it started. I. I know if in sports there's all kinds of butterfly effects, if you. If you really look at them. But I think it was a mathematician by the name of Edward Norton Lorenz that was also a meteorologist, and he used it for weather and tornadoes. And so that's kind of it really closely where that started and how it was related. And then it's moved into the sports world and all these other avenues. And we certainly have a lot of things in the sports world that you look at and you can see the butterfly effect in them.

Well, I appreciate that, Coach. We have history lessons on this podcast too. So Stars on History is the sub podcast of this one. But you obviously know enough about it then if you know that specifics and such. And do you have some examples that stand out with you regarding it either at baseball, at L. LCC or just in sports in general?

I think it's. It goes back to the. The theory that everything affects everything. And so in sports, one. One swing can change a season. You know, one foul ball can change a season. We were just watching a documentary about the 2022 Ole Miss baseball team that was. Had a really pretty average season, below average season. And they ended up getting hot and winning a national championship. And there was a certain play in the super regionals where a team had hit a grand slam and it looked like it was a grand slam. It was right down the line. And they went to replay and they looked at it and they determined that was foul. And even though the replay certainly appeared to be that was a fair ball. So those runs got taken off the board and the next pitch the guy popped it up to the first baseman and they were out of the inning. And so it's those little things that just kind of propel teams.

And I think that's a great example. And I have one you'll probably know better than me, but I only vaguely remember some of the specifics. But. And I think they're amplified in sports because of maybe championship that it leads to. But the University of Michigan baseball team a couple years ago, or they have an Kind of a okay season. And in the Big Ten championship tournament, there was a split second play at second base that went their way that allowed them to win, I believe. And by winning that they made it to the tournament and they ended up going to the national championship, if I believe that. But that one little play goes the other way and it's a totally different outcome for the whole, the whole world of college baseball because they ended up beating team that might have gone for. And you talk about momentum, you talk about being hot and how that can happen, but I know you're also a big believer, like how to handle that effect. Like, you know, if one thing goes your way or doesn't go your way on making sure you try. And you know, our ero, I mean, that equation comes up a lot. So we're using math and science and meteorology here and we don't even want to talk about meteorology again with this spring. But, but, you know, so in sports, it's also trying to find a way to like mitigate the butterfly effect.

But for sure, momentum is one of those things that's in every sports event that you watch or that you playing in or coaching or anything else. Momentum kind of moves all over the place. It's. It's on one side, it's on another side. And you know, you try to teach about. It's not so much what happens to you, but being able to answer. And when you can answer back in your whatever, however you're doing it, that's a good way to start shifting the momentum back to your side.

And I think that's big about the butterfly effect though, because an event happens, you know, and change is going to happen from that event. And you know, another thing, I think that's huge in how you handle it. And you know, I learned a lot from Zach Sorensen and your base, you know, going to some of your leadership. The thing is confidence. And confidence, and I'm paraphrasing, equals trust and trust in your process and trust in you and being able to have that. Because having confidence can, can lead to how you handle a certain event, especially I believe in hitting or shooting a basketball, having that confidence, you know, heading into taking that game winning shot or at the bottom of the ninth in tennis, you know, when it. Or in volleyball when it's match point, you know, and you gotta, you know, the pressure might be a little higher per se, and I don't know if you, you know, because you like keeping pressure here.

But yeah, it's, it's definitely good. It still Comes back to belief, you know, and. And your confidence is built by your belief system, not necessarily by the things that are around you. And if, if you allow the things around you to build your confidence, then it's going to kind of waver and be somewhat like a roller coaster. So if you can have a belief system that's built by the processes that you do, you build confidence through that and not the external stuff. So it's super important to have confidence and to have a belief system.

Not to digress, but my belief system is in Ted Lasso. But. But. Just kidding. But. But the other interesting thing about the butterfly effect too, is it. Is it more like reflection? Like you don't know it at the time, what?

Hundred percent.

And we don't do a lot of that or we get too busy to as a society. I think, you know, good coaches and teams and even good people at the end of the day. I just heard a motivational speaker talk about how important, you know, reflection is one of the important things that successful people do. You know, keeping a journal, which I know is big to your group, whether in the morning or at night.

But I mean, think about, like the effects of. We're sitting in this room right now, but what if you had decided to go play a college sport? You know, would we be sitting here right now?

Right.

And I've told you. Example of, you know, even my own college experience of choosing one school over the other or, you know, I had two meetings scheduled at this time and I chose this one cause I wanted to be around you two instead of the other meeting. But I hope they're listening. But yeah, and it's crazy, but we don't think of that at that time. But I'm sure we all have examples throughout history. I mean, even in music, there's examples, even bands. I was listening to a podcast today, and I'm not a Pearl Jam or Nirvana person, but how bands split up and can lead to different bands.

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Van Halen's a huge tale of that. I think that as I. As I'm listening to you guys and, you know, obviously not a huge. Don't dive into sports too often, but the one thing that I think on a daily occurrence that everybody, I mean, I know it goes through my brain from time to time is driving, where, you know, you get stuck at a stoplight very often I'll sit there and tell myself, well, maybe that helped me avoid some accident down the road or

something like that just made you later than what you were.

Well, there is that too. But you and I talked about this earlier this week that I wasn't even thinking about. Could be a whole nother podcast. Making your story like an obstacle to overcome makes that story better in spite of. Yeah, and I agree with you, Daedalian. How many near misses there were in your life, especially in driving or you missed a plane and things. Thankfully you missed it because, you know, it got diverted or something. So, yeah, it's in all facets of life. And I think driving is another good one. But especially in sports and, you know, and I think, you know, in my experience here at LCC, even my experience before, I don't think it gets talked about a lot. But when you sit back and look at it, that all the different. And I'm not a what if person. I actually hate the question what if? I don't want the what if? I want to capitalize on doing what. What we can do or make the most of that. But, you know, I think the butterfly effect lends into, you know, what if this would have happened, you know, what if Sean didn't get hurt? You know, that it. Leave that question.

So.

Any other. Go ahead.

Well, I was just saying my point about the Van Halen, I never dove too far into that because it's not a music podcast. But they actually had three singers, and a lot of people don't know that. Yeah, they had, of course, David Lee Roth. You had Sammy Hagar. But then the third singer was Garry Sharone. Now, Gary Sharon used to be with the band Extreme, and he was, you know, very much considered to be a great singer at that time. But then he did the thing with Van Halen and nobody really cared for him after that. And he never really picked up his career like he had it before.

Sometimes it's all about who you follow.

Yeah, yeah, but we've talked about contagious proximity. Yeah, exactly. Of, you know, following a great coach or, you know, two great singers. I'm a Van Halen fan, so I'm glad you brought up music. We like music. Again, Green music and sports are very similar. Another part I think, you know, it impacts in our, especially at LCC and in college athletics is recruiting. You know, the, you know, how much time we put in recruiting in the near misses there or, you know, the ones we do get or the ones we get that turn out even better. So I think the butterfly effect is huge, actually, in the recruiting area of our job.

Yeah, for sure. You know, the more successful you are, the. The quote, unquote, easier recruiting gets and the less Success, you have the quote, unquote, harder recruiting gets. So it certainly plays an impact on that. And it's. It's a lot of little things that make up the big things. And sometimes those little things just don't go your way. And sometimes they do. Yeah.

And then it still goes back to how you handle those things, which then lead to a new effect and, you know, you know, might as well go into that conversation, too, as we end, you know, that final third of all our academic year and seasons is there. As a coach, is that approached differently or significantly? Okay.

Yeah. I believe that the stars shine the brightest in the final third of the

season and that accumulation of everything that transpired up until then.

Yeah, it's called systems of success or, you know, your process or whatever it might be, but it's trusting that they are going to shine the brightest.

Yeah. And that's what you work towards. You know, again, I've shared with you how I love at the beginning of the season because there's new hope and there's, you know, new teams and new new schedules and everything. But I also agree with you. And then the middle, you know, I compare it to, like, running track, even, like, you know, in 800, everyone sprints that first lap and everyone sprints that last 200. But that middle of the race is where you kind of might coast or relax a little bit. Where I learned and when I coach was take advantage of that, work a little harder during that time and you'll. You'll get an advantage against others. And to your point, I think we do that even in our season, the middle, you know, we try. You know, people are trying to play around in that, but I know a lot of teams and you got to have a good start, you know, even back to the butterfly effect and a good season, because I'm a believer of the golf saying you can't win the tournament in the first day, but you can lose it. And even like Major League Baseball right now, there's a lot of talk about there's teams out there that have already, you know, seasons are in a tough situation if they're like 3 and 18 or something. But still, I still think for many of those teams, it's trying to figure things out. You're close, and those teams that shine the brightest are the ones that put it all together in that last third. Their pitching comes together, their hitting come together, their shooting come together, their defense come together. You might not have seen it, but if you look closely enough, you know it there. And the good ones do Put it together at the end, and that what you're trying to experience with your final

third, I think that's what we've always tried to do here. And it's the same idea. It's still boils down to a belief system. And there's a difference between getting on the start line and hoping you're going to win and knowing you're going to win.

And there's a lot more variables, too, because if you haven't had that success, then back to that belief system or trust that we still need to do these things to be successful, even though they might not have panned out. You know, there's other variables that you're dealing with that you. You know, that you got to try and fix and get together before the end of the season.

But.

And even those teams that might be out of it still finishing strong and building momentum for the future, they maybe get an upset if you make the postseason or something.

But I hate to derail again, but you just mentioned golf, and I think that's the epitome of butterfly effect right there. Anybody that's a golfer knows that you have that one bad shot, you let it affect the rest of your hole, and you're completely messed up. Now, at the same time, what's also cool is the butterfly effect, where I hit a bad shot, I'm in a bad area, but then I get this phenomenal recovery, and that's enough to make me go, well, that was where I was supposed to be, so I'm good to go.

And you find a couple extra golf balls while you're doing that.

Yeah, well, that's a successful round for me, finding more than I lose. But the butterfly effect for me is I'm going to hit a tree. So does I hit a tree and go in the woods, or do I hit a tree and it goes back out in the fairway? That's my butterfly effect.

And I have.

I have.

Yes, we've all witnessed that a little bit. Yeah.

But I think it's. That's a great point, because I think in golf, you hit it on the nose. Like, I'm not a very good golfer, but I hit one good shot around. It, like, brings me back. And you usually can get one good shot, and it does give you that, like, high. That momentum, that confidence.

Well, and even when you take away the mental aspect, I've had times where, like, I will have a pretty decent hole and I'm. Maybe I get a bogey or a double bogey, but I always think, you know, if I'D hit that one shot a little better, that one shot. Then I would have had a better score on that one. But.

And again.

And that's, that's why I say it's the epitome of butterflies.

It is. Especially when you look back at your round and reflect, you can see that what led to that, that next hole. And another topic we talk a lot about and I, you know, Ted Lasso talks a lot about is be a goldfish. Short term memory. And that is so important in golf. Forget about that, you know. You know, I learned some mental performance from some of the guys you like about, like, how long should you remember something, you know, like one thing, one person, like under a second, you know, don't even remember it, you know, but. And in golf, I think that's very important. You cannot, you know, you gotta let it go. You have, and too many people don't. They're still stewing.

Yeah. And a lot of that from the psychology piece is really, how mentally tough are you or how mentally weak are you? If you're pretty mentally tough, you can take bad events and use them as catalysts for drive and for that kind of stuff. If you, if you're struggling with that piece of the mental side, then it ends up kind of being a crutch or one of these things that really debilitates you. So you have to determine where am I at? Not where somebody else is at, but, you know, you can take things like a bad golf shot or anything else and use that to drive you. Or you can use that to be like, you know, I'm not very good and this is just another day and I keep hitting balls in the woods

and I think that transfers to your sport and hitting. I think it transferred to volleyball and serving and basketball and shooting. Like if you're, you know, if you're over two on the day and you're going up against the same pitcher again, you know, you know, making the adjustments or, you know, I mean, back to your point of what a foul ball, you know, a ball that just goes right outside the baseline. How that, you know, can impact your confidence or your momentum or even your memory of moving forward.

Yeah, I think that's awesome that you really dive into the mental aspect of the game and that is the butterfly effect that you cannot control, but you can at least help it flourish. Is that the right word? That's not even the right word, but you get what I'm saying.

Yep. Big thing. And I learned a cultivate that conference recently and they were talking about Mentally tough. And, you know, the premise was you have to be mentally well, to be mentally tough. And that's a whole nother podcast. We talked about it, and I know your program works on it with falling sleep being, you know, minimize, you know, handling anxiety, having nutrition and that.

So being consistent.

So in handling the butterfly effect, mentally toughness is an important part of that. And there's so many factors. You know, we all want to, you know, some of the best teams are mentally tough, but there's so many variables that go into that.

Good stuff.

It is good stuff. Well, that's. That's. We could talk more on the butterfly thing. We probably will, and we'll talk more about some of these other topics, but I do like ending these with. With some stupid questions or something. So debating between sunflower seeds or ice cream. So we're gonna go with ice cream. I hope you both like ice cream, but when I think of youth sports, you know, like, this is stupid, but when I. When we went to. When I take my kid to church, I used to bribe them by taking them out to eat afterwards just so they'd, like, go into church. Well, when I think of youth sport, the fun part was going for ice cream afterwards. You know, I always went to the local dairy store in hand. My family loves ice cream. So we can go two ways, whether some kind of place you'd like to go after a certain event or what's your favorite ice cream or.

Well, actually, it's funny that you mentioned the church and after ice cream thing, because I can remember as a kid, I don't know that we were necessarily being bribed, but I know that every time we would go to church right afterwards, you guys, anybody from the area would Remember House of 32 flavors that used to be on jolly and cedar. And that was always our destination point after church. So it was that thing where that's what I always looked forward to. It wasn't going to church, I can tell you that.

But the ice cream afterwards.

Oh, yeah, I was down for that.

You're right. And it's not necessarily bribing in that case. It might be just that a routine or a family, you know, tradition.

I think they were probably bribing us without saying this word.

There was some significant bribing in there. You see it at the youth, youth levels of sports. You know, you. You guys play well today, and you go out and give good effort or, you know, pay attention for an hour, whatever it might be. We'll go get some ice cream after, you know, and that's That's a win, you know, and so I think it. It definitely plays in. I'm not a huge ice cream person, but having four kids and a wife, you know, they. Obviously, they. We've had to bribe them at different times, so certainly. Certainly we'll go. But. But it's not necessarily something that I'm just gonna be like, oh, if I do this, I'm gonna go get some ice cream after.

But do you have something in your path, like something you did that even. Like, my grandparents took us miniature golfing all the time, and we'd always go to Dairy Queen afterward. They lived in Ohio, and we loved them. My siblings and I love miniature golfing still, and my parents do and my kids do, but it was just like, do you have any of those traditions or something?

Well, I think back, you know, because we've been talking about the butterf And. And as we're working through this, I think. I think about, like, the butterfly effect with myself and coaching. And I was coaching T ball at one point and at the little league level, and I remember telling the. They're so small, and they couldn't pay attention for more than two seconds, you know, but telling them, like, okay, if. If we do well today, we're gonna. We're gonna get some ice cream after. If we do not, we're having broccoli for our team snack, you know, so. Wow, that was a. That was a real thing. But the funny thing about it is that team went undefeated that year. And, you know, we never keep score at that level. But after every game, I tell you, you guys played great. We won, you know, and I think it's important to build that at young ages, that competitiveness. And maybe you do have to bribe them at times.

Well, but it is, you know, that's a good point about competitiveness. I just. Watching the Michigan spring game, and the winner gets steaks and the losers get hot dogs and weenies, and there was a competitive thing. And in today's society, too many times we see everyone getting steak or everyone getting a. A medal or a participation certificate. I think broccoli is a little extreme and, you know, probably not, you know, something we probably could even accept nowadays, you know, if we said, but the

kids aren't going to accept.

True that. So did your team go to ice cream after those T ball games?

Absolutely.

Yeah. It was fun seeing all the little jerseys at the local. So do you have a flavor, favorite ice cream flavor, even though you don't like it that much?

Not really.

Really.

What about you. Mint chocolate J, baby.

Okay.

Oh, yeah.

Mine's coffee, and I don't even drink coffee. Oh, yeah.

Well, yeah, I could do coffee, too. And then there's the peanut butter one. And. Yeah, actually, I'm. I'm down with ice cream.

Me, too. Me, too. My. My family is, too. My kids get ice cream.

You and me can. We can leave Coke Chicago behind.

Yeah.

It's all good.

So. All right. As always, great conversation. And 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 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!