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. 23 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 by our assistant AD Steven Cutter. And Steven, today we'll be talking about a number of topics. The nice thing about this business is there's a lot of things going on that we could really dive into, especially this time of year. So it's almost hard to narrow down to one. And today I wanna talk about the fine line of things in our business that also transfer over into life and other businesses. But we might also hit recruiting and enrollment that the big topic in college athletics right now. We've talked about doing some book reviews, but I'm going to tie in a book to even our line today. But I know both of us like to read and read about leadership and educational athletics and other things too, but a number of complicated issues in educational athletics and that fine line. I was at the campus resource fair a couple weeks ago and our CFO comes up to me and I asked him, how you doing? He goes, I'm living the dream. But it's a fine line to, you know, thin line to becoming a nightmare. And the same is true about, you know, you'll talk about, you know, good and great and complacency and consistency, but even, you know, finances and decision making. And I read a great book by Urban Meyer which, you know, we kind of talked about one podcast too I wasn't the biggest fan of, but the book is excellent. About leadership, about above the line behavior and below the line behavior. And you know, that's the only two really thing there are. You're either above the line or below the line. And there are different characteristics to that. But you know, I was joking with you the other day. We have a number of great topics in our office that we should be recording for this podcast about things that get you in trouble or things that lead to decision making. And you know, I had a former colleague tell me that the two things that'll get you in trouble in this business is finance and romance. If you cross that line in either one of those areas, that can lead to trouble. And we've seen a number of times in our business where people have tried to hide it or think it's not gonna come out. But you and I even carried that conversation in on decision making. Like, relationships are such a huge part of this job and what we feel one of the most important jobs.

So is finance.

Yes. And I told you that I do not like money making decisions or being the number one factor in making decisions. But unfortunately, in some cases it is. Yeah, yeah, I would hope what the best interest of the kid may that number one factor, student athlete. But we all know there's still parameters of money that lead to those decisions. But it's such a fine line. And unfortunately, in all factors of life, people have crossed those lines and we've had to define or, or redefine those lines. And one of my favorite quotes in this is the best thing about this job is the people. The worst thing about this job is the people. And when you're dealing with relationships, trust becomes a big part of those factors. And that goes down to relationships. So it is a fine line. And our goal at LCC is to stay above the line. We wanna lead with integrity and excellence and follow rules as humans. You know, mistakes are going to happen. You know, we. We've seen a lot of things in the news where people expect perfection from people, but that's just not realistic. And there's going to be errors, whether it's with your car that, you know, they might forget to hook up the exhaust pipe, you know, on a new car, or, you know, in our office, you know, they might forget to connect the plumbing pipe and there will be a leak in there. So it's not realistic. It's not realistic of coaches either. But coaches, you know, being the public entity that we are under a lot of scrutiny, you know, when they make those decisions or have the impact of that decision and what those consequences are. So have you experienced that? Am I off? Am I. You know, what do you think about above the line or below the line behaviors?

We define it in our program as top third and bottom third. It's the same idea. Just the thirds kind of apply in baseball quite a bit. But coaches, athletes, people that work in sports, they're held to different standards because they're more in the public eye than what some other people are. So it's the same thing that happens when you'll see a high school coach maybe get some kind of offense, you know, that's not a felony. But you read about it where you wouldn't necessarily read about it from maybe somebody else in the school. So you're held to a different standard. It's a razor thin line between good and great. It's a razor thin line between those finances and those relationships that can hurt you and those finances and those relationships that can help you. We talk a lot about that. The difference in that razor thin line is there's really two Cs that, that I've come to, to know, and that's consistency and complacency. So the people that are struggling, the people that are maybe just doing a, at what they do, you're going to see there's going to be a lot more complacency and there's going to be a lot less consistency in what they do. They might do it every third day. The people that are in that top third or above the line, they're going to have a lot of consistency and they're going to have very little complacency. So that top third, that consistency, instead of doing it every three days, they're going to do it every single day. And when they do it every day, it's not going to become a, that it's boring for them or anything else. They're just doing it because they bought into consistency. And you can apply that in any, in anybody's life. You know, it's not just athletes. It's, it's, it's for everybody consistency. The more consistent you can be with things, the more times that you can do things when you don't feel like it, when maybe you're not having the best moments in a day, you know, just keep moving forward, keep doing the things over and over. And that's, that's what the big separator between those lines. And as you kind of mentioned that the money and the relationships are super important in athletics and they can go one way or they can go the other.

Yeah. And another one of my favorite quotes is the strength to the extreme becomes a weakness. And that is true with both of these. If you carry it too far, even your trust or your, or your relationship with a donor or something, it could turn into a weakness if you don't have that balance and modification. But I like the word consistency too. We talked in the past on our podcast about one word themes or whatever, and that might be my next one because I think there is a lot of merit to that to reach success. And you've talked about top third, bottom third, and that's true for any roster. And in the book above the line, they talk about kind almost dismissing that bottom third. Like you're not gonna get them to change. Your real goal is to try and take that middle third and move as many up to that top third and hope none of them go down to that bottom third.

And, and that's viewed as like fence sitters. Those fence sitters could go either way. And, and what kind of influence you have in your company, what kind of influence you have in your team is which way those fence sitters go, whether they move to the, to the top third or they move to the bottom third. And then when you look back on a season, you can tell where the majority, which is the culture piece of the team, where the majority is. And that shows up in wins and losses, profit and losses. It shows up everywhere.

Yeah. And we've also talked about that bottom third, which you and I both agree. We don't dismiss. We work harder to try and bring them up. But you also, as we talked about, trying to keep that top third moving in that same direction. And the ratio usually stays the same. But you're right, I think that does lead to success at the end of the season. You can see where those numbers are and that's, I think, true of any team in business or life. And you know, most breakdowns are that top third are probably intrinsically motivated, disciplined, have a passion for that sport. The fence sitters are, you know, they like the sport but aren't all in.

And then they're typically good at those sports, but they haven't necessarily had to put as much work in as, you know, somebody else. So they're just kind of neutral typically

and could be good in another sport. And you know, this is their second sport. And you know, I think our.

You get a ton of fence sitters at the high school level.

Exactly.

Especially in my old job, multi sport athletes. And there's just a lot going on there.

And I think our society has almost discouraged them from, from participating because they're not getting a college scholarship. So go to a sport that you will get a college scholarship. And I think those are hurting our numbers. I think the bottom third, some of them just want to be a part of a team and enjoy that experience. And if they accept their role, it will be positive. If they don't accept their role, that's where it becomes a negative. And that's when you have to deal.

Not to digress too far, but think about how much money people spend on trying to get their kids a college scholarship. A lot of times it's twice the amount of the college scholarship that they get or a lot more just in what they're trying to spend on their children to get them to get that college scholarship with the travel teams and the travel and in the lessons and everything that they do.

Yeah, I think it's a payment plan. They just started that payment plan in kindergarten.

That takes a little bit of time though, right?

Yeah. And each get a different, you know, some don't start until middle school, but you're right. I mean the youth sport business is billions of a dollar.

I mean, we have a, we have an 8U Little League Baseball World Series now.

Crazy 8 year olds. Wow.

Traveling around the country playing.

So it is a big business. And again, and it just, you know, and that could discourage kids because some might not want to have to play at that level. They just might want to have fun and go out there and learn. But you know, it's a triple down, trickle down effect to where we're at. And even at our level, especially at our level when, you know, we've had a number of conversations of local and national presence and how that can help financially or the number, the numbers change

a little bit from high school to college, but you still have the amount of fence sitters and numbers really don't change that much. It's just, it's more about what kind of dynamics can you bring into a program, into your business, into your family or whatever it might be to get those fence sitters to go kind of pull on the rope in the direction that you know you want them to pull on the rope. Because if you don't, they're going to go the other way and you're going to have, you're going to have some issues and you can look in the business world and you can see that. And that's what happens. And that's why there is a razor thin line between good and great.

And it is razor thin. And I think at the college level the impact is, you know, at, probably at the high school level, they were one of the best student athletes on the team. And then they get to the college level and they blend in more. And for some of them it could be burnout or it could be not accepting that role of being the star player. Because the expectations are a little higher too at our level of the emphasis on competing and winning. And so some student athletes might struggle with that. The time commitments, which is one of the number one concerns of our student athletes is time management. So I think those are kind of the factors that start to Determine their success or long term participation at the college level.

Yeah, for sure.

And again, we do everything we can and try and find ways to help them be successful. But back to that fence sitter label that again, it's just hard for some. The transition is hard. I mean, I've seen transition throughout life being in education of, you know, that next step from elementary school to middle school, from middle school to high school, and now from high school to college. And now they're supposed to be adults. But a lot of these students still don't know what they want to do in life. And you know, at their first, maybe away from home, you know, one of our conversations in the future will be housing and working and how those dynamics impact our student athletes. But it's a big jump and we expect a lot. And that's why you see a percentage of students and student athletes that go off to college and end up leaving after that first semester because they didn't know what they were getting into. And it's a fine line. And it could be one little thing that moves them over the line or the other side of that line that we might not even know led them to that decision.

But most of it is still comes back to finance and relationships. You know, whether they're going to have success or not is going to be dependent on a lot of that, you

know, and you're right, I mean, for some kids it could be more expensive than they thought or, or there's other costs that they weren't anticipating or they don't fit in like they thought they did, or on the other side they do fit in better and they meet some good friends and, or have a class with somebody.

I mean, you talked about time. Just being a college athlete, it takes a lot of time. You need to have excellent, you know, impeccable time management skills if you want to have a lot of success. Well, when you're talking about money, you, a lot of them need to work, right? And so how do you balance work your class schedule, your, your homework that you have, your, your weight room stuff, your study tables, then talk about practices, then talk about going on the road on a bus to play games. You know, how do you work in that situation? So then it comes back to money. How can, how can you do both? Because you need to be able to pay for your gas or something bigger like your apartment or you know, food, different things like that. So it still comes down to the, the money. And then, you know, we've talked about youth sports a fair amount on here too. And there's plenty of studies that show the reason why kids stop playing sports after, you know, the middle school level is because of coaches a lot of times. And if you boil that down, that's relationships, you know, so it still is finances and relationships.

And again those are probably the two lead stressors of our student athlete at the college level, whether it's having enough money to stay or having friends or teammate that support them and help them through the hardship.

So the lead stressors of whether you're a college athlete or you know, you're 50 years old, I mean, it's still a lead stressor. You know, I was reading something from Harvard the other day and they put out this study that they believe the study showed that they think that kids typically aren't going to know what they're going to do or humans aren't going to typically know what they want to do until they're close to 30 at this point.

Yep, I totally agree.

How are you going to know what you want to do when you're 16, 18 or even 20 years old? And I think most people would shake their heads at that, like yep, that's pretty normal. That doesn't mean that there aren't people out there that know exactly what they want to do. They may have been groomed in something or they just know, but a large percentage, they just don't.

Being in education my whole life and you know, seeing our share of students come back and visit us, I have a hundred percent agree that and I think it's different for male and female but and I read some similar research that it's 26, 27, 28 for males and maybe a little earlier for female than you know, fully developing and fully understanding and you know, especially nowadays as you and I talked about self awareness and how that might not, you know, again your own self awareness of where you fit in or what's going on in your life and how that impacts being a student athlete. But even trying things to failure or trying different things to be successful, everyone wants to have that dream job right out of college. And that path is pretty roller coaster to get to the job and that stress and back to finance stress. My wife doesn't have any stress about finances at home. It all falls on me and making stuff sure that it taken care of and I joke there but, but it is stressful even at, you know, as you get older, you know, those are the two things that do, you know on a daily basis. You know, we talked about bringing to work or bringing to, to the team and impacting their performance as a coach.

Do you find that any of those young folks rotate in and. And they are, they've got their heart set on becoming a professional baseball player.

Yeah. You, you definitely see a few of them. Yeah, not everyone. I mean I think there's some reality there that the percentages are so small so they, they dream in bigger, more broader strokes of the paintbrush where they just want the typical is I want to play as long as I can.

Yeah. And a little different at our level because that next step to them could be a four year institution instead of going on to professional sport. But we've had a couple in our past that have made it to that level. And I think the number's higher when they come in, but I think they start to learn right away that again back to that path that it might be a couple other step before they get to that level or they learn that this is too much time and too much money. I mean there's again one thing is college, but those other expenses outside of college, you know, going to private instruction or traveling to get that instruction or get in a higher competitive environment lead to stresses of finances. But I mean, I think, you know, when you start young, everyone, not everyone, but a lot of kids that participate in sports is gold is to be a pro athlete. And those percentages just significantly decrease that

as you level because they don't completely understand at those ages, which is 100% fine, but they don't necessarily understand the cost involved for, for getting to those levels. And so there's, there's a large cost, there's a cost in everything, but there's a large cost for those professional athletes. And at some point through high school or in college, they start realizing like that you know, I'm not really willing to pay that price. And so that's the reality that usually sets in.

And it's mostly high school. And again I've seen it more there that you know, if they don't think they're going to get a college scholarship in high school, they stop playing. But you talk about cost. You're right. And cost is more than just money. It's time. It's, you know, it's other factors that you know, all play into balancing that behavior. So again, that fine line is incredible. And we deal with it every day. And you know, at LCC, our goal is in our objective and our, you know, well, with work as hard as we can is to constantly demonstrate above the line behaviors. But the law of averages is, you know, you always deal with Some of those below the line and you know, hopefully, you know, we're, I, you know, customer service is a big topic in student affairs and our goal is to do everything we can to help those that are below the line. I mean, they need our help more than the ones above the line in some ways.

At the risk of extending this episode out a little bit further than we should go, I was kind of curious earlier. You were talking about the book, the leadership book, and about how that bottom third you kind of just have to leave behind. That does not seem like our philosophy here at the college at all.

No. And I think that even more, I mean at the community college and maybe the four year college, because of demographics and accepting student that we know have some work to do to succeed in academics. But it's back to relationships and providing them resources to be successful. And again, that's where I disagree with this book because we've seen statistics that for the most part it's hard to get below third to succeed, that are you wasting money or time on them? And I don't believe you're ever wasting money on a human being or time.

And a lot of times what they need is that faith from somebody else to say, yeah, you can do this.

You will see in whatever organization you're in, you will see, you know, bottom third or whatever you label that as you will see bottom third, go to top third. You see that rotation and it really a lot of times comes down to the second one we've talked about is relationships. And then the other big word is just consistency. Once they get the relationships, they start learning how important the consistency is. And pretty soon you'll see that migration to a different level. And I think you see that a lot in really good organizations, whether it's colleges or businesses or anything else, you will see that. You see you have a lot of success stories. Now the other ones that struggle that are maybe on that good side, they don't have as many success stories. So it ends up being we just forget about the bottom third. We just forget, we forget about them. And that's the more of that mentality of relationships at the end of the day.

Yeah, and I agree. I mean, and that's the fun thing about sports is you see those underdogs succeed, you see people move up levels. And to your point, Dadalia, and I think you're right. And one of the biggest thing is believing in somebody and how important that is. And whether it's a professor or a coach or a success coach or someone on campus that you didn't even know you might have done something. But it really comes down to believing in that person to succeed, because most of the time, they haven't had anyone to believe in them because they've had a life of failures. So that's the fun part about our job, is we get to see every year those underdogs succeed. And you even talk about levels in some of the most successful organizations, their bottom third could be even significantly better than the top third of other organizations. Absolutely. That bottom third had a fight to make it up to that level. And, you know, but it comes down

to culture and relationships and being consistent with what you do.

Yeah. And I agree. Relationship first, and then that develops the consistency. And we'll just end on one last quote is, you know, from John Wood and. Or a couple of people. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And again, that'll go a long way in our business. All right.

Go Stars?

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!