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 I'd like to talk a little bit about where athletics fits in college and mainly roster sizes. There's been a lot of talk in society today of using athletics as a recruiting tool and a way to increase enrollment. And you see at some of the other levels, schools adding sports, adding JV teams and the emphasis and some programs have quotas on the number of student athletes that they have to have on a team, probably more so than even being competitive. And I can see where people are coming from and using that tool. And with a lot of factors into enrollments at colleges nowadays, declining birth rates, graduation rate dates and such. And in the end, the bottom dollar is enrollment at your institution. But there's many ways of going about it and being honest with student athletes. And it just seems to be even a more common pathway for high school student athlete that want a college scholarship. So you the supply and demand seems to be out there of more student athletes wanting to play in college. Although on a side note, I've seen many student athletes that have put a lot of time in their sport and then say I'm done quit when they're a senior in high school. So I've seen both ends of the spectrum. One of the most telling statistics I've seen from the Michigan State Youth Sports Institute is 75% of the kids quit sports by the age of 13. And what that statistic really says in my eyes is that maybe they quit that particular sport, that they find another sport or other things to do. But it's a challenging topic for us and it's a fine line. I mean there's, you know, we get a lot of critiquing from the crowd and what's, you know, a lot of people have their own like 12 should be the magical number for a basketball roster. But I've seen coaches go with eight or nine so they don't have to deal with playing time issues and I've seen them do with 13 or 14 for depth and in other ways. So there, I don't believe there is a magic number. I've always emphasized opportunity, inclusiveness for the coaches that I've directed. And in our short time here at LCC, when I started two years ago, I think we were at around 120, 25 student athletes and we're up between 150 and 60 right now. And that's without increasing sports. And again, your program has a lot to do with that, with where our baseball numbers are, but I can say across the board all our roster sizes are larger, which I think is good for our program and good for the college.

Yeah, I think really I've noticed a lot of it. If you look at youth sports, they seem to be in high demand. You really can't drive around in the warm summer months here and not see something going on. Whether it's, it's, you know, football, basketball, baseball, softball, whatever it might be. A lot of kids maybe do transition out of that sport that they're playing. Maybe it's because of burnout or, you know, there's a number of different reasons. It's coaching, it's, it's parents, it's, there's a lot of different things going on there, but they seem to always find another sport or at least in general. And the numbers of kids that want to play college sports is extremely high. It doesn't seem like there's any short demands of, you know, what people want to do. So it's definitely there. When it comes to roster sizes, it really, in my opinion, is just dependent on the coaches, what they're looking for, what they need, how many games they're playing. Maybe if they don't want to deal with a lot of problems, they're going to have a team that, that isn't real large. And so they won't deal with the, the issues that are off the field, but they'll deal with issues that are on the field if they, if they're short staffed or whatever it might be. So I think it's somewhat relative to the coaches, but you definitely see that there's a lot of people that want to play a college sport and that's a good thing.

I mean, I, you know, I think sports is integral to our society and a microcosm of our society. And kids learn a lot of lessons playing sports and you hit it right on with where youth sports are in our society and how big a business that has become. It's Billions of dollar business. And the joke used to be like, you know, two teams from your hometown go to Tennessee to play each other when you could have played each other in the backyard. But now your hometown has two teams and even more than that. So the interest is definitely there. And it is fluid, the changing and some of it time demands. I mean, it used to be seasonal where your sport was for a certain period of time, but now it's, it's kind of extended year round. Yeah. And so it's hard to play another one when, when there's crossover and many do. Summers used to be a time off, but now it's, it's an off season.

Did you see that at the high school level where you've got coaches that are expecting their kids to do something, you know, pretty much year round and then that year round happens to be in the other sport that the kid is playing. And then how, how do they manage that? I mean, you probably saw that, right.

Increasingly more difficult in recent years. And you know, the new phrase is championships are won in the off season. Well, you need to do something in the off season if you're going to win. You can only do so much during the time you have them during the season. That's more like preparation for games. But.

And that off season is somebody else's season, right?

It could be. And I always encourage kids. If you're playing another sport in the off season, one, you're using a different muscle group and two, you're still competing, which is a trait that helps you be successful in another sport going against other competition. So I didn't always feel it had to be the same sport in the off season. But there is some merit to having your own sport in the off season too. Getting some work and even strength and conditioning and agility are a huge business nowadays. And more student athletes having their own private coaches in the off season or even during the season. I see that at our level we have student athletes that have their own coach, specific position coaches that they go to before or after practice or in the off season has become increasingly something. We've had to manage that.

But from the other side, I mean, how long is a football season at the high school level?

Typically 15 weeks, 12 to 15 weeks.

So a little over four months. So if, if you want to be a really good guitar player, are you going to play for a little over four months and then take the other eight off and not. And not play the guitar and say, well, I'm going to work on my fingers or I'm Going to work on my, you know, whatever it might be or, you know, and that. And so that model is why you see more and more people doing things year round. And it doesn't. It's not just sports, but I mean, obviously we're here to talk about sports, but it's in a lot of things.

You are right. And we bring music and I. That's why music I think is such a good analogy to sport that they've increased their camps and private lessons and it. And even being in the education business at high school level, there were people that thought by taking summers off, you forgot that part of education that you had to retrain kids when they came back in the fall. So your first couple weeks were retention and building that where maybe a balanced calendar longer that they would retain those skills. So you're right, it is more than just sports. But sports has become such a big business and sometimes we forget about having fun or making the opportunity about more than winning. So even when we're. When you're talking roster sizes, it's a management thing. You have to make sure to be good. You gotta make sure every kid is engaged or feels a part of the team or it could lead to bigger issues. And you alluded to if you don't have a large roster, injuries or other kids getting could impact your roster and your success. So it's intertwined.

And you know, from the coaching standpoint, you're. No matter how big your roster is, if you really boil it down to what the student athletes want, they want to be helped, they, they want to be able to get better in whatever it is that, that they're doing. And so if you can care about them, if they can trust you and you can help them, they're fine. It doesn't matter if you have a roster of 50 or if you have a roster of 5, if you can do all those things for all those kids and you can help them and you can care about them and they trust you, then it's fine. Where those things break down, whether it's 50 or five, is when those things aren't happening. And that's where the breakdown that happens in the classroom too. If you need help and you're not really getting what the professor, the high school teacher is talking about, you don't understand it and you can't get the help and that trust is not built there. And then you feel like they don't care about you. Well, what do you think happens? They don't get good grades and that the victim comes out a Little bit. And it's the teacher's fault. And, you know, but. But that's kind of a microcosm of exactly what we're talking about with roster sizes and everything else.

And I forgot I just saw this yesterday, the day before. And John Gordon name comes up on our podcast a lot. But the Energy Bus, which I haven't read.

But do you know that when he went to first speak, that he had a bunch of people show up and he was super impressed and he was like, in Iowa, and he couldn't figure out why all these people showed up, because he was just getting into the business and what had been sent out was people thought it was Jeff Gordon coming to speak.

I would go and see Jeff Gordon. Yeah. Yeah, that is funny. And again, by chance and people. And. But he put on a good show because now he's won the world. And back to the Energy Bus. I haven't read it, but getting people on the bus, getting everyone on the same page, and you know, the reason it came up recently is, you know, our fall sports are beginning to happen. And one D1 football coach said, this is my toughest issue is getting everybody on the same page. And it can be a large roster, it can be a small roster, it can be a medium roster, but that is one of the biggest tasks of a coach to be successful, regardless of roster size. Unfortunately, we're still in a society where, you know, some of it comes down dollars. There's a sense, and that is either a larger roster or. Or more sports. And, you know, currently at LCC, we have nine sports. And, you know, we had the conversation, you know, before we started recording the podcast about other sports we've offered in the past. Hockey, bowling, swimming, and as golf. Golf. As we look at moving forward again, we've done a nice job of increasing the rosters on our current team, where they're still manageable. But adding sports is also something we're looking at as a department.

But adding sports in general is just difficult. Right. You can't. It's really hard to just say, okay, well, we're adding hockey.

You know, it is. There are the number of factors I look at when I try to add a sport. One is our recruiting base. What do our local high school demographics offer that we can make sure we can sustain a team? Two, what our league offers. You got to have a schedule, and if you don't have a local schedule, you're going to travel more and it's going to be more cost. So you know what league sports are offered out There helps you put a schedule together. Three facilities that would be another cost. Whether you have to build one, whether you have to rent one, whether you currently have one that you can adapt to use. And then another number of factors. Quality coaches out there. Again, dollars and cents is always a big one. But it is a challenge. It's not. It's just as easy. Many people come to you and say, hey, let's start bowling tomorrow. Well, obviously they're the path that has to be navigated through to make it happen. And that's why it's difficult and that's

why staffing as well, you know, to

manage all that departmental and sports specific and that's again things that people don't see or forget that try and make it happen tomorrow. Where if you do it too quickly or you don't do it right, then it is back to a negative experience for student athletes or it doesn't last. And that's clued when you start your own business or even the other things we talk about the preparation up front, the time up front to making sure you're ready. And the same goes true with back to roster sizes. If you don't have a plan or you don't prepare ahead of time about engaging every student athlete in practice, we've talked about having purposeful practice plan, then you're going to lose probably those student athletes that aren't engaged or having a good experience, which is counterproductive of having a large roster size because the end it still washes out.

Yeah, I think naturally you'll have attrition rates at some level in all sports. Whether it's from injuries or just lack of playing time or whatever it might be that they just kind of wash out of there. So those roster numbers are always going to be fluctuating a little bit. And in the sports like baseball and football and some of the other contacts sports as well, like rugby and basketball, you end up with injuries. And sometimes those injuries last more than a week or two. And so then there's that attrition right there as well. So you get it from both sides. But it's, it's super important that you have teams that have enough depth to be able to carry you through a season. If your season's only a week long, then you probably don't need a lot of depth. But when your, your season goes from like the, our baseball season that starts, you know, in August and, and hopefully finishes somewhere the first of June, that's a, that's 10 months. You know, that's, that's A super long time. So you need that.

And that's a great point of what different sports have to tackle when navigating rosters and even how many games you play during a week. You know, in the spring. Sometimes weather impacts our season that, you know, there's a higher risk of injury if you're making up games and playing every day. And that's another huge reason why I encourage larger rosters is because of the length of the season and all the things that can happen. And you know, three main things that happen are injury, quitting or eligibility issues. And you got to prepare for that because it's a lot harder to manage a small roster when most consider the end of the season the most important time of the year and you don't have a full deck to compete with.

So for baseball, cold weather states typically will play more games, more innings in a week at the college level than major league baseball will. And when you think about that, those guys are professionals and that's what they're getting paid to do. These are student athletes who are also not only playing more innings and more games, but they're also being students as well. So there's a higher, a much higher piece to that.

That's a crazy statistic when you think of major league plays almost every day once they get going. And alarming a little bit when we try and make sure there's students first. But it's just eye popping of the obstacles we face in scheduling or trying to fit.

Especially in cold weather states.

Yes, yes, and baseball and softball and just not cold weather, rainy weather. It's hard to talk cold right now when it's been as hot as it had this summer. But just too much short sightedness if you don't manage your roster and prepare or even kind of be selfish like you alluded to earlier about not having as many problems if you have a smaller roster. And thankfully it starts up front with staffing and you know, even having assistant coaches, you know, with budgets tight there and not having a high assistant coach budget, but finding volunteers to help out so that there's more people that can help communicate and build and support and develop the student athlete that might not be actively involved in a particular drill or a particular game. So staffing also plays into that. And good coaches find ways to help each individual, whether by themselves or with their staff, to stay engaged and involved. Because I just think if you're not inclusive as a coach, it's going to bite you. And we've all coaches have been bit by an injury or an eligibility issue or a kid quitting. And that happens even in the best program. So it's not like a coach is doing a wrong thing, but it's just the nature or the law of averages. But it's just so important to manage your roster and be inclusive. And I think you're more successful with a larger roster up front and in navigating through systems like that than being maybe the other world. And again, it helps the college and it helps argumentally, statistically that we are having good enrollment statistics for. But the other end is the transferring and the. The graduation. You know, making them see them through their retention rates has always been a statistic I looked at for when looking at a coaching staff or who's coming back and why or why not are they not coming back? And there's a story behind every one of those. But it helps, you know, paint a total picture of what your program looks like. Because if you're going to win a championship, and not that that's everything, you need luck, you need a good path, and you need to be healthy and you need to have talent. But, you know, we forget that the injury part of how that can impact and you know, one of the big things that in pro sports right now, you know, the success of the Patriots and Bill Belichick's model. Next man up or do your job. And that's a lot easier said than done, especially at the different levels of athletics.

But so doing your job's a lot easier said than done daily.

You know, I'm a knowledge seeker, a wisdom seeker. I try and learn as much as I can. But you also got to do too, so you got to do your job. And again, learning 80% some days is better than others. We've talked about sleeping. If you don't get a good night's sleep and you don't want to go to work the next day, you still got to bring everything you can. And that's so true in athletics because whether you're playing a talented team or a team that isn't as talented, you can bring different levels of skill or something. But if you apply yourself to your own standard, you're playing against that every day. But it's not easy doing your job or the next person up. And some days are better than earlier. We had that conversation this morning, but unfortunately there's not many days off or that's where, you know, you substitute in and hopefully that person steps up. And we've seen throughout history of someone might be getting someone that gets hurt and their. Their backup comes in and they never lose that spot again. So, you know, taking advantage of your opportunity and that's all back part of managing a roster, doing what you're supposed to be doing every day in practice, other variables and, you know, getting it done in the classroom because if you're not eligible in the classroom, it doesn't matter what you you can do at practice that day. So it's all intertwined, it's all important. And in the end, it'll be a clue of whether you're going to be successful or not and successful on the court and successful for the college and making sure it's a viable program and we're sustaining ourselves and providing an opportunity for our recruits and our student body.

Do your job.

Good conversation as usual. And 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!