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!

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined today by our man that does everything around here, our assistant athletic director and producer, Steven Cutter. And we'll miss the Daedalian today, but he's a pro at this. He does it for his own podcast that you need to listen to. Coach. Today we're going to talk about a topic you and I have talked about a lot. The more I think about it, the more. I mean, it's just a really interesting area that as an administrator in athletic that I deal with more than I thought I even did. And it's control, because it's important, yet it's a fine line. It's a balance. And I've had coaches that have tried to have too much control and I've had coaches that didn't have enough control and fluid ones. And it was really interesting to me. And, you know, we've talked about different scenarios at different levels, and it can make or break a season. It's something I don't think gets enough discussion. You know, there's a lot of ways to go about it. And even internally within a team, the control factors. Because. Because it's important. Controlling is crucial. Control is crucial. I mean, it's a necessity.

You speak in coaches from the athletic world, controlling, or are you talking about student athletes trying to control?

I would focus on the coaches part, but you're right. There is that reverse effect of those student athletes that coaches lose control of or try and control too much. I mean, there are two different angles you could definitely go. And the angle that I deal with as administrator more is the coach controlling the team. Whether they do it too much, they do it just right, or they lose control of the team. But part of that stems from the players, you know, because when you try and control them too much, you know, do you lose trust? Do you lose creativity if you don't control them enough? Do you have discipline issues? Do you have chaos?

Yes, yes and yes.

Right, right. I know.

I think about when you Talk about control. What comes to my mind is a word called structure. And big word. You know, control and structure are. Are super important. If you have. If you try to structure your day by the hour, it's going to be pretty challenging. If you try to structure your day by thirds, it might be a little easier. But if you tried to structure your day by the second, it's going to be darn near impossible to have everything go the way you want it. And I think that's what you're trying to get to, whether it's, you know, coaches or student athletes and how there are some areas where it's not necessarily gray areas, but it's like more of a purposeful areas where you need to understand what is most important.

And that's a great point. When I researched this to learn more about other ways of control, structure was the main word that came up about it. Almost interchangeable with control. And again, it's a fine line in sports because too much structure and there's no creativity, not enough structure, there's no discipline. And then it leads the trust issues, morale issues. And I think we've gone to a sports world where we're trying to empower kids, which is a way to help control a team, and then teaching them to empower them. Yet having those structures or systems in place, that allows some creativity, some improvisation, some instincts. But there's still a system there. And in the example that came up with Guy, we name a lot on here, Phil Jackson had the triangle offense. That was a structure, yet a lot of flexibility within the structure. And then you see some of those coaches that, you know, are too controlling and it seems to impact the team's play that lead to morale, that end up having a bad season. So structure, definitely it. And you talk about thirds. I'm a big practice plan person. We've talked about practice plan before. How I think in life, even a practice plan for the day, or you have a syllabus or a curriculum for your classroom that you follow. So having that is important and helps with structure. And things have evolved because we've talked about old school and new school on here. And the old school was coaches would say it's my way or the highway. And that's evolved and changed, I believe, and a lot of it changed. Our students are more experienced, more educated, more aware. We've taught them leadership and things at younger levels. I still think there's coaches out there that. And we know there's a different ways of leadership. The autocratic, democratic, laissez faire kind of things. And I don't. I'm more as an administrator. Is helping a coach control a team not too much or not too little. Again, they might control them because a lack of trust of that team, a pressure to win for that team, insecure about their own thing. And this is my favorite. This is where again, we could go probably an hour and talk about it. Those that are insecure, usually younger or newer coaches, but even coaches that might not have won or have battled different issues, they try and control and yet they're afraid to lose control, which is probably end up what's happening because it just leads to fear and chaos and because you try and control too much and you lose it. Because back to you trying to manage every second you get overwhelmed or you become inconsistent because you. You aren't consistently controlling every detail that you try to control.

We all know the best teams, doesn't matter the sport, but the best teams are the teams that are led by the players. And to be led by the players, the coaches need to relinquish some things. And so my belief system with what we're talking about with structure is that you have to be really wise with choosing your battles, what's most important.

And that's a great point. Again, we've talked about. I'm a big believer in knowing what battle to go on a hill and die for can make or break your team. Or, you know, I've talked about the serenity prayer before here. Give me the wisdom to know the difference. And I think that is hard. And each team is different. And I want to go back to the original premise of what control is. And I think some coaches believe it's about dominance or power when it's really about direction, if you do it right. And again, creating that structure, as you mentioned, it is finding those things to reward or give to your team so they can take ownership or they can lead by example. And again, some of the most successful coaches, I believe and teach leadership, and I think that helps to give you comfortability in releasing that control. But adapting, you know, that was the other key word that came in here is adapting, being flexible. And I think that your point of, you know, knowing that leads to what battles you can choose to fight for and what. And that's even individually per kid. I mean, some kids need more control and some you can. And they probably need more time. That's where you spend the time than the ones that take care of themselves or do those things. So in the end, yeah, I think that's how you handle control. I Think it's an issue in athletic administration just because of we're competing, we're trying to win, that the more you control, the more you think you have that chance to keep external factors out, to keep mistakes out, to keep anything from those outside influences from impacting your team. But from my experience, it seemed to backfire in the end.

And when you talk about your experience, I think that's super unique. Listening to you sitting across from you in the WL and Z studios, I'm thinking about like all of the coaches that you've got to not only, of course, try to impact, but a large piece of it is you're just watching what's happening. Sometimes it's on the sidelines, you know, sometimes it's at the games, practices, sometimes those are meetings that you're in and it's been going on for a long time. So you bring this wealth of information into what you're talking about with maybe too much control, not enough control. I think you've seen a lot of it.

I have and always haven't dealt with it well either because they even had an administrator micromanaging coaches on how there's.

Not the book on, you know, this is the perfect level of structure or control and this is the imperfect level. And that's not there because you're still talking about the humans. It's people and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other.

And the different levels of it. Because I have seen both extremes of coaches having no control over the team and coaches that tried to control too much and then again those ones right in the middle that are usually more successful.

See in the classroom though too, that.

Is right again, coaching and teaching our professions. And again, it does go hand in hand and synonymous in the classroom of those teachers, professors, you know, classroom management that try and control too much or don't give any flexibility. But there needs to be structure for the classroom where it'd be a circus.

Structure is extremely important for success.

And it does because it allows for decisions within a system and it gives parameters, it gives standards. And I think those are important too in having control or having standards or having parameters. That it's not about everything, but it's about something. And then within that system, then there's some flexibility for the kids or the student athletes to be. Have some of their own decision making. And I know that's a risk. I mean, we talked about before too, about we're relying on 18 to 20 year olds to help us succeed in what we want to do. And that is a risk and that is a battle. And there is adversity and failure there. And we know a lot of external factors that they deal with that we try and help them with. But to control them would be and this is an extreme to like say you can't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend because you know if you break up with them then you know then they that that'll impact your performance and that kid probably wouldn't play for you or kids wouldn't play for you. But that's an extreme example of too much control where just helping them and working with them and developing that connection that if they have issues with a relationship, hopefully the team relationship can help them overcome it or build it. And we've again seen the examples where it has adversely affected their participation on the team or performance within their participation on the team. So yeah, I've seen it at all levels. I've seen some do it real well. The one that frankly though, if I evaluate back here the extreme. The ones that lose control of the team that have no structure don't make it. The ones that have too much control, I believe do make it. But at the battle it's.

What do you mean by make it? What, what's make it mean? Like have success.

Yeah. Have success or not. I think the ultimate success but are able to see go through it. Yeah. That's you know where if you have no control, I mean it's hard and same for a classroom. You're nothing getting done, you know where with you have too much control by getting done. But there are battles along the way that are taking your time. That alignment thing that you're not totally in alignment that allows you to go to the next level or spend more time preparing for the thing that you prepare for. And that was just a quick analogy evaluation of my experience between those two extremes because that's what we're talking about today. The ones in the middle that have control over their team and have that structure, those are the things I have to spend less time as an administrator and an overseer of sport. But it can go one way or the other really quick because we talked about those thirds even on your team, depending on where that middle third goes, could lead to losing control or trying to have to control too much.

I think with too much of the control, at least from experiences that I've had in the business world and also in the sports world, is that if you're trying to control everything, you're going to end up focusing on those kids that maybe are struggling more in this system based processes and then the, the kids that are doing really well in it get less attention. And so the overall growth of your team slows down because those kids aren't getting as much of the attention from the coaches. So you're trying to focus on everything. And so when I, I circle it back to you've got to really figure out what's most important and then structure through that and control that. And then the other things that happen in the day it's raining, you know, we're not going to be able to do anything about that. But then that also leads into providing some 18, 19, 20 year olds with the ability to not only provide leadership but also provide some ownership to what they're doing.

Yeah. And again I think like we've talked about this should have been the first question I asked at the beginning is I think control can be think of as a negative. You know, we talked about how discipline and thought about or confidence thought, thought about. And so when you think of control again I think you think of power or you think of dominance instead of empowerment. And those that I think do do it well are on the other end of the spectrum that use it as empowerment, that teach decision making, not obedience, that create feedback. Because from my experiences I think the standard thing which you have really helped me develop and learn more about of having standards for your team is setting clear expectations in non negotiables early. Communicate consistently and transparently, build a culture that self regulates control through shared values and handle pushback because you're going to get tested. And so how do you handle those players that challenge your authority in being consistent. So I think those are ways to help learn control and teach control. But it also starts with trying to empower them. And the one word that also kept coming up with when you talk about a control is trust. You know, trusting your team and being able to trust in them and them trusting you.

The best teams have that best ones do. And it was on the board the other night, if you look at any of the best teams once again I'll say it doesn't matter what sport, you're going to see that T rust word in bold print maybe underlined all through the fabric of that team.

And I agree with that and we both, we talked about that before and how connections and relationships help with trust and how trust is really routine and consistency and lead the confidence. But I believe that also at the center of control because if you trust your team you don't have to control them as much. And if you don't trust your team, then there's another issue there. And the same with the trust within the teammate there. If there's trust among teammates, I don't think there's chaos. I think they work together where if there's a lack of trust, that's where you, you know, work on more of controlling individual parts that can spiral out of control. So in the end, it's still, though, about, you know, in those battles and when to pick those battles. They're not robots. We got to treat them as thinkers, competitors. I think that's a whole other thing, the competition part of this that leads to failure or adversity or winning and losing that, again, you can control. I mean, we can talk about the game plan, we can talk about the personalities, we can talk about offense or defense. You run, which is the game plan. But there's no different part to control. And the larger staffs you have at the highest levels, you might be able to control certain things more. I think that's another thing I hadn't thought of about, you know, having not.

Every team wins, you know, not the highest levels. So it's. It's still about the structure or the control, but it really comes down to the people and who you have on that bus or in that room. And sometimes you don't have full structure or control over that either, whether it's at the highest level or the college level. Sometimes you make mistakes on people that you bring in. Sometimes you make mistakes just with yourself, and you don't do a great job of developing the people that you bring in. But at the end of the day, it's about the people. And if you have the right people on the bus, the trust and the systems or structure, control will take care of itself. If you don't have the right people, it tends to go sideways. And they still may have success, but it's not probably what they could have had.

Yeah, and that's a interesting point because I just brought up the word robots, and we're dealing with people. They're not robots. And when you try and control too much, you try and make them robots. And that is not it, because they are people. And the only reason I bring up winning, though, is because one of the reasons you want control is to try and get to winning. You know, you think the more you control, the better chance you have to win, which, again, like, sometimes it's not true. So the question in basketball is, hey, do you want a great play at the end or a great player? And I think the Fozzie movement give it to the great player. Don't worry so much about having a great play and that losing control because having a great play would be the control factor. So. But having the right people, you know, at our level we recruit and you're right even in recruiting, you know, I was at a conference a couple weeks ago and they talk about when they recruit. They it's who you play for, who you play with and what dial you play for. And you try and find people that fit within those three things and. But sometimes we are wrong or sometimes it's wrong for them. And how do you control those factors? And now we have the transfer portal, which is rampant, but that's one way too where the other way too is suck it up and let's work together and fitting in. But it's not always right. It's not always easy to fit a square in a peg hole or whatever that saying is that I mess up every time on this podcast. It's something I wanted to talk about, something you and I had talked about that when they choose the right battles and the control, a well controlled team that's empowered I don't deal with. But if the too much control I end up dealing with it or if there's not enough control, it usually leads to something that changes need to make place and not to say from year to year you can't. Especially as you grow and get more confident and more trustworthy and have experience and know which battles to choose and develop your structure and standards. Those are all part of maintaining a consistent imbalance of control. All right, Anything else real quick on that?

No. I think it's obvious from an athletic director standpoint what you're kind of shooting for where it's kind of in the middle there you don't have to deal with a lot of it. And if it gets too extreme on one side or the other, that's kind of when more things start coming across your desk and you have to work on that kind of stuff and not only work on it, but try to help everybody get a little bit better.

With the mediator per se. Yes, and that's exactly that. You know, those ones in the middle that are well controlled, you know, I take for granted sometimes. Or you don't appreciate that you're not dealing with them because when that needle moves to one extreme or the other is when you have to get in. And back to my point of when there's no control, it's hard to. You know, another one always taught me, like start strict and loosen up. I don't know if that's true or not. But those ones in that aren't in control, it's hard to reel those in in the middle of a season where those ones that are over controlling. You can maybe find ways to, you know, find some. Yeah, there's definitely flexibility, adaptability.

There's definitely too late points.

Yeah. So yeah, it's a great discussion and one I don't think we think of enough because I think in our business we think of control as what coaches are supposed to do and have control of their team. And I believe it is true. But it is that balance, that moderation that we've talked a lot about of finding that right line to navigate because you will not reach your highest level of success on either end of those streams because you'll be battling other things than the to your point of what you should be focusing on, which is player improvement and compete, achieve and grow. So no. Very good. Thank you.

Excellent.

Excellent. So our last question. This is a dumb one today.

Oh boy.

The Dalian might have had one for us. I was thinking about my own food experiences and when I was little, I don't like cooked tomatoes. Like when we have chili. My family. You like chili, coach?

I do.

I do too. The chili cook off this weekend in the Lansing area. I'm thinking that means it's fall and I like chili.

But we have one for our baseball team too.

Oh, that's right. Are you having that?

Yeah. But it's disappointing because it's not baseball players making chili. You think they could do better, but they're not really.

They're college kids. I mean they have to research, you know, and I think they take for granted chili. They probably get their. Their family's recipe. The chili wasn't even the thing talk about. But my point was when I was young, chili, my mom and my wife do now is grind up tomatoes because I don't like chunky or cooked tomatoes.

Yep, me too.

Oh, really? So. So the interesting thing was where I'm getting to this long story is tomato soup. I like tomato soup because it's ground up tomatoes and I'm not a big tomato person. But when I was young, I went to my best friend's house and his mom put elbow macaroni in tomato soup. And so she'd cook the macaroni and she'd cook the soup and add them together. And it was my favorite thing and I love it. And my wife still makes it for me to. You're over there smirking. So that was my question is, are there Any childhood, like, concoction that other people might think are different.

That's incredible.

It is it. And it is incredible. It really does taste good. Coach the noodles, soak up the soup and. So this sound gross to you?

You know, I mean, it's your thing, so.

Well, my best friend's mom thing. But we talk about it every day. Like, I went over there, I thought they were crazy, too, and then I just loved it. So every time I went over there with. But she would make it for me.

And so with this story that you're talking about with food now, are you putting, like, elbow macaroni in your chili?

No. No. But. Okay, let's go that way. Because you don't have a food concoction. You know, for me, a good chili and you like walking tacos, but me, a good chili is. And my wife makes it this way. So this is new. Like Doritos on the bottom, chili on top, sour cream and shredded cheese. Growing up, my chili was chili with saltine crackers. That's what our family. We had chili and we put saltine crackers on it. So forget the macaroni. What's your chili then?

I think the best chili that you can possibly have is one that can go in a bowl with consistency, but also can go on a hot dog and not ruin the bun.

Oh, see, I love chili dogs, too, so.

And if it's too soupy, it ruins the bun and everything else. So when I'm talking about consistency, I'm talking about a chili that has that great consistency a little bit hotter. Make sure the tomatoes are ground up.

I like it. See, we finally agree on something. So, though, even when you put your chili on a hot dog, like, my wife and mom used a lot of beans, so there would be beans. The chili dog that you get at Thor usually grind everything up at the little f. So. So, yeah, I would agree with that. I would love that, though. I eat leftover chili on the hot dogs. I would put cheese on that, too.

Let's go get some chili dogs after this.

I second that with Penn Station fries. But 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!