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 am joined by our Assistant AD and baseball coach, Steven Cutter. And Steven, today I'd like to just dive in our fall season. You know, we're a month or so into our fall semester and sports season, and pretty much all our sports are going right now with the rules and, you know, guidelines provided by the njca. So we've learned a lot in our short time here in the academic year. Like to dive into that a little bit and tie into some of the things that we are dealing with as we head into that fall season. So, you know, we celebrate our success. You hear it in our body of our past and our history, but, you know, nothing like the present. And, you know what our goals are for this year. And our goals are always pretty high here at LCC, winning championships, whether it's in the classroom or in the community, but definitely on the playing field. And, you know, had another successful last year. We didn't win the All Sports trophy. We took second, but we still have a record 19. And, you know, we want to add to that this year. That's, you know, always a goal of mine because it shows the true picture of every sport doing well in their particular sport.

Does anybody have more than 19?

Not to my knowledge. I think 16 is the next closest. And I think it's Grand Rapids who beat us last year by seven points. I believe we had a great year. And I talked to their AD in the off season. They had a nice sophomore class run through or even some of that Covid class. But, you know, again, it's something I want to compete for and do well in because again, it's across the board of our sports doing well. And see where we measure regionally. We want to measure nationally, which again, last year we won six of nine regional championships in our sport that we compete in. And, you know, that's exciting to win that many at a regional level and to go on and compete at a national level. And this fall, our Volleyball team is off to, I would think, one of their best starts in school history. They're sitting at 12 and 2 right now. Our cross country team, our men are ranked second and our women are ranked six nationally. Right, Nationally, which is low for our women. But you know, again, change over in a roster after winning the national championship two consecutive years, some missing pieces, but they will get better as the year goes on. But I, you know, super normal at

the junior college level though, you're, you're typically seeing a lot. Half of your roster is changing every year, so it's normal.

And when you're successful, it could change every year as you've experienced. You know, students go on after one successful year to a high level perform. So definitely, you know, you, you know, being at the high school and you think, four years, wow, that can be a long time with somebody. But two years, it's pretty quick. And then in four years, for some people, it's not long at all. You, some kids you want to have for a lifetime. So that's the nice thing about this business. But also even, you know, fall baseball and fall softball are starting. So, you know, going out and watching those games and the coaches seeing a

good age where they start at six weeks, you know, we're at six weeks right now.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Where does time go? And then our basketball teams are putting their rosters and finalizing their rosters and, you know, doing some out of season activities.

And the basketball season kicks off when

games start November 1st and both of them are going on the road for a tournament at the beginning of November. We have a new women basketball coach. We should probably have her on this podcast.

And that's pretty consistent for every season. Right. You know that October 1st range games, November 1st for basketball.

Yeah. For the winter seasons, I believe in basketball, our winter sport.

I'm going to interject here just because I don't get it. So you said they're starting off with a championship.

Who that the basketball team, they're starting off with a tournament.

A tournament, yeah.

Okay. Our women's team will be going to the Illinois area and our men's team will be going to the Baltimore area. Which coach has some relatives out there. They've gone out there pretty regularly and play a couple games out there against different competitions. So a lot of our teams usually take at least one trip in the season to go see some other teams outside of our, our region.

Gotcha. Okay, so I'm sorry, I'll close my mouth again.

No, good question. Sorry if I. We'd love to start off with a championship, although they're normally one at the

end of the season.

Yeah, you know, I like those, those terms out there is you can't win it on the first weekend, but you can lose it on the first weekend. And there's some merit to that, that, you know, depending on how long the season is or what can take place. But yeah, you know, you're working toward the championship every day and, but the trophies are usually handed out at the end of the season.

I think that applies for, depending on what sport, you know, you can, you might not be able to, to win it, but you could lose it in the first week. And that can apply to like football and things like that. But sports that are stretch out further for, you know, longer seasons, like baseball and softball and even basketball and things like that, it's, it's pretty much impossible to lose it in the first week.

Yeah, I agree. You know, I think you learn a lot in the first week. As you and I have talked about. You know, a lot of sports have preseasons and scrimmages, but I think the first, you know, I think we're very similar to the academic calendar. And I know I've shared this with you, but you know, you do some practicing and some learning where students are, and then you have that first test, which is I think our first game, and then you see where they're at after that first game and then you build toward that final exam. And there are certain processes to go through to, to, to reach those. And you know, you and I talked about, you know, preseason meetings with student athletes, you know, the halfway point and then post season meetings if you really want to get to know your student athletes. And I think that's true of when you do grade reports for the academic calendar. You know, the beginning, your first exam, the mid season progress report and then your final grade. And I think the good coaches and the good programs kind of to follow that model. But as we are right now, I mean, we're learning a lot about our teams and a lot still can change, as you mentioned, but I think a lot of progress is made between that first contest and then those next couple weeks after that with, you know, if you reflect and see where you're at, if you talk to your student athletes and you know, you practice with intention on improving those things. I think, you know, this is a huge time in our year right now is where are we, where do we want to be and do we need to refocus some things? You know, are we maybe not as strong in shooting or hitting that we thought we were, or we need to move this person somewhere else, or this person isn't performing where we want them to be. Especially when you're dealing with freshmen, you're dealing with, as you mentioned, transfers in. There's a lot of variables, and we've hit a lot on that in the last week in our office. The different variables that our student athletes feel faith that can impact their performance on the field. And right now, they're right in the middle of their classes. And some kids could be struggling, and that could impact their classes. Or, you know, some kids could be not getting the grade they want. You know, we always seem to focus on the kids that are struggling, but there's some kids out there that are mad they're getting a B right now when they should be getting an A or it's A or it's a hard class to deal with. And, you know, it's, you know, taking a lot of time for them to do well in that class.

There's a large cost for that piece, too, for those that have the standards that are really high, and maybe they are getting a B, but it's still not good enough for where they want to be or where they need to be to move on. And so then they're taking an exuberant amount of hours to be able to try to get that grade up. And so there's a cost there where they're losing sleep or they're missing time or, you know, with friends or family or anything. Anything else. So there's. There's definitely costs on. On both side of. Both sides of that. And they. They do have very full backpacks, and they're constantly dealing with things that sometimes you or I might think isn't really that big of a deal, but because of the situations they're in and the age that. That they are, it. It is a really big deal to them. And. And it's just trying to manage all of those. All of those issues that come up, whether it's in the athletic department or on the athletic team.

Yeah, and we're fortunate because it's really important for coaches to understand their student athletes, get to know them, to have a relationship. And, you know, as I've talked to you before in this podcast about making sure they talk to every student every day or another. One I like is, you know, listening to hear. I mean, because you need to hear what's going on in their life because, you know, looking at their grade report, that's only one factor I Mean, everyone wants to focus on the kid that's getting a D or an E. But that might be the best they can do in that class where we might be letting a kid that get in a B or C that should be doing better in that class. And sometimes we lose focus of that. And that's something I try and emphasize because everyone wants to just critique or throw the person under the bus that's getting a low grade, which they might be working as hard as they can where there could be other kids that are being lazy or just skating by and you know, that carries over into their performance on the athletic field. I had absolutely a college coach tell me once that, you know, they looked at kids SAT and ACT scores in relative to their GPA because if they have a high SAT score and a low gpa, that shows them that they're not working in the classroom, that they have the potential to be pretty smart. And if they're not working in the classroom, they're probably not going to work as hard for you on the athletic fields.

But the key word is probably because if you track that stuff, you'll find that people, that there are people that don't do very well in the classroom do really well on the field and there are people that might not do really well on the field and they do really well in the community, in the classroom. And so there isn't any, everybody's or, or all that. It is very random and there's a lot of, if you track it, there's a lot of things that will really surprise you. And you start asking why, you know, why can't they do well in the classroom, but they can do really well in the community, in the community service or whatever it might be between the lines. And you start asking why? And I'm not sure that you ever completely get those answers.

Well, each kid is differently and each kid or student athlete is motivated differently. And we see it a lot in our business where student athletes love playing their sports, sport. So they, they work hard and they, they are motivated to do well every day, but they just have no interest in the academic part of that. And some of them, some of them, and then those kids, usually an educational athletic might not make it or just scare, you know, barely make it, but they could make it in a club setting or a semi pro setting because the academic piece sure isn't a part of that. And we've seen that at many levels of, of college athletics where student athletes don't want to be in the classroom so they go and play in another area. And for us, you know, you have to do both that. We have eligibility guidelines that they have to do so. Well, you know, you have a 2.0 past 12 credit to be, you know, eligible on the field. So that's a whole other component when, you know, you're participating in college athletics compared to some other areas. So that's why some kids, I think, do better in sport and not in the classroom because they just aren't motivated. And again, it's individual, too. Some kids do well in math and don't do well in English because they like math or they like history. It's, you know, kind of what their why is or what their passion is or what motivates them. And, you know, our goal and our job is using sport to motivate them in the classroom, that to help them get that associate's degree or help them, you know, transfer to another institution after they're done here. And we're using sport as that method, and there's other ways to use it, but there's statistics there that if they get involved and they're invested in some activity in their high school or college career, that's going to help them perform better in the classroom.

I was thinking a little bit as you were talking about how successful the LCC teams have been here over a long period of time with all of those championships and 23 national championships as well. Well, and it got me thinking a little bit as you were talking about that what if we were to add more sports? Because I know our athletic department gets contacted a lot from just random people that want to see this sport or that sport or esports or whatever it might be. What if we were to add sports? How does. How does the athletic department go about that?

You know, we do get a lot of interest from our. You know, I have a student that just reached out to me that's going to be a student next year that wants to start soccer. And I gave her credit. You're planning ahead. Most come on campus and, you know, it just takes time to.

But if you want. If we wanted to add soccer, how's that process work?

Well, we're working on it. When I was hired here, one of the goals was to try and add sports here at LCC. And, you know, we're doing some different interest surveys. I was out at the campus resource fair. The student newspaper put an article in the paper last year to contact me if you're interested in this sport. Mainly it's, you know, individual students contacting me. I have. I've met with a couple local soccer coaches. I've talked to a bowling coach in the area that you know from my high school connections that have reached out to me and wanted to add those sports. Here at LCC we used to have a golf team. In our previous interim ad, Nicole met with a golf person.

We had a hockey team too.

Yep. A hockey club in the past. So you know, we've had, we've had swimming and tennis if you look way back. But interest is probably the driving factor if there's an interest to add that sport. But there's a number of other factors too. One being cost and financial sustainability. The other is recruiting base. Do we have demographics in our area to recruit those student athletes that could help us succeed in that sport? Staffing, staffing, quality coaches, you know, what the league offers. I mean I'm meeting with a gentleman this Thursday about football. And the toughest thing about football is there's no one in a four hour radius to play. So your travel budget significantly increases if you want to add football. And community Christian in Detroit has football and Hocking College in Ohio has football. Grand Rapids had it many years ago and won a national championship. And many people, you know, I've talked to, I talked to our other colleagues when someone comes to me about adding a sport. I was talking to retired AD a couple weeks ago about the difficulties of adding football. So I get somewhat number of requests throughout the year. Bowling, soccer and golf are seen to be the ones that have rise to the top competitive. Cheers. Another one I'm meeting with a lady on in a couple weeks and, and have talked to a couple high school coaches. Esports is one we're really looking at as a college. I've been working with our IT and media departments on developing that. That seems to be a growing sport. I've been talking to high schools in the area that have esports because back to our success. If you want to be successful, you got to have a good recruiting base. And we start locally with our recruiting base and fortunately for us in all those sports we mentioned, I think we have a strong recruitment recruiting base at the high school level that would help us be successful right away. Grand Rapids just added soccer at their community college and their men's team doing really well and their women teamed around 500. But it probably, you know, it starts with staffing and it starts with having a, a strong recruiting base. So all those factors play into it. Money, scheduling, interest. And not one of them or the other but you definitely need interest to start something. And I listen to any, I'll meet with any student. I got a student athlete that comes in and sees me every two weeks about golf, you know and we're working towards. And can it be a club sport? Can you start with non scholarships?

What's a club sport mean?

Well, at the community college it means a much different thing than it does at the four year institution because at the community college it counts as your eligibility. So you get two years of eligibility at the community college. And playing on a club sport in the community college is that it's more just a non funded sport. We you know, kind of be run through our student life department where at the four year institution a club is at the club sport and it doesn't count toward the student eligibility. Right? Yes. So but it's one way to kind of maybe see if it's sustainable and maybe to progress towards adding funding to it depending on the funding outlook. So again there that's another detail you have to finalize is how do you want it to look like. It's not easy just to add a sport the next year. Some sports you take a year just to recruit to add a sport.

For sure. You mentioned soccer is a lot of teams in our conference have soccer.

More have women than men's soccer. I want to say there's like 10 teams that have women's soccer, maybe six to eight.

So travel wouldn't be an issue for, for that but maybe for a sport like football then logistically it's, it's much more of a challenge.

It would. So soccer would be one that we, you know, could could add and have some success with. Bowling is another one. Around 10 to 12 of our, our leagues school offer. And the same with golf, it's a little less six to eight. There's some, you know, the NJCA doing a great job of some emerging sports. Men's volleyball. Southwestern Michigan College has bass fishing and esports. And then Mid Michigan and Montcalm College have clay target shooting and bass fishing. So again colleges are trying to find way different ways to get students involved that might not just be interested in sports or as you and I have talked about in music or the arts. So just other interested that brings students on campus.

Do you anticipate pickleball anytime soon?

Not soon. I mean because right now the biggest perception with pickleball is people think it's a senior citizen sport but it actually is trickling down and it's, you know, it's one of those new fun sports that I think will catch on and they're turning malls across the country into pickleball facilities. So community that really investing in pickleball,

you're feeling like the commons could have a little area with some pickleball and maybe a couple lanes for a bowling alley coming soon.

You know, pickleball is growing. Bowling is, you know, grew. And when the high Schools added it 10 years ago. So I don't know if that's still growing, but I still think there's an interest to have bowling. But pickleball, I think is one of the fastest growing activity sports in the US I think and in all age groups. Again, it started with probably senior citizens that thought they were too old to play tennis and the tennis people didn't like it. But I think the tennis people are buying into it now because it's a different game. It's just a faster pace game. It's more social. You're closer together. It's like ping pong on a tennis court or from what I've heard that.

So you haven't played?

I have not played. My son has played. Who, the tennis player?

I have not our coach?

No. I drive by people playing pickleball every night when I'm going home. Them.

But the people I hear that play it, love it and are all in, you know, golfers or other tennis players that I, you know, I have friends that tell me they, they play it constantly.

Do college teams have pickleball?

Not to my knowledge. Not yet.

So we could be uncommon and have a pickleball team coming or.

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Start it off, man.

Let's get ahead of the curve here

because you know what's going to happen. It is. We could use one of the malls or the, of some facilities here on campus that might, you know, have space available.

I hear the noise is a real complaint like anytime they're in a neighborhood or whatever. And so I'm trying to envision this in a mall.

It seems like that'd be pretty loud with the echoing.

Yeah, I think, I mean what they do is take the mall and build like 20 court. So it's all pickleball. And I think there's ways with the wall thing, the, the less than that noise. But you're right with the, it's like a whiff of that. It is a little louder than tennis. But I think, you know, the people that are playing it are loving and we deal with that every day. You know, when you, you know, I'm reading a book about professional soccer and how it's grown, how it grew, you know, the last 20 years. And, you know, in England, they build their sports stadiums right inside the city where there's no parking. And we deal with it with our facility that are. Right, that could be too loud or the lights are on or the sound system is. Is. Is too loud. So. Right. You know, we deal with that in every sport that we offer, whether it's, you know, in the city or not.

Stars Pickleball.

Stars Pickleball.

Well, we'll have to.

We'll have to go on, on site next time and do our. Our podcast from a pickleball facility and do a little, a little tournament here. I think there'd be some competition. I would actually be down to play. All right, let's do it. So. So again, great to be where we're at this fall here on LCC's campus and seeing our student athletes get going on the competition field. So looking forward to a great year. 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!