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. 24 national championship wins! Over 170 All-Americans! 19 MCCAA All Sports trophies! Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it. We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation and right here at LCC. This is Stars on Sports!

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter and our producer Jereny Robinson. And gentlemen, today we're going to pick up from a podcast we recorded recently. Coach Cutter, you used a great quote by Mike Tyson and we laughed about quoting Mike Tyson on this podcast, but it's true. And it seemed to have just come up a lot in my life in the last week. So, you know, we both know that effect where you, when you're looking for something, you see it. But anyway, the quote is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth and then, and then what happens? And we've seen it in real life and events over this last weekend, but I think it's very prevalent in the, in the world of sports and here at LCC. And coaches are usually really good at putting plans together. I mean, most have practice plans, most have game plans. You know, in the NFL, you always see head coaches have their, like their 1st 20 plays scripted or something. So. And one of the best articles I've ever read that I had shared with my previous staff that we sent to our whole district, Washington, you should schedule your day like a practice plan. I'm a big believer in coaches having a written practice plan and following it and sharing it with their assistant coaches. So everyone's on the same page and you have an effective practice. But in games, as we both know, adversity's gonna happen. So. And how do you handle it? And, you know, that's one of my favorite parts of sports and life lessons. And we talked about it before we went on air about how well sports can teach life lessons, but teaching, especially today's student athletes, how to handle adversity because again, most of the time they have a plan going into the game and then something happened. The opponent either does something unexpected or does something well and you have to adjust that plan. So again, there's two ways of looking at it can, you know, making sure you plan and then how you handle the adversity once you get, as Tyson was, a punched in the mouth or a hit. I think Muhammad Ali used hit. But, um, so in my experiences, it happens a lot and it excites me and I think the best coaches know how to, to handle that. And I'm not saying you, we talk about how much important planning is and, and you shouldn't change your plan completely. It's more about adapting your plan. Um, you know, emergencies are happen when you, when it's unexpected. And I know I'm not really talking about emergencies here. I'm just talking about either throughout a game or throughout a season. At some time, you're going to have to deal with something that you weren't expecting to, you know, slumps in baseball, you know, batting, you know, things that you just, you have to work through to overcome.

Yeah, I think that plans, having plans is, is vital, but I also believe that planning to do the thing is not doing the thing, and doing the thing is really going to typically require you to have some experience. And so I think the people that are more experienced in whatever it might be tend to have more success and so you can prepare all you want. They say the best coaches, the difference between a great coach and a good coach is the good coach will have a game plan and the great coach will have a game plan. The great coach will make changes at halftime and the good coach won't. And they say that's just a fine difference. So you can plan for stuff. And as I said earlier, I think it's 100% vital to plan for your, for whatever it might be. But you've got to put some action behind it. And if you can put some action behind it and you can have some experience behind it, it's going to matter. I see in the sports world, you look at, like, freshmen, whether it's high school, with college, whatever it might be, first year professional players, that that experience isn't there for, for that level. It takes them a little bit to get adjusted to it. But I tell you what, their second year, their sophomore year, they are much different. They know what the college life looks like. They know what the high school expectations are. They understand things. And so that experience goes hand in hand. And I think, you see people have more success in the world when they've had the experience of what it feels like to get let down, what it feels like to lose, what it feels like to fail. Those experiences go hand in hand and, and help you become a better person when things are on the line?

Yes, and experience has been a common topic in our, in our previous episodes, too. And do good coaches find ways and practices to try and resemble game like situations as much as they can. Is that an important part of a practice? Because, again, when, when emergencies happen, you usually revert back to your level of training. And, and experience also helps of dealing, especially more in adversity than when things are going as smooth as possible or you're in the zone or you're doing well, that complacency usually sets in, as we've talked about. So is it important in practice to try and, you know, resemble game like situations as much as you can?

Resemble is a pretty good word because I'm not sure that you ever really, truly get to game like situations. I know that's a buzzword and coaches like to use it, and there's nothing wrong with that. Trying to strive to get towards game like situations, I do believe is the best thing that you can do to help prepare student athletes. That being said, the difference between practice or a scrimmage or a fall season, and the real thing with fans in the stands at a college World Series or whatever it might be, they're so far apart because the, the pressure is different. And that's where, like, the mental game really comes in. So I believe, and we teach that the more you can practice the mental game, the more you can put yourself in those situations, the more experience you start getting from that.

Okay, so I got a question. So this european coach said that american high school basketball players are athletically and more talented, but they're not better basketball players because they said that they play so many games in Aaudhe that they don't get the practice. And then the european players, they practice a lot, and then they play maybe one or two games that week, and they're coming in the NBA more developed. So I was wondering, what's the difference between the two? Like the, what's more important?

Sports mimics life in a lot of different ways.

Sure does.

You know, if you're learning to play the guitar, are you gonna grow most by playing in front of crowds or are you gonna grow most by practicing? And the obvious is that you probably should start playing in front of a few people. It's going to help. But if you're doing that all the time, you're not going to be, you know, really learning how to do that. And so that european coach is on the right path because there are too many games often and you see that in travel sports a lot of times.

More in travel sports because of the travel dynamic. And we were talking about that on our way over there, that they don't have much practice because they, they are playing and kids want to play, but you actually see more improvement in practicing. But you get game experience by playing games. But to improve your fundamentals that that takes place in practice. It's like learning to fly in the air or, you know, I had a basketball coach come, you know, one summer, a kid came in and goes, coach, I ran. I rode my bike 2 miles every day this summer. And the coach goes, well, that's great if you're going to ride a bike, but that's not going to have you in shape to run down, up and down a basketball floor. But the point is you do need to practice what you're going to. It leads right into my favorite quote that I was going to bring up. Victorious warriors win first, then go to war. Defeated warriors go to war first and seek to win by Sun Tzu of the Art of War, which is a great book. And we're going to have a whole podcast on that book because I researched that book. But I know you're big and vision planning and mental visioning before your contest. I believe you do it every day, but I think we get that loss sometimes, that it's also the mental part of it, of believing and going through it in your mind in addition to the practicing to be prepared for that game.

Yeah, I believe it's 90% of your life is the mental piece, whether you're playing a sports competition or you're playing the life competition.

And some things you can't plan for. I mean, we both know that. But I listened to a podcast a couple of weeks ago and to live in the present moment, the moment it talked about what did you want to do, what happened and what the best session now to try and still accomplish moving that forward. And that stuck with me. That's what really every decision is when. And in sports it happens fast. When you're up at the plate, you might have a little time to reevaluate, but, you know, in different parts of sport, you gotta make figure out those three things quickly to try and move forward and be ready for the next event. But it also comes down to practicing them, you know, going over them in practice to know how to handle, like if you, you're owing to a strike count, and I'm sure you studied the picture on what they will throw hopefully that next time. But if they don't um, so, so it's a combination of those things, but.

Also being able to define what present moment actually looks like. And so if. If, you know, when we're working with student athletes, have to adjust what that definition looks like. But in our circle where we're talking here, I'll get into, you know, you're sitting at a red light and a. A car gets t boned right in front of you. That that is being present because all of your focus is going to go on that car, that that person in the car or what happened, or the. The other side of it is, if you have children, your children, your. Your child starts screaming or crying, you're going to get locked in exactly on what's going on, what's wrong with them. That's. That's what being present looks like. Um, and we have to explain it in different terms for. For student athletes, but understanding what being present looks like and then trying to get to those levels when you're doing things that truly matter, that you. That you need to do in life.

Or in sports, but knowing your student athletes, too. Because I was listening to a person the other day talking about, we revert, we remember our negative experiences more because of our survival instincts. So if something happened to us that it had a negative experience, we want to prepare for it. We're on alert. Like the example they used, if you're walking in the woods and run into a bear bear, the next day, you're going to think of more running into a bear than looking at a tree. And that's so true in athletics, too. If you struck out or you're missing three point shots, that our mind kind of, you know, wants us to prepare for the. The worst and then intake. But as coaches, we gotta learn and kind of teach them. And as I know, you do use technology to prepare them to. Like, back to my example of if Owen two count with this particular pitcher on the. They're gonna probably throw in this location and this pit. So it still comes down to not even just practicing, but understanding your opponent, adapting. You know, I. You talked a couple years ago about, you know, that third strike, or it went, oh, strike two count of just trying to, you know, prepare for that and not strike out looking, but, you know, practice hitting pitches that you weren't going to want to hit. I mean, the first couple, you're probably waiting for that pitch back.

You're looking for your pitch, but when you do have two strikes, you're trying to compete and you have to expand your zone and. And you want to take it out of the umpire's hands and, and you want to just do whatever you can. And that, and that's a lot like life. You've got these plans and then all of a sudden something changes. You get, you get hit in the mouth and then you, that, that man, that hurt, that, that, that's really not a great thing that just happened. And then you have to figure out, okay, how am I going to take steps forward at this point? I'm going to have to adapt a little bit. I'm going to have to change what I'm doing. I'm going to have to maybe work a little bit harder, feel a little bit less, you know, the feelings is one of those things. And not to get off topic here, but those feelings are one of those things that you got to be really careful with. You can't be listening to the feelings all the time because you listen to your feelings, you're going to, you're going to have some issues and you're going to be fighting some battles that you don't necessarily need to fight because those feelings, they're going to be coming at you and you don't always have to listen to those. And same thing with the negative stuff. It's, it's just negative. You don't have to respond to it. It's, it's not great, but you don't have to respond to it. Doesn't matter.

And it happens in every sport. I remember my, in high school, for my own experience, I hadn't even thought of this, but in our league championship meet, I'm running cross country and 100 yards in where the largest crowd, my shoe gets taken off. I mean, someone stepped on my heel, so I had to run the rest of the race. And it was a muddy, wet course with one shoe.

Impressive.

You make it work.

How'd you do?

Okay. I mean, I did probably the same that I did without a shoe. With a shoe? Yeah. I mean, because I want. At the league championship, you got a.

Did you think about taking the other shoe off?

You know, you're just running. But I did. And I actually, I think sometime in the race I told my dad that my shoe was back there to go get it. But I've seen other runners that cramp up or even watching the Olympic trials, runners that get knocked down and get back up and get mad and. But you still have a strategize. You can't just make it up all in one spot. But, so there's my point that there's example then every sport of having to handle adversity. And sometimes in the biggest games or the biggest moments, and you always prepare to try and be at your best at those biggest games or biggest moments. But to the point, we've talked about a lot in the podcast. There's other things that can come into play that we don't know about or didn't plan for. And it can be a family situation, it could be a school situation, it could be an injury situation. And we've seen, you know, I think of Michael Jordan and Isaiah Thomas have injuries in NBA championship finals where they played their best game being. But it was that mentality of still competing, which we've talked about before in a podcast is, you know, something that is very valuable characteristic of a, of a student athlete.

Yeah, I heard a good speaker say that whatever you put your, whatever you meditate on the most is what will grow. So if you have a negative thoughts and you're focusing on that, you can either get rid of it by focusing on something else, or you can think about it more and it's going to grow and turn into something more, and then you get defeated.

That's, and that's really good stuff because it's the same thing when we talk about being present. You know, I brought up the car accident. If you're focused on the person's safety in the car that got hit or what just happened to you, you don't even, you're not feeling the wind or what the temperature is at that point or any, you know, you're not looking for the. What the notification on your watch just was. And so 70% of our thoughts are negative, and they're on, on rerun in our brain every day, and they just keep coming back, coming back and coming back. But it doesn't mean that you need to focus on those. It doesn't mean that you need to listen to those.

Right.

And through, you can do that through mindfulness, through meditation, through a lot of different things. And you can get punched in the mouth and, and now all of a sudden, you don't have your teeth. And, but you figure out a way to move forward without the teeth. And it might not be ideal, but you find a way to move forward. And that's what I believe. The United States is the greatest country in the world. And it's because people are just really resilient. And you see that when tragedies happen, you see it when natural disasters happen. You see people come together and you see people find a way and they're helping people. And that, I believe that's one of the more special things about our country.

And I think it's even special about sports. Some of my favorite moments in history is the human spirit. And in the sports scene, teams rally behind each other or rally behind society during those moments of tragedy or uncertainty. And it just makes you feel good to be a part of something like that or watch it. So. But adapting is huge in, in this area of when you get punched. And again, coaches and players need to practice on the different adaptation to be able to overcome most situations. And you made a great point earlier about the halftime adjustments or the between ending adjustments or the mid race adjustments and, you know, having that strategy of going out fast or something and, you know, something happens early in the race but still come down to practice and planning and having a good plan in place and then being able just to adapt accordingly and practice adapting that plan. So again, Tyson with on to something I think that is so important in our field. You know, what about, you know, another thing I've studied that I is when you're in the zone, you know, when you're just like, everything is going well, you made that point of do you notice the wind? Do you notice the other things? And I know people have studied it more recently, but do you even notice getting punched in the face if, you know, you're just all things are going well. And I think of the couple moments in my own athletic career that I were, my best performances, frankly, that, you know, we all have, though, that you were just in the zone that time.

It's good stuff. I know Zach Sorensen, mental performance coach um, he and I have talked a lot about in the zone and I think we've really come to an understanding that you wake up in the zone and life tends to take you out of the zone.

That's what I was going to get to, that getting punched is what will probably take you out of the zone. And you can probably deflect some punches, you can probably handle some punches. And when you're in the zone, you can probably handle harder punches. But in the end, punches that'll eventually take you out of the zone.

And I think that's where researchers have come in and said, you know, in the morning, the first thing you shouldn't do is look at your phone because that has a high rate of pulling you out of that zone. Wow, you're going to see something maybe negative or you're going to have some comparison theory going on and when you're scrolling or whatever it might be, but you, we truly believe that you do wake up in the zone, and you've got to fight like heck every day to remain in the zone because things are going to pull you out of the zone. Whether it's accidents, whether it's statements, social media, whatever it might be that's going to happen to you, you got to really fight hard to stay in that zone.

Well, I wonder. This is a whole nother topic, but I. I'm not a morning person, you know, I wonder if that influenced, you know, but, like, I have a routine when I get up in the morning, and once I start going through that routine, you know, I am ready for the day.

But what would happen if you took 30 straight days and 100 times a day, you said, I am a morning person, you would start changing those theories on whether you're a morning person or not, too. So it's, it's, it's understanding. And you don't necessarily. You don't. That's not that important. You don't have to change whether you're saying you're a morning person or you're a night person, but if you're in a role, you have a job where you have to be really proficient in the morning. Maybe you're on the news or whatever it might be, and you're. You're get. You're on air at 430 in the morning.

Crazy.

You've got to flip, be able to flip that and to be able to do that. If you're saying I'm not a morning person, you're going to struggle, right?

No, you're right. Now, there are times I've gotten up early, they're like, traveling or, because I have an early meeting and I do it and I do it fine and think, I could do this every day, you know? So, yeah, it is, again, that mindset, or, you know, again, preparation. The preparation the night before or just being ready. But yeah, your mind is a powerful thing, and it can talk you into something or out of something, and probably not any. Probably no more important time than when you get punched in the face.

Very true.

Back to your motion, then being. Being ready. So. All right. Great conversation. Mostly on just general life, not necessarily LCC sports. So let's end with some fun, gentlemen. My original question was going to be, what was your, what's your number one app on your phone? But I'm going to go a different direction and tell me name. Tell me something. You're terrible at that you wish you were good at.

Preparation. Okay, so what y'all was talking about was just hitting me. Um, working with this guy, the Dallian, the best, the best organizer of all time. He shows me like, ah, I need to work on this. Yep. So preparation, organizing. I'm a very seat of my pants. Just do things. It's gonna work out.

I think I'm, or actually, I don't think I know. I'm a natural introvert by trade, so I'm really bad at big situations where there's lots of people and trying to be an introvert that is forced to be an extrovert. So I'm really bad in those situations, and so I'm constantly trying to work on those things, and I know that I can get a lot better in those areas.

Well, good. You guys were much deeper than I was. I was going a little more superficial. Mine were golf, piano, and dancing. I'm more of a.

You play the piano?

I'd like to. I dabble at it. I tried to get my kids lessons and play it, and one does.

And so you're trying to live through your kids?

Yeah, I love the piano. I love the music of the piano. So I can play Christmas songs and really, really just one handed, though. But I can play.

We gotta get a keyboard in the athletic department.

Stupid kids songs, but those were mine. But if we're gonna talk deeper, mine would be more like risk taking or, like, I'm an information gatherer, so I try and gather a lot of information, so I'm hesitant on making decisions until I get more information. So being a little quicker there would help me be more productive. Yeah. And maybe having. I like writing things down and carrying them with me. I take them everywhere I go, and I never really utilize them, so. So, yeah, you guys went a little deeper on me.

All right. Surface level roller skating. My mom, my mom, you know, rest in peace to my mom. She, like, she grew up in an era where roller skating was huge, so I used to watch her, like, skate backwards, and it was so cool to me, like, and she had turned around. Like, I could skate around, but, like, to do the stuff she did was like, oh, that's super cool. So it is. I think it would be cool to learn how to skate backwards.

This dates me. But growing up, one of our field trips each year was going roller skating, and I wasn't very good at it. I played more time in the arcade area, and it was pretty popular, inline skating and such, so that's not on my list, but I could definitely be a better roller skater.

Good stuff.

Yeah, very good stuff. So always fun, gentlemen. Always good conversation. 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 and Jereny Robinson. You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand at LCCconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit LCCstars.com thanks for listening. Go Stars!