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 in our air conditioned studio with Steven Cutter and our producer, Daedalian Lowry. And gentlemen, I joke about air conditioning, but I just came from our office space and it's really hot up there today for some reason, mainly because the air conditioning from the gym is not moving up to.

We need to balance that out because it gets really cold down here. Yeah, it's the basement of the TLC building and there's a lot of electronic equipment so they keep it pretty cool down here. And I forget I get in here in a short sleeve shirt and after a while I'm kind of see, I.

Wear a pullover every day because normally our office space is cool because we do get the air conditioning from the gym that blows up into our office. But for some reason it's not staying as cool. Which leads us to our topic today because it just seems like over the last week all I've dealt with is is it too hot? And so my premise is, are we getting too soft in sports or have we just misunderstood what toughness really means? And I'm glad we got coach Cutter here today because a lot of it has to do with mental health. But we've also learned a lot over the last 25 years of what really is toughness in sports. And you know, it used to be suck it up or, you know, play through an injury. And, you know, some of the biggest memories in sports are, you know, Kobe Bryant playing with a torn Achilles or Michael Jordan in a flu game. But that's not everybody. And there's a story for everybody. And I think that's one of the biggest premises of toughness is knowing your student athletes. And also science has helped us a lot too. You know, we have lightning policies, we have heat indexes because there have been far too many heat illnesses and heat deaths in our country which are all preventable with the right resources available. And I've experienced, I remember one time we played a soccer game On a Saturday and it was really hot and we kept checking the heat index and we had a kid that we had to get an ice bath real quickly because his body didn't handle the heat like the other 45 kids there. It was scary, you know, but he's not weak or, you know, we weren't being too tough to play that day because we were monitoring and following the policy. But being under a lot of scrutiny, being that old school mentality. Are we getting too soft, Coach Cutter?

Absolutely. I think in general, and when I speak in general, I'm not talking about everybody because certainly there are the situations where you're dealing with extreme temperatures, whether they're extremely hot or extremely cold, that you have to be very, very cautious. And we're talking about individuals because everybody is going to be a little bit different whether it comes to that cold or the hot. But when we're talking about mental toughness, I think of a story that I just heard recently, and it was about this gentleman who took a flight to spend a week in Alaska. And on his flight, he left his home, packed his bags, and he was going to spend 30 days in Alaska, very remote area, and he was going to live off the land. He said on his flight that it was really cramped and they were playing the same old movies that they always play on those flights. He said it was a little bit hot on there. The air wasn't, you know, what he was normally accustomed to. And he said when he finally got to Alaska and He spent that 30 days there, he was stripped of all the modern conveniences that he had. And this is a gentleman that is. His name's Michael Easter and he created Substack. And he's not some high performing former military person. He's an average Joe that is worked himself into high achievement in life. And he spent those 30 days there and everything was taken away. And he said when he got on that flight to go home, he appreciated how comfortable the seat was and the climate, cooled air that was being blown into the cabin, and how much he appreciated the ability to have a screen and see something else besides nature. And so the point of that story is most of our things when we talk about mental toughness are because of perspective. When we feel it's too hot, we think about people that are acclimated to the south, they're used to it. But when southern people come to a northern climate and experience 40 degrees in March, they're not liking that at all. Well, we're used to the cold weather all the time. 40° day in March. We typically have short sleeves on and you'll see people in shorts because that's relatively warm for what we've experienced. So most, most of it, when we talk about it, whether it's in our program or anything else, we talk about perspective and that that's a big piece of it.

Yeah. And very interesting actually in a different direction than I thought we would head because I was worried more about defining soft. But you know, just being acclimated to those clients and that comes down to preparation and practice. You know, I was watching the college World Series championship game and the pitcher was undefeated all year and didn't have his best outing. And part of me wondered it was the hottest day of the year if the sun impacted him. And I don't know this, no one talked about it because everybody player without there in the same weather. But about acclimizing and also about preparing, you know, I know coaches that if they're going to play in the heat or I know you do towards the end of the season, you sometimes play two games at different times. You practice at those times and help you.

It's a huge thing because even like in our baseball and softball programs, we're going south during the super cold season where we're at. So if we're able to get outside, maybe we don't have a lot of snow and we're able to get outside. We're still practicing in 30 some degrees degree weather typically. And then all of a sudden we go on our spring trips, which baseball and softball do, and we go on those spring trips and we're playing in 75 degree weather typically or sometimes hotter. Well, those student athletes are not acclimated whatsoever to those temperatures. And that's where like our nutritionist has done a great job of making sure that she stacks certain things that they need to make sure they're having and taking that they haven't taken in months or even thought about. So that when you, when you speak about acclimation or I speak about just perspective, those are really similar things.

Not to dive too far into the weeds, but I want to know a little bit about what does she recommend.

Things like tart cherry juice, liquid ivy, that kind of stuff. Because a lot of times you're, you're sweating. Not in your lifetime, but I'm talking in months. Yeah, you're just not used to it and, and so you can get dehydrated, you don't recover very well because you're just not prepared. Things come into like cramping, stuff like that. You Know all these things that you just weren't used to when it was colder.

Interesting. Yeah, sorry, I didn't want to do.

I just, I'm not writing anything down. So I got to remember. But perspective is part of it too. I mean, look at us. Even with 30 degree weather at the beginning of the season, we think 30 degrees, this is too cold. By the end we're saying we're playing in this because we got acclimated to. But to her point, resources have helped out even to your person that went to Alaska of liquid iv, the protein bar, the gel caps. Although there are more weather specific that help with the heat and the weather that we deal with. But injuries are included in there. And one of the things I learned from you in our discussions is when you think you're spent, your mind's only at its 40% capacity that you still have more to go. And I think that is one of the most telling things about being soft or not is to the point. I mean, that's a great example. On the way there, he was complaining. On the way home, he's appreciated because his mind realized that there is more there. And I think that's something coaches have to learn and help student. Are you hurt or that just so.

There'S plenty of studies out there that also talk about that. We. Everybody knows what is pretty solid for you. Everybody understands that taking the steps versus the elevator is better for you, but we kind of, we kind of move away from that. Everybody knows that, you know, you don't, you don't have to park in the front row, park, you know, a ways out and get, you know, an extra 50 steps. Everybody understands that's better for you, but we tend to shift away from that. And that's why you only see when they do these studies that it's right around 2 to 5% actually take the steps versus the elevator. That is such a small number. But yet everybody knows that it's better for you. So that's kind of where the mentally weak or the mental toughness or the softness that you speak about, that's the stuff that is the real piece of it. We do know about it. We do know what it takes. We do know what we're supposed to do, but we don't always.

But our society and it has impacted sports has moved into convenience even like I laugh and get mad at people come to a sporting event and they get mad when there's not enough parking or they have to park far away and you're at an athletic event. Walking should be a Part of that. And you know, my family gets mad. I do like actually parking far away. You would blame it on my parking, I'm sure, but I like it. Any way I can add steps to my daily routine?

You actually hit on two things that I did yesterday. So yesterday I went to the elevator and I went, you know what? I'm gonna take the stairs today. So I took the stairs, but then I went to go buy a card for a friend and I went, well, I could go to Meijer. If I go to Meijer, I gotta walk all the way up and, you know, I gotta park somewhere. So I ended up at the family dollar because I was lazy enough that I didn't want to go do that.

And that's our society. And I joke one of my. It's not my favorite movie, but when I talk about what our future holds, I tell people the movie Waldo. Have you guys seen the movie Waldo? It's where Earth. He's a robot that, like, cleans Earth. Wall E. Wall E. Wall E, Wall E. My bad. Wall E. Exactly. And the Earth is trash that we built this base station and everyone lived on the space station, but they're all on, like, rafts. They don't even walk, so they're obese. And robots bring them everything. And I just think, man, that's what our future is going to look like because of the things we talk about. It's that fine, you know, even as a parent, being too tough on your kids, yet trying to help them get to a standard of grow and develop. And I truly believe sports is, you know, we talk about it being a microcosm of society, but in this point particularly, it really is scrutinized. And we probably have been on the side of being too tough, but not swinging that pendulum where we become too soft and doing the research. It's about defining toughness. And, you know, is it, you know, we think about, is it pretending you're okay when you're not that? Being tough? And like, even being sick, you know, I don't like taking sick days, so I come to work when sick. And I think Covid taught it that, you know, you should stay home if you're sick or something. Even student athletes, we expect them there every day. But it's toughness more about showing up consistently, even on the hard days. It's about being coachable. It's about being accountable. It's about self awareness and the courage to keep going.

I think the other thing that I've learned is some of the toughness is actually being Able to admit when you are.

And I think that the thing that biggest. You are not okay. It's okay. Yeah, I agree. I think that the biggest thing actually, that we've learned to understand that we are vulnerable, we can get hurt, and that it is okay to. I think. Yeah. That you are not okay. And we've had athletes do that in the past. Kevin Love in the NBA, Simone Biles in the Olympics. Taking it off because their mental health. Because to perform at the highest level, as we talked about, it takes a lot of things coming together. Luck, not being hurt, having skill, the opponent. But it's also being in the right frame of mind or. One of my favorite things, and learned it through Covid, when there are a lot of anxious things going on, is it's hard to take care of others when you can't. When you don't take care of yourself. And, like, if you're anxious or dealing with something, then if something else happens, you can't help them. That you got to be in a good mindset to be able, as leader, to help somebody else out. And I think that's very important as a coaching staff. Yeah.

Whole oxygen mask on a plane analogy there.

Yeah. Or, you know, like, you know, there was a small timeline where I was at, like, anxious to fly. And on our flight, we had, like, a medical emergency. And I pride myself in, like, stepping up when things go wrong. That's my job every day. But at that time, I was anxious about flying, that I couldn't. I was worried about me. I couldn't help them. And I've worked hard to get over that. You know, read some good books, and now I don't mind flying, that I would be able to help that person on the flight. And again, I don't think that applies the coaches too much, but coaches have to understand that. And, you know, I don't like the word old school. I mean, that's used pretty prevalent in our business. I think there's some gender biases in our. Our business of what? You know, back to your point of it, that is it easy for males to say that they're. They can be okay or not okay? And it should be for everybody. It's, again, at the individual thing, but it's a tough thing. I mean, even back to, you know, having camp this week and should we take breaks and it's a fine line. And there's research. I mean, we have a heat index that we can follow. Like, if the temperature this much, the humidity this much, we need to stop.

Or it's Tough, though, because even the heat indexes don't apply to everybody. They affect people differently. So it's one of those tough things I also think about when you're talking about sports. I think if you're, if we speak in phrases like raising children, if you want to raise children that are resilient, you're going to put them in sports because sports will teach them what resiliency looks like. Things are typically not always going to go their way. They're not going to make every shot or maybe get the playing time that they always want to get. And so the resiliency is built in there. And of course, in life you need to have a lot of resiliency. And, and so the same thing goes for the mental toughness. It's one of those things that if you want to build mentally tough people, you have to work on things. You can't just pave the road for somebody that you're trying to teach. They're not going to get the adversity and they're not going to gain the edge of being mentally tough.

Yeah. And I think the other phrase that gets used a lot as a parent or as a coach is tough love. And what that definition. And again, a fine line I probably used mostly with adversity or an injury, which again, we experience regularly. I always joke that the trainer is in a tough position, athletic trainer in our business, because you got a player hurt and you got a team that needs that player probably back as soon as possible. What's best for the team and what's best for the player and balancing that. And even the person hurt really doesn't know if they, unless they've hurt themselves before, like how much they can push it or how hurt they really are. And you know, you go to certain doctors and they, you know, prescribe rests right away if they don't, you know, aren't specific sports injury specialists. But, you know, that competition factor brings a lot into it because of trying to get back to compete or being part of a team and fulfilling your role in that team. And it's always been frowned upon if you missed or if you were sat out as an injury or if you got sick. I think Covid actually helped bring us a long way in a lot of those things. But defining tough love as a coach I think has become more difficult and again gets you labeled as a new old school coach or a new coach that I don't even have the definition. You know, I've been in this business a long time, so most of my career was with the tough love and, you know, fight through the injury or kind of a thing. So it's a change in mindset, as you mentioned, of practicing, of finding resources to help you overcome it and get through it. And to my point, of redefining what toughness is, because, I mean, again, it was funny. Your first example, when I said, are we getting too soft? You were right on it right away, thinking, we are.

In my notes, I. I had to pull it up. But a gentleman by the name of G. Michael Hoppf. I've heard Tony Robbins say it a lot, but it wasn't his. His quote, it says, hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. So it's a cycle. And it starts with, I really have two stories. Pretty quickly.

You're good.

It's a cycle of us as parents that want to make things easier for the next generation than what it was for us. And by making it easier, you create weak. I also think about when I was at the high school level in coaching high school baseball. I had a teacher that had been there for over, like, 25 years, and she was really involved in athletics. And I remember speaking to her a ton during our first season. And she. She was telling me about the kids, and we got into this kids these days, and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And she was talking about how much things had really changed in the teaching world because of the fact that a lot of times when kids would struggle, when she had started, the kids would get in trouble at home for not putting in the effort to do well with their class or classes. And she said that there was almost a paradigm shift at some point where it stopped being their fault and started being her fault.

Yep. Yeah, I noticed that too, being in education too. Like, when I grew up, if I got in trouble at school, I was more afraid at home what would happen than at the school. And evolved over time is when a kid got in trouble, they were calling their parent and they were on their way up there as their lawyer because they're afraid of what might go on their record or hurt their future scholarship, that they would come and argue. And there's two things there. And this is, wow, this is crazy. Where we go. Which is why I enjoy these podcasts each week. One is accountability. That now I lost my train of thought on both of those issues because I wanted to talk about both at the same time. But that respect for authority to that second issue of change, that. And then the other one was the American dream. Where we do want. I'm a parent. I do want my kid to have better than I do. And that does lead to some softness because we do things for them or we provide resources for them that we don't have. One of the interesting things I saw in a history class was like, superpowers, how long they last. And it's pretty much the same cycle you just mentioned. You know, you grow as a country, you fight for what you have, and then you develop a democracy or a government, and then you become affluent, and then you become soft, and then you start. Someone else comes to take your spot, and it starts all over. So it is a full circle. And I think. And I don't want to get in the definition of defining too soft, but I think we are trending that way that we. It is something we have to keep in the forefront, address, and make sure we are handling. And thankfully, we got technology and sports science that really can help navigate us.

I think ultimately it's understanding that there's a cost for the theory of leaving it better than we found it. Yeah, agreed.

Agree. And that's a good way to end it. So. All right. So we can carry on about softness in the future because we can die. That went a totally different direction than I. I thought it was going to go. So let's head to our.

We do have to mention that Greg does not have papers today.

Very impressive.

He came in with an iPad and it went okay. I'm a little worried. I needed to write something down.

No longer old school.

There we go. See, I can change. That's a tougher thing. That's not soft.

And I. I will say I am old school. I still prefer the paper, so I'm.

On board with you. I was worried today about how this was gonna.

You did good.

I thought this might get scrapped. So. Okay. We're in the heart of summer. We've talked about how hot it's been the last week. So is there anything in the summer that you like, you drink or eat that you don't do the rest of the year?

So watermelon.

Wow. Interesting, man. He surprises me.

Yeah, that kind of threw me off a little bit. I. I will.

I swear he's gonna say pizza again.

But I will not ever eat watermelon.

So I'm not a big watermelon. My kids love watermelon melon at all. 8.

Watermelon, muskmelon, mini melon. I don't like melon.

I don't mind it. I don't like seeds. I don't Again, I'm picky. And maybe I don't want to have to fight for my food. So if it got seeds in it, then you're fighting. But my kids live. We have eaten a lot. My wife complained yesterday my floor sticky because of all the watermelon we've been eating in the house. Well, that went a different direction. Dalian.

Nothing's coming to mind right away, but I will say that on occasion when the ice cream truck is rolling down the road, I will. I will grab something, so. So an ice cream treat of some sort.

And I agree. I like ice cream.

Yeah. So I'll eat it, like, in the winter, but, like, it's different when you ice cream on a stick. I guess.

Yeah. I like trying more variety. Like an ice cream truck. Like a drumstick or a fudge bar.

Yeah.

Something I wouldn't normally snow cone because we'll get ice cream all the time at the local ice cream store, but. But I do that ice cream is significant. And the other one I'm surprised is a slushy. You know, I like summer.

All right.

You know, okay. Yeah.

I don't think as a Mountain Dew fan, I'm combining the two. So it's a Mountain Dew slushie. I'll do that from time to time.

You drink slushies? Cut.

Not at all.

Wow. He is. Okay. Well, next time we're gonna have slushies and pentation fries.

We're gonna bring him in a watermelon slushy.

There you go. So interesting. All right. 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!