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'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter, and our producer, Jereny Robinson. And gentlemen, as we record this podcast, we are wrapping up our fall season here at LCC and had a great fall. And the thing I want to discuss today is about finishing and even talk a little baseball and softball, how we're finishing up a fall season. But it's really finishing in preparation for your spring season. So even some of that finishing is preparation for your next start. So there's so many ways to go, as we talked about before we came on air, about finishing strong or things not going well, but you still finish or how close you are to finishing with success, it might not be there, or how do you get to the finish line, you know, in sports with teammates and such. So as I always do, I just want some initial thinking on finishing in sports, and we'll see where this, this one goes because I definitely have a couple things I want to hit on.

Okay. I feel like finishing is one of those things where it can encapsulate so many different things. You. You could go in directions of how important is touching the line? Why do people have success when they don't touch the line? You know, you can talk about why people often fail to have success because they quit right before that. Success is, you know, basically right around the corner and they give up on those dreams because it's so darn challenging and so many things are stacked against them. So there's a lot of different ways that we can go in this podcast. And I'm definitely excited to see your pictures and all the stuff that you have to lead us.

Not finding my picture. I have a picture because you touched on the one thing that, like when I come up for topics of the podcast is touch the line. When I was a coach, that was kind of what I lived by. Like, I want my student athlete to touch the line. And in running, you run through the line, the good runners, I believe you don't run to the finish line. You don't slow up to the finish line. You run through the finish line. But as I've talked before on our podcast, it's about practice. And in practice, when you do running or you do any drill, it's about finishing it. It' finishing it strong. It's about touching the line and not coming up short. Because I would. Even though you're right, there are people that do succeed that don't touch the line. Overall, I would agree. The ones that do touch the line would end up having more success. So I was in a leadership class a couple years ago, and we had to come up with our. I forget what the word. Your passion statement and mine was like touch the line in competition, life and other things. But the key message was touching the line. So that's. Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because that's why I wanted to discuss it today, because that's been how I tried to live as a coach and as an administrator is touch the line finish. Don't take shortcut. Don't let the little things go. And I think that helps lead to success.

Okay. For those who don't know what is.

Touching the line, well, in my eyes, you know, when I was a basketball coach, it was when you were running mainly, and those that didn't run all the way up, we ran. I think they're line drilled now or, you know, so touching the line was mainly running drills. But I think it just. And most people didn't like running or didn't want to do the running in practice, so it was almost something you didn't want to do. And, you know, a key point you hit on before we talked about that I thought was interesting, is the support you get. Like, even when you ran the line drills and practice, those that are done were encouraged to help the other and usually had a time you had to get to. And that's one of the reasons maybe you didn't touch the line is because you were trying to get the result of, you know, a faster time, but by having the support of teammates, which I think is a huge thing in sports. And how finishing. I just came back from our cross country nationals as we're recording this, and we had a young team this year, and it's a big race. And in running, sometimes teams go out fast to set the pace, and you worry about getting caught up in that if that's not your style. And being a young team, we were worried about that. There was another team that had five runners in the front of the pack at the first turn. And I was following, I was actually screenshotting our places and we were like in third place at the first eight minute mark. We were at second place in the 16 minute mark. We were at first place in the 20 minute mark and we finished in first place at the 25 minute mark. And it more led to how you finished and not how you start. And I still believe, back to my statement earlier about finishing is preparing for that start. You still got to start well or you got to start right because if you don't start right or well, it could lead to a certain thing. But it was just really cool how our team just finished strong and one, you know, we got our 25th national championship doing 25. We have to change our bylaw or log thing. But, but the key was the finish, how they finish. And, and you know, every point counts. We saw you and I talked about this over the summer in the 100 meter dash. Usually the start in the Olympics is so important, but the, the gentleman that wanted this year was like in last place at 40 meters. And then just that last 60 meters started just ticking off. And it was one of the first examples in 100 of how you finish. You know, everyone focused. I mean, because every many second counts that you got to have a great start in the 100. But you know, he just finished so strong and won it. But in every sport, you know, because the postseason is usually what you play for, which is at the end of the season that you're, you're hoping that you're getting better, which is a big thing we talk about is being better every day that you're hitting your, you know, peak at the end of the season and finish. And we know injuries can play into it. I mean, I know a coach that I felt our teams were tired at the end of the season because we worked so hard that they weren't their best at the end of the season and that. So it's, you know, there's a cliche out there. It's a marathon, not a sprint. I, you know, here or there, that can apply to different things. But the key is that to be successful, it's about touching the line or finishing.

Yeah. So I asked you about what touching the line is because some people may not know what that means.

I'm glad.

You know, a great example of finishing. You know, I happen to be from Detroit, Michigan, and you know, it's this team called the Lions.

And that's a great year right now.

That game though was, it started out really Bad we didn't score in the beginning, great amount of interceptions, but we stuck to it and somehow we just crept back in and then was it a fresh rookie court a rookie kicker?

New kicker to the NFL.

Yeah. New kicker to the NFL. Yeah, I think he had new kicker or rookie. Both of his kicks barely got in, but they got in.

And that's a great point. I mean, what a finish. Especially when you probably played as poor a game. The quarterback did that he has all year. But it's also about adjustment too, throughout that, you know, through that game, through a race, through a nine inning or seven inning game, through a basketball game. And you see good coaches that help make those adjustments so that you can finish. Because if you're doing the same thing you do, you're not going to finish. Well.

Yeah, because what the main thing I want to point out is that the announcer was like, this is good for the Lions because in the playoffs it don't always go your way. But how, how do your team know how to react when it doesn't go your way? When things aren't going away, do you still know how to get that win even though things aren't going away? So I thought that was a really good.

And we've talked about on this podcast about getting. Handling adversity or getting hit in the mouth. So how do you work with your team on. Do you talk? That's one thing I wondered if team practice, finishing or. I know you're big in mental performance and you guys, you know, you guys see things and then do things to visualize. But is there anything that you do differently to make sure you finish or.

Yeah, I think about just a few different things. And the first one is that we tend to teach there is not a finish and the lines that are down should come from you and those lines are your standards and that you're often going to need other people to help you along the way when you cannot reach those standards. Much like the quarterback of the Lions, he probably would say he didn't touch the line in that game, but he had others around him that did or over exceeded that line to make sure that he was picked up. So I believe that most line touching comes from your standards, what your expectations are and you never really finish that. It's a continual thing that we call process.

And I agree. And one of the things at our level is we have a changeover in our roster. Every team does every year. I mean you could change one person in your team significantly different in the next year. But even what I alluded into at the beginning is that finish is the next start. If you're not having a good year that you want to have, you can still finish strong and build for the next year if, or again, back to the lines if you're not having a good first half to finish the game strong so you can have some momentum going into that next game. So finishing is important. But you're right. It seems like in sports there's always something after that finish line. And there's even talk of how long can you celebrate your finish whether it was good or bad. Like if it's bad, we're going to bring up Ted Lasso here. Ted Lasso moment. Ding, ding. Be a goldfish, forget about it. But if it's a good finish, you always hear, we got 24 hours, then we're on to the next one. And that's even the off season, you know, even when you win a national championship or you know, I win a national championship in cross country on Saturday, our coach had recruits in Monday morning for next year. You know, talking about the kids for winter workout. So great point. In sports, you know, they're, there's lines there and we can put. I like the idea of our standards and lines down because I agree winning a national championship is special, but we've always talked about a standard and you know, you can win a national championship and not run well. You could win, not win it and run your best. I mean, the other team was just better that day and we've talked about that. So yeah, great point on the finish because even like right now where you guys are at in your season, you're not necessarily wrapping up your fall season. You wrapped up your fall competition season, but it really is in preparation to start your spring season.

Yeah, I believe that the people's faces will always change in your environment and but that doesn't mean that the standards or those lines need to change. And the hardest part, why I feel that people will end up falling short sometimes of those lines is because it's difficult, it's challenging. It's one of those things that's just really hard. And as I said earlier, you do need people around you. But the other thing is that when you are process based, you are about your standards and what your process is, those results will take care of themselves. The results are not always going to be there, but the, the one consistency that you can have is in your process and what you do.

And I think that the key word consistency, and we've talked about consistency and I think the more Consistency, you have the better chance you have at finishing strong. But as we've talked about in sport, that's not always easy, especially in games.

And if the Lions would have lost that game, if that kicker would have missed that field goal and would have lost that game, it still would have been rewarding because they hadn't. They. They. Their quarterback had played not great.

Right.

Statistically, really bad. And they had a chance to win the game.

Yeah.

Win that game at the very end. So that's still a win, whether that goes through the uprights or not, because that's process. That's what you want to see. You want to see people compete, even when the chips are down, fight through it.

Great.

It's. It's excellent that they won, but it still would have been a great sign for them to still be there against a very competitive team at the end with all that was stacked against them.

But what a fine line, you know, back to that line of touching is that you're right, they could have taken something if they would have lost. But winning a game like that, I think puts them even at another level.

So much hard work that goes into winning, but it's also a huge piece of luck. I mean, that last ball just barely missed the upper, you know, so it's a. It's a game of inches, they say.

But it's also. And we've talked about the butterfly effect before, because that's not even their number one kicker. Their number one kicker gets hurt in the off season and they bring someone on and he turned out to be a great kicker, that you could argue this started back at the beginning of the season. Where would their regular kicker have made that? Would they have gone for it? And. And that's the neat thing about sports. But there's still some common things there, like you said, finding ways to finish or even using that finish as a catapult to what is next. Because they haven't handled much adversity this season because they played so well. That. But also, you know, the back to even what the coach did with the halftime adjustment because the other team didn't score in the second half, scored 23 in the first half. You know, so there's so many variables in finishing. And in the end, the media focuses on the result.

You know, it's not just the media.

True. I apologize. Media.

Everybody focuses on the result. And that starts at a young age. You've got. If you have a basketball player and you say, you know, hey, the first two questions they get asked after a game, all the Time is, did you win and how many points you score. You know, all results based, not, not. You know, what kind of effort did you put in? And you know that. What kind. What kind of teammate were you today? It's all results based. And so that gets internalized at really young ages. And then people tend to just focus on the results all the time versus what they're actually doing, what their process is, and the process ends up being way more important than what those results are. And that's why a lot of times, you'll see the dreams get left behind because the results aren't there yet, but they're not going to be there yet. It's the same thing with, you know, if you've never really picked up a tennis racket and you're playing a Division 1 All American in tennis, how are you going to do? You're not going to do well. So you just give up on it. Because look at who you're playing. Look at what that standard is. They started probably so much earlier than you ever did, but if you start doing that consistently, you will get better. So if you get wrapped up in the result, you give up, but you get wrapped in the process. You can see growth.

I'm just glad you used tennis and not pick on my golf game like you had a history of doing here, because I don't usually even finish the round of golf because I'm so frustrated with it. Who came up with the number nine in golf? I'd been happy with six holes or 12 holes instead of 18. But the other point you make, though.

Hold on, hold on. You just say you didn't finish.

I know. The thumb golf round. I don't finish.

We going to have to replay this podcast whenever you feeling like.

Think off of the hobby and not. But again, if we tie in all our podcasts, how you do anything is how you do everything.

I just want to bring that up, Jeremy.

All right, I'll. I'll finish my next round, I guess. Yeah.

Spent that money. Enjoy yourself.

But. But there's two things else that you hit on that I'd like to dive into a little deeper is patience. Because sometimes we don't have the patience to finish. Like you said, that especially, I think as the younger generation is more like.

You have to become best friends with delayed gratification.

Right.

And that's so hard to do. So hard.

Harder and harder. Actually, in our, you know, society and younger generations and the technology and everything, the quick at our disposal.

Started with microwaves.

It did start with microwaves. I Agree. It's called the microwave effect, I believe. I like the microwave, but. But yeah, so patience, I think, plays into that, that finishing. And then also you talked about, you know, starting later. You know, how that people have head starts and how that could lead to a better finish. And I think that's more prevalent, like at the high school and youth level, like about 10 years ago, there was always discussion, what age should kids start playing football? Should it be when they're four or five? Should they start tackling in third or fourth grade? Or should they wait till seventh and eighth grade? And we saw a pro athlete that didn't start till high school. But in our.

You see ones that start at four.

Right.

That's why there's always going to be an argument for either way.

And the problem is, I think back to the competition thing is you feel like if someone else started at 4, that you can't wait till 6 to start because you're two years behind them. Even though development stages are different for everyone. But my point is, at our level, I think that's a neutralizer because it doesn't. Regardless where you start, you know, you're all at this level playing, which is a small percentage anyway. But I do think, you know, to the point of, at the younger levels, a head start can make a difference in whether someone finishes or not finishes.

Because Those ages of 6 to 10 are enormously prime for building some blocks.

But even the development of the, of the person, you know, some are late developers. And, you know, I just had this conversation the other night with somebody that I remember when I was at the high school level as an administrator, some of those middle school teams or freshman team would say, we won the freshman championship. Why aren't we very good at varsity? And you know, because that sometimes the coaches would do like double reverses or they would just get the ball to.

The tallest kid fast. Underclassmen were already on varsity, and that's.

Part of it too. But also it could have been they, they went around the strength that wasn't a strength that people got older. And if you're six, two in eighth grade and you can get the ball inside and just put it up there in varsity, everyone that youth football when.

I coach was whoever could get to the sideline, you know, on offense. If you get to the sideline on offense, you were going to score, you know, whoever could get over to that edge, you know, Right. And that's. You don't run up the middle, get to that line. You get outside and you get to the line or the edge. Yes.

Interesting. Yeah. So. Yeah. So even having head start doesn't always process.

If you've got a better process than what the person that had a head start, you could start decades later. Decades.

And that process for me is touching the line. If you do that every day in practice, whether it's a running drill, whether it's finishing your velocity, pitching on the last repetition, the same with a layup drill. I mean, you're shooting for six minutes or even free throw practice or running four eight hundreds. Running that. That's the neat thing in cross country is they usually put times on, you know, let's run 4, 8 hundreds and 210 or something. So, you know, they're the. They're the goal for each one. But the point is doing that every day, touching that line every day, finishing every day will help you finish when it matters.

All right, that was deep, man. Like that.

All right, let's go to. Those are still. Listen.

Yeah. We got a question.

I've kind of broken it up now to a food question. And would you. Question. So my first. First of all, this is a dumb question.

Pizza. And no.

And, you know, having fun. Pizza. Actually, my original question was gonna be, what was your favorite deli? We're gonna stick with it. Now. I was gonna do something different, but what's your favorite deli sandwich? Like. Like, for me, like, I do like the pizza sub at a local restaurant in Mason. They just make an excellent pizza sub. But if I'm going to a. Like, a deli place, it's a turkey Reuben with coleslaw and not sauerkraut on it. So those are my deli sandwiches. Do you guys have a favorite deli sandwich?

Two. It's two.

Okay.

All right. So, you know, home of the Detroit is really famous for the Reubens, so I do like a classic ribbon with the sauerkraut. You know, you taking it off is. Of course, you'd be different, taken away from the sandwich authenticity, you know, So I did.

I did.

Yeah.

You took away from the authenticity of the Reuben. But it's okay. You had it with turkey, so it was already kind of getting weird.

Wow, you two ganging up on me.

All right, so no corned beef Reuben. Classic. And then an Italian sub. I don't know.

Anywhere I go.

Anywhere you go, if you don't know where the food's at, you can always go on an Italian.

Yeah.

And it's gonna be. Usually be solid.

Okay, good one.

I think you guys had some decent ones.

Oh, decent. Okay. What you Got?

Yeah. What do you got? Got.

Well, I think that I tend to lean towards things that are, you know, a little higher level. And so I'm gonna go with a PB and J.

You know what? That's.

What kind of jelly?

Strawberry.

Strawberry, for sure.

Great for me. Really?

I slept on that.

You said.

They said deli, though. That's not a deli.

You get those?

Yeah, that's okay. It's sandwich. I'll go. I'll let you slide. You gotta, of course, be a little different. So higher standard.

That's my home go to.

I mean, if you talk to sports nutritionists, a PB&J is excellent throughout the day for student athletes.

So.

Okay, we got one. We started this last time when you weren't here, but.

Okay.

Would you let me find the one I was going to ask today? Would you rather be stuck on a desert island by yourself or with someone you dislike?

Is that supposed to be hard?

No, that's the question. It's not hard for me either.

It's not hard for me.

Yeah.

Okay.

I would rather be by myself, really.

Okay. What about you, Journey?

It would be someone I dislike. I feel like I can love them, to love them enough to make them change, you know, not change who they are, but I can learn to enjoy who they are as a person.

Being a athletic person, I would be with the person I dislike to, hoping that we could find common ground and work together.

Great answers.

So, all right, just having fun here at the end. We'll continue that until you guys keep booing me off the set.

We're not like that last. Like, I'm telling you, the last thing you said, man, that's a clip. We need to take that out and put it in, like an intro somewhere. Okay, that was good.

Do that.

Well, we're trying here, so 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!