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!

Podcast radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at LCC, past and present. ero

Lansing Community College athletics has a strong tradition.

25 national championships, 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. Right here at LCC.

This is Stars on Sports.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Stephen Cutter, and our producer, Daedalian Lowry. And gentlemen, it's no secret that on this podcast, I am a big Ted Lasso fan. And, you know, we've covered a lot of topics on Ted Lasso, but we've never really dived into, like, specifics. But as you know, Coach Gutter, one of my favorite videos, and I show it in almost every leadership presentation I give the dart scene from Ted Lasso. And the premise of that dart scene is be curious, not judgmental. It's a Walt Whitman quote, according to Ted, and I believe it is. But now today's world has it as a Ted Lasso quote. Walt Whitman kind of got lost in this transition, and I really like that quote. And as I researched it, it's incredible. And you and I again, over the last week, you brought up curiosity earlier this week about how important it is in developing an identity, which we will also dive into identity, too, in the future. And there's counterpoint to curiosity, but I like it. To me, it's learning. It's asking that an extra question. But when researching something, curiosity is a soft word. And when I say it, I kind of get it. And I always like asking you to your first take of what the word is. So for curiosity, what do you think? Good?

Bad?

Indifferent?

Excellence. In my studying, I've found across the board one of the most major things for people that have success in life. You know, success can be defined in a lot of ways. I like to define it as just, you know, being happy. And that's a whole nother path.

Good one.

The people that have been really successful are extremely curious. And they're not the type of people that necessarily walk around in their own worlds and think they know everything or choose to not listen. I think people that are curious are, you know, really solid at listening to others. They're usually pretty observant and they want to know why. And the More you can keep asking, you know, why is this like this? Why is this that way? That's how you can make large improvements, too, beyond just saying it is what it is, or this is the status quo or this is the foundation of our business or whatever it might be. The curious people are really the people that are the innovators and the movers and the shakers.

Danalion, what do you think of the word curiosity?

I like the word. I find that when I am curious about things, actually, most of the time when I'm utilizing curiosity, it's talking to somebody so I get to know people better. So I find it good in that manner. I can't say that I am a naturally curious person. Kind of like Cut was saying, I get caught up in my own little world, and I try to. To be curious, and it is something I have to actively pursue.

Yeah, great point. Actually, I hadn't thought of that because I don't think of myself as curious either. But when I do talk to people, I do try and ask a question, more than a question, just, how are you doing? Just to dive deeper and get to know them or pull it out of them. So I don't think I'm naturally there, but I try to do it when I talk to people. The quote that stuck with me over the last couple weeks, and that was gonna be a different podcast, but we can tie it in, this one is Eleanor Roosevelt, and I'm gonna butcher it. But it's, we wouldn't care how much people thought of us if we knew how little they really thought of us. And we do get caught up in ourselves or what people think of us. And in the grand scheme of things, I've been trying to tell my kids lately, they don't care. They don't think about it. They're moving on. You know, they might judge you for a second, which is the first part of this. Don't judge. And I'm a big believer in that. I think that's where we get caught up. We label everything. We judge everything. You know, if someone comes in with a limp, that the first thing you know, and you label them with it instead of why do you have that? Or how have you overcome it? And what are your successes with it? And so I think the key. I'm focused on curiosity. But I also don't want to forget the don't judge part because I think we're too often the judge, and that's not our place in life to judge other people.

Interestingly enough, I actually find that I excel at that area, I do not judge people very often. Very often it's a matter of going into the conversation, or if I'm in the conversation and they say something I don't agree with, I don't automatically jump to the conclusion that we can't find common ground or anything like that.

So good. I think that's a great attribute.

In reality, that's the way it should be, though. I mean, we all have so much, as human beings, all have so much in common that we're really more alike than what we realize. And we get stuck on some of these things.

Differences.

And the differences. Yeah. And we really have so much in common. And we get lost. And that's almost, you know, somewhat like what we're talking about on the Curious piece. You get lost because you have one thing and you no longer are curious. But we do have a ton in common.

An interesting way to put it, too, is very often I'll be driving down the road and something will happen, and whoever. I'm not going to name names, but the person that I typically am in the car with will get kind of annoyed with that person. But I'm very. And just saying, you know, you don't know what's going on in that person's world. You don't know if they're in a rush because they've got to get to the hospital or anything like that.

They're late.

Cut. And I talk about that a lot because we have the same commute to work and we laugh at these people that are driving fast or getting over quickly and you don't know what's going on. But both of you hit on a couple of points. I'd like to dive in deeper. First. Cut. You talked about the why. Finding the why. And we've talked about that before, how you need to find your why in life. What's your why? And being curious and helps you. Like, kids go out of college and they think, well, I'm finding my end job. And that's not normally the case. Normally they gotta find some different things. And I would encourage them to be curious and try different things. Because just because you think you want to be a teacher, maybe you want to be a counselor or maybe you want to be a coach. And so it is. Being curious helps you find your why. And to your point, Dalian, being open is important. I think we forget that sometimes that come in things with an open mind and then see where that goes. We have so much information at our fingertips, we sometimes come in with a predisposed conclusion. That this quote, don't judge, be curious, helps remind us to come in open. Because to your point, it also develops relationships. And that's where I think it's important in our job, because we talk about how to be a successful team. It's about trust and relationships. And being curious significantly builds stronger relationships. It helps you get to know people. It helps you understand people. And I think, you know, coaches are at a fault Sometimes when something goes wrong, we, like, jump on them instead of, what'd you see? What happened? How can, you know, walk me through it? Instead of, why'd you do that?

Sometimes it's really hard to even have a response when you're talking about something like that, because a lot of the times it's just a reaction. And you can work and get your reactions better, but ultimately, some things are just reactions. You just react.

And that. Actually, we did the boot camp here at Alice that you did boot camp. And one of the neat things that it re emphasized is pause, respond, not react. And I'm a quick one to react. And I worked with some of my kids that, like, just are ready to jump when they think someone's wrong or know the answer and you're right. One of the things that learning about curiosity is pausing, taking a breath, slowing things down, and leading the conversation. So, yeah, I think we've talked about before how everyone you're listening to talk instead of listening to understand. Just an interview. Lately, we were interviewing for a position at college, and the person just paused before she ever. And that's hard for people because their silence can make you nervous. And she did a great job pausing and then going right into a nice, fluid answer. And I've always been impressed with people that have been able to do that.

You will find the people that pause also do not drop a lot of ums and ahs.

Interesting. I would agree with that, because they're comfortable with silence. Where and when I say, you know, it's a filler, it's like, we're not comfortable.

I do know that there are cultures where it's almost expected as I say it, as they go to talk, where the pause is supposed to be there, they would prefer you do that than anything else. In fact, it's part of the conversation.

It is about conversation. In this particular Ted lasso scene, both of them kind of, like, hustle the other person. The old owner says, oh, I have these nice darts, and Ted was throwing with the wrong hand, and what do I need to win? He gets, like, three of the toughest shots to win. But if you ask questions to his point, you would have known that he threw darts his whole teenage life with his dad and got regularly. But, you know, sometimes we like squash it. We don't. We underestimate because. And I think that's true in sports a lot because of all the information we have or the scouting reports and such.

It's also a piece of you could be wrong. So the more curious you are, the more often you find that maybe some of your beliefs or your first impressions or, you know, whatever it might be, you were wrong. And I think just as general, we don't really lean into liking the feeling of being wrong.

No, especially in our business too. Again, I think it does lead to assumptions, gossip, foregone conclusions. The curiosity helps you on the back end of being wrong less because you're open, you're not judging right away that what you think will happen or. And it's hard because part of our business is trying to predict what will happen and getting prepared for each scenario. But it's a switch in perception because it is inquiring. It is that you matter. And it's about being vulnerable to, like you said, open yourself up to learning about people and their differences. But it's also being able to find maybe common ground by asking more questions. I think to your point, Daedalian, some people are better at it than others. We always joke about my dad, he helps me out at athletic events here. And whenever we go to a sporting event, he's just finding somebody to talk to and asking questions at the end of the night. Yeah, that guy went to Cleveland, he played here, he did this and we just laugh. And I don't think he's an extrovert. I think think he's curious that what brings you here? What's your background? What's your expertise? And it is important to kind of navigate through that. And we don't have time. We always use time as an excuse of maybe not doing that. And that's where teams should be better. Because your preseason or even before that, you know, we have questionnaire that we ask our student athlete that give us their background and such. But it's really asking the better question. Do you have a go to question when you talk to somebody? Like in our leadership camp, if you remember, they said, what's your favorite gas station food? If you're going into the gas station, what are you buying at the gas station?

Are you asking us now?

That could be our food question. Did we already get over to the food question? But no, but like mine are like, what's your favorite teacher, your least favorite teacher, your favorite something? Like, I have them compare their favorite thing compared to their least favorite thing.

Well, I will say that whenever Cut comes in with a new player or anything like that, I usually tend to ask them about the city they're from, and then if I was to visit that city, what would be the best thing to visit?

Those are great questions. Yeah, those are good. Well done, Dallian. You co. I know you do. You're a good question asker.

It just really depends on the body language of the person, so it could be fairly simple. I tend to like to try to meet. Meet them where they're at, more or less. And so you walk into maybe a gas station and the person working behind the counter, it looks tired. And, you know, it's. It's more or less greeting them with a hello, and it looks like you've had a pretty long day. You know, just generating things like that that gets people to open up a lot more than how you doing, because you get the G word back. And, you know, it's just pretty superficial. I think if you really want to get to know people and you can get to a point where, like, there's some trust in the room and stuff like that. Like, we have a lot of trust in this room, in this circle that we're in, too. And so that's kind of why I bring that up. And maybe some other people can take something from it, but it's. It's getting to a different level where it's like, Dalian, describe who you are without including the titles or where you came from, any of that stuff. Tell me about who you are, you know, and. And that gets people to really start thinking about, okay, yeah, you know, I'm very curious, you know, that kind of stuff. That. That's how you can really get to know people. Because a lot of times you're going to be like, I'm the athletic director at Lansing Community College. And then I was the athletic director at Mason High School and Eaton Rapids. And, you know, you're just going in to all that stuff, and those are just titles that superficial. They're just titles at the end of.

The day, again, that's where it comes back to a good question or digging deeper than I know your program doesn't use the word good, which I find great. Like when they came in for leadership last night, just asking them, none of them use good in any of their answers of how you're doing. And you're right. That's such a Cop out. Question how you're doing. Good. Walk on. And do you really care how they're doing? Curiosity. We'll talk about the other side of it. Because one of you brought up a quote on the kills the cat. Yeah. Which I didn't know much about, but. But we'll hit it right now. I'll go back to my stuff. But that's about having too much curiosity.

They must not be curious at all.

I'm allergic to cats.

Me too.

But that quote is about if too much curiosity could lead to trouble or lead to finding out things you don't want to find out. And I think that is another reason we're maybe not as curious as a society, too, is because we don't want to know. We're afraid what it might, and we might have to do something about it if we learn something that it is.

But I'm always curious about where phrases come from. That's why this is up.

I'm glad you brought it up. I was, too.

It was originally called Care Killed the Cat From Ben Johnson's 1598 play, every man and His Humor. And then the switch from care to curiosity happened gradually, likely because of common observations that cats are curious creatures.

Okay. Which yours said yours weren't. Again, I don't have cats.

And then that's great.

See, we're more than sports on this podcast. We got some literature going on.

She brought up the curiosity killed the cat. And my grandma used to always say, whenever I would say it, but satisfaction brought him back every time.

Interesting. And does that mean that they got satisfied with what they found?

Yeah, basically her thought process was, well, curiosity is a good thing. And if you actually looked into it, you probably would find some sort of answer. So that's gonna bring you back.

Yeah. And I believe it lends right into one of our biggest premises on the show, that strength to the extreme becomes a weakness, that too much curiosity killed the cat. And I think of. When I think of it now, more I think of they got in trouble because they kept digging deeper and might have gotten to a hole.

And that is the premise, I believe.

Could be a parallel to Dan Campbell.

Well, we're gonna talk more about Dan later. Not this podcast, because I have another great topic that lends into that about making it and breaking it. But back to this. The other thing about judging and curiosity is sometimes we're quick to judge, even though we're open at the beginning. But we take that first five minutes, and what happens is we like our brain. And you've taught me A lot about how the brain operates. And we get so much information in a second that we gotta go right to the pattern that we're used to that we are quick to judge. And it could lend us to missing a lot of things about people. And your point, you know, the mood can lend to that. Mistakes lend to that. In our business, if they make a mistake, we can judge them or we can criticize them instead of inquiring and helping them through that. And I think that's a mantra we really need to work harder at in our business. That I hope you know. That's why I think the TED Lasso show really helped out of changing the approach on how we look at things. Because there's yelling in our sport, there's demonstrative behavior, and it's usually when a mistake happens, whether it's by the official, a player or someone at the event. And it won't totally change because again, it's in the moment. It's hard. Back to your respond, react. But if we carry that and our mantra, and I have a shirt that said this, and I get. Every time I wear this shirt, people say, I like your shirt. Don't judge, be curious. The more we do that, the better I think overall we will be at handling those moments. So, again, the scene itself, I show it every year. It's a great ending. He ends with barbecue sauce, which is kind of his mantra saying, and go to moments. And I think we should have that, too. We were talking about bowling here before the podcast. Just your approach and visualization. And he's from Kansas City, so I'm guessing the barbecue sauce has something to do with that or the, you know, just, you know, this is like gravy to get that bullseye or 30 he needed. So I love it. I mean, any other thoughts on curiosity or judging or how it impacts your team or what you see in our athletic world?

I think it still goes back to the successful athletes. Successful people are going to be just a little more curious than the people that aren't or the ones that don't have as much success. And I think it's something that it's somewhat of a muscle. We might be. I think we are born naturally curious, but I think it probably gets maybe drummed out of us a little bit. But it's something that you can get a lot better at and maybe get back to, you know, when you were born and you were curious and touching everything and trying to play, you know, with everything. And so it's definitely a muscle. And if you want to get better. Curiosity is an incredible place to start.

I agree. I think it's powerful if your locker room has curiosity in it. And I think it ties into some of the themes we've talked about recently from, again, what I've learned about don't judge, be curious. Egos shrink because you're, again, less interested in you and more interested in the other person. And we've talked about egos recently. Accountability rises because you have that trust, that relationship. And we've talked about accountability before. And the other big thing is it's learning. It's, you know, mistakes happen. We learn from them. And I think being curious is a growth mindset. It's a mindset of I want to keep learning about something in particular and specifically mistakes in our business and in the world itself, that mistakes and failures are okay, and let's be curious and figure out why we made it and how we can be better. So I think it becomes a growth mindset that leads to the premise of Dallian's first amendment of connection, relationships, and bonding that, you know, make teams better.

Very cool.

You got anything else, Daedalian?

Nope. I'm just going to say curiosity. Good. And actually, as. I guess I do, because as I got to thinking about it, I thought, you know what? I actually am a little more curious than I thought I was because we were. Yeah. When we were talking about, like, very, very much like, I'm always curious about how I can improve things. And especially, like, in my limited sports arena of bowling and golf, I am always watching videos and trying to go, okay, how can I approach this better? What can I do better?

Yeah. And it's a great approach. And coach and I get frustrated with the fixed mindset. People that are lazy or stubborn or don't want to get better with all that potential to the ones that are curious and do want to get better. So. All right, that's great discussion. We'll probably have more on that because, again, it's my favorite video. It's my favorite saying. I try and live by that. As you've known, carpe diem with my, like, light mantra. But this one is moving up because I don't want to be judgmental and I want to be curious about things going on around.

Are they still have seasons of Ted Lasso or are they done making that show?

Yeah. My understanding that they're filming the fourth season right now.

I'd heard a rumor.

Really, so.

And I understand. I've seen pictures of them doing, you know, it'll be a different kind of setting So I hope that, you know, worry about if they change it. And I'm not sure he's coaching AFC Richmond anymore. But the principle of the show is still some of these leadership lessons. And there's a lot of them. And the two other ones that are big to me is the believe. Believing in ourselves and the believe sign. And then be a goldfish. Which in researching for the podcast, I realized goldfish don't really have 10 second memory. So that kind of hurts me a little bit. We're still gonna. That's probably gonna be our next podcast, though. Be a goldfish. I do believe that the key leadership principle. But let's get to our. I was struggling with some food questions, so if you guys have good food questions, let me know. But my one, I was gonna come today with candy canes, like if you like them or not. But we're holding off on that one. So think of that one. Eggnog. I'll start. I like eggnog. I wouldn't. It's not a drink. If you looked at the ingredients, I would not want to drink it. But this time of year it's like apple cider in the fall, which I think we did talk about earlier that the dallian, the one cup guy and ditches it. But I see his face. I'm thinking he's not even a one cup guy in eggnog. But maybe I'm reading him wrong. What about eggnog Cutter?

I think my. My brain or my identity was formed and you say eggnog and I think of Christmas vacation and cousin Eddie and I'm just like, no, you know, so you don't.

Did your family buy it for the holiday? Does anyone in your family drink it?

I don't think so. I look at that as in the same parameters, those green wreath cookies for Christmas that they put those little red dots on them.

But we're gonna talk about sugar cookies, too. We're gonna talk about sugar cookies too. Not today. We're gonna stick with eggnog. But we will talk about candy canes and sugar cookies in our next couple. What about you, Daedalian?

I completely surprise you on this one because here's my thing and I'm gonna go very Lansing, Michigan on this one. I do like eggnog. I will drink it. I don't really go after it or anything like that in the store or anything like that, except for quality dairy eggnog. I don't know what they do different, but it is so good. And I will absolutely confess it is a guilty pleasure. For me this time of the year. And I swear I put on a few pounds already. But almost every day, I will stop in for one little bottle of quality dairy eggnog. And I just love it so much.

So you've already started drinking it?

Oh, I've been drinking it almost every day since the beginning, actually. Probably before Thanksgiving.

Okay.

And it's like. And I know I shouldn't because it's.

A lot of calories. Yeah, I agree with you, Dalian. I like it, too. Just this time of year. I have not had it yet. I usually buy a half gallon. I think I'm the only one in my family that does drink it, so. But I will drink it as much as I can between now and Christmas.

My girlfriend's not from the Lansing area, and I gave it to her to drink. She's like, oh, this is, you know, didn't care for her. She doesn't care for eggnog. But she was one time got me eggnog from the store, and I go, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. It's not eggnog. It's QD eggnog..

There you go.

I'm not trying to throw it out there to QD all over the place, but, I mean, their eggnog does rock.

Okay, well, that's interesting. So a little different than I thought, but good conversation. Until next time. Go stars.

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