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 fortunate as usual to be joined by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter today. Steven, I'd like to talk a little bit about recruiting. At the time of this recording, I'm having a lot of letter of intents across my desk and as we work on rosters for the 23, 24 season and just an exciting time to finish out this school year. But coming from the high school level, recruiting is probably one of the biggest differences that I've experienced and I'm still learning about at LCC, how it works, but it's an important aspect the success of our program and, you know, just getting ready and to discuss that. So I'd like your perspective on it. But, you know, just to give our listeners a little bit about what recruiting looks like in our athletic department, high school, you know, we recruit from the hallways. You know, you got kids that roam those hallways and coaches are out looking for them and trying to find the best student athletes that fit their team. Where at the college level, it's constant. You know, coaches are always talking about recruiting in our office and, you know, we do a lot of recruiting locally, but, you know, we go across the country and recruit as we'll talk about some of our demographics later, of national and international students. But it's again, as I mentioned, it's important to strategically build the rosters and our teams at LCC. And there's a lot of variables that go into that. At Lansing Community College, we offer 108 scholarships. We have about 160 student athletes, though that shows that not every one of our student athletes receives a scholarship. They're worth the in district tuition at LCC. Our coaches can split them up, they can double them. There are different ways. But we have to stay within the allotment for LCC, which is less than the NJCA allotment, but much more than many of our NCCA counterparts. Then once they recruit, we sign the letter of intent to make it official. It can be done electronically or manually and then they become a student athlete or a prospective student athlete at Lansing Community College. But it starts much earlier than that, doesn't it, coach?

Yeah. Obviously recruiting is the lifeblood of any sport and teams are only going to be as good as the talent that they have on them. And you really have to put a lot of time into the intention and be super intentional about who you're trying to bring into our college. Fortunately for the baseball program, we have Hayden Modaff. He's our recruiting coordinator and he's a legend at it and works tirelessly. And you'll find our assistant coaches and myself going to just countless prospect camps every weekend throughout the Midwest. And we're trying to find players that are a good fit for our program. Players that are a good fit for our program might not be a good fit for another program that we have here, but at the end of the day we're just trying to bring in the best all around student athletes.

And you bring up two points that I would like to continue to discuss. One, resources. You've done a nice job of allocating staff to help you with this important area. And I think that something our department needs to look at in the future is building that recruiting experience and allocating resources to show the importance of it. And then the second thing is you mentioned one avenue of recruiting prospect. You host your own prospect camps. You mentioned you go to prospect camps. We have recruiting surveys online. There's recruiting services out there that student athletes sign up for. You can visit high school games, travel games. There are just many different ways nowadays, Twitter and social media sending videos to you to develop that process. And it starts way before the student athlete senior year. Obviously July 1st of their senior year is when the official process starts. But it's very interesting of all the different avenues that coaches have at their disposal, which is good and bad, to look at recruits and see what are good fits. There's also a misconception out there that you don't need to be recruited to get on a roster at the college level. And that happens. It's rare. We do have walk ups and walk in that might make it, but I know some of our coaches have open gyms or open fields or tryouts at the beginning of the season. So there are different ways for some of those kids that might not have been recruited to still have that opportunity. But the main avenues are the travel and the prospect camps and the videos and recruiting services. Am I correct?

Absolutely. I think coaches are always looking for the right fits for their program. And you can find them in a lot of different places. Some of them you're going to find because they're going to reach out to you. Others that you'll find at prospect camps. And through it all, you know, last season we had a tryout for our team. We had a smaller roster. We had a tryout at the beginning of the season and three of our four weekend starters for pitchers ended up coming from that tryout. So they were not recruited. We didn't know anything about them. They were in college here and had some hopes and they ended up making, not only making the team, but being starting pitchers for college World Series team. So it is possible. It's just, it's really small percentages that can just walk on to college teams.

And I would think that also speaks for the rest of our department that I think each of our teams have had one, maybe two, sometimes zero of those tryout that student athletes become a part of the team and those are pretty cool success stories. And some eventually earn scholarships or, you know, become part of the playing roster. As you mentioned, being starting pitchers. So a lot of different avenues keeps our coaches busy. I mean, I know I get a couple interest each week, you know, a handful, not as many of the coaches do different times of the year. I'm guessing. You know, there's an uptick in number of people reaching out to you or filling out our questionnaire online.

I don't think it ever ends. You know, approximately a week ago on a weekend, myself and another one of our coaches, we're here, we're up at 5:00am, we're here at the parking garage at 6, and we're on the road to be somewhere at 8:00 clock for a prospect camp. We're there from 8 to about 10:30 and then we're back on the road back to practice because we had practice that day. And so the hours that are invested are definitely a little bit abnormal. So it's not a 9 to 5. You know, you're definitely out there at some weird times.

Yeah. And you mentioned there's, you know, you do tours on campus on weekends and after hours when families can come in and make it, some students take school off to come and visit, which is common and a valuable educational purpose if you ask me. But that's not always the case that it does happen in the evening. And you know, we had a coach that had recruits in here this weekend on Saturday giving tours. And that's one of the best things for us is because we feel our success rate is when we get them on our campus that we have a good chance of signing them because they are very impressed with our campus. Then we take them and tour our athletic facilities. And that adds another level to what we can provide to them that maybe other colleges can't. And then the other thing that I've heard from coaches is our close proximity to MSU can help us in the recruiting process. So, you know, we have a lot of resources at our disposal that help us, but to the point of getting them on campus. And it could be at different hours of the day. But in showing them what LCC had, the other resources, I mean, it's not just the campus as part, you know, the tlc, the star zone, the other buildings. You know, we got to get up to that planetarium. Yet there's a lot of resources that we can show off to prospective student athletes that help sell our program both academically and athletically. You know, when they come here, we want them to get an associate's degree. You know, most of our student athletes are general associate majors, but we have our share that are business and kinesiology majors. And we take them over to the HHS building and all the technology and beautiful classrooms in there are again, another cell to help get that student athlete to play sport here at LCC. Other thing that on campus that I'm missing, that help with recruiting.

I think you talked about all the things that we have here. What we found is the most important thing is the people. And so when you're able to have the people that we have here at LCC and the coaches and the athletic department, we have a special connection. So when people show up here, they see the bright lights and the beautiful things, but then once they meet the people, that's where the closing actually happens.

And that's true. And that's true in any business. It's the people that make or break it. And we are fortunate enough to have good people here. As we mentioned, we have beautiful facilities, but they're nothing without the people that occupy them. Then the other big thing is once they get on campus and they sign and we get to loi. Signing ceremonies are becoming more popular at high schools. And here on campus we have our share. And there are different path. We get our share of transfer kids that are coming from other colleges that come in that might have not have worked out at another college, but might be a better fit here. As you mentioned, we have 12 to 14, I think, in district schools in our area, and we have successful high school sports in our area. That helps our Recruiting. But, you know, we've had international students before. We have students currently from California, Las Vegas, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Indiana. But Texas, Texas, a majority, you know, are from this local area. I mean, we have, we're represented by 90 high schools across the country. On our rosters, 25. We have multiple high schools. Grand Ledge, Holt, Charlotte, DeWitt are the ones we have the most student athletes from, which are right here in the Lansing area. So that makes sense. But again, it's much bigger than that, much broader than that. But it does start locally and then branch out from there. That what you experience, too?

Yes, 100%.

You know, we got our share from Grand Rapids area. Grand Rapids and the Chelsea Milford area, too, is another area that seemed that we get student athletes to come here in particular sports. So it's been very interesting me to follow and understand, and I still have a lot to learn. But it is so important to the success of our program.

Right. And when we're recruiting, we focus less on where they're from and more about who they are.

Good point. Good point. I think, Annette, you know, we've talked about this before, how athletics brings people together and how teams bring people together and how important diversity is in our society and in education and athletics. And it's nice to have that diversity and people learn from other parts, you know, students that might come from other cultures or parts of the country. You know, it really builds on that educational experience, too, that's integral to success of teams and their experience in bonding situations in life. So you're right, it is more about who the person is, where they're from. But it's just very interesting in recruiting of where they do come from. And people might not know how vast that area is. And at our level, you know, We're a Division 2 school at the NJCA, so we offer tuition and course fees. They have Division 1 at the NJCA, which also allows for housing scholarships. And then there's Division 3 level that has no money for scholarships. So, you know, most of the colleges in the MCCAAR conference are Division 2. I think there's a couple that are Division 3, but the closest Division 1 schools are in the probably the Chicago area and farther south that offer housing. But as we talk about how far student athletes come from, housing is still a part of that and hopefully costs play into that. But with our scholarship that we offer and the money that we can help, that they still would have to pay for housing and fine housing in this area, which is part of that equation. And fortunately enough, our location Allows for them to find adequate housing to live in this area.

Yeah, we're very fortunate. Some colleges might only have houses because they're in a small town. We're super fortunate to be really close to Michigan State University. So the amount of housing and apartments and everything else bleeds over to our Lansing Community College. You know, students and student athletes. So we're extremely fortunate to have MSU right in our back door.

Yes. Because housing is. Even local kids. It's surprising to me how many local kids actually get housing closer to campus. And again, with time management being one of the biggest issues that our student athletes face, travel time and being close to campus is probably more important or just as important to student athletes so that they can manage their time and be at practice and not have to make as many trips. But again, we can't finance housing. But it's an integral part of the recruiting process to show that in some colleges, especially at the community college level, have added housing to their. To their campus. We're kind of landlocked and not an emphasis at this time. And there's other variables that play into the housing factor. But fortunately, we still have housing options in this area.

We've got some parking lots that aren't being used very much now that we have the Gannon ramp. So who knows?

There you go. You might be onto something. And that ramp is huge. So you're right. We might not need those parking lots. But I got other ideas for those parking lots. Parking lot, too. That's a whole nother podcast, so.

Sounds good.

Anything else on recruiting that I forgot or that we need to talk about?

I don't think so. I think you kind of circled around it. It's. It's really all encompassing for our programs, and there's a lot to it. But it's misunderstood too, as well. From the high school end of it and from a lot of people, parents in general, they. They tend to have a lot of questions. At least the high school parents do. And in a lot of ways, they don't necessarily get those answers until they come on a recruiting visit. So we're trying to do a better job overall, just educating parents, incoming parents, and things like that.

And that's a great point, because being at the high school level, we got a lot of questions on recruiting. How early to start? Whose responsibility is it? We've talked about being contacted by parents or being contacted by student athletes. What's more beneficial or valuable. And so, yeah, there's. I still think you. Even though it's grown significantly and it's a big business in college athletics across the country. As we talked about these recruiting services that student athletes pay a lot of money to be a part of, there's still a lot of information out there that could help student athletes be more successful in the process. And even at LCC, I'm still learning how important it is and how much coaches are involved in it. And I still, when I think of recruiting, I think of all the hours of, you know, the games that night, the camps on the weekend that our coaches are always attending, and the travel that's involved that many people don't understand how much time it takes as part of their season schedule to be successful at recruiting.

And I think the last piece on recruiting is the reality that most high school kids, when they're a freshman or a sophomore in high school, really do not have any intention on coming to LCC to play a sport. They have bigger dreams. They're thinking they want to go to an NCAA instead of institution. And so we're not necessarily their first choice. But as they get a little bit older and they might not have the opportunities in baseball, the transfer portal has changed everything in recruiting and that could be a whole nother podcast in itself. So with the mix of things like the transfer portal, it's changed the recruiting. So now we're, we have more opportunities with kids at a few younger ages because they're just seeing how difficult it is.

And that's a good point too in the sense that even their senior year it's pretty fluid on maybe they think they were going somewhere and you know, maybe some, you know, college over offered or it's not the coach changes. And so even as we head into the summer of the that following fall, we are getting changes in our rosters and LOI process. So it is a very fluid process. And fortunately we have a lot to offer here. And at the NJCIA level, it's about opportunity. You know, we have some very talented student athletes that might have had some different variables to their resume that provided this opportunity for them, but it is a very fluid process. And even though when that LOI is signed it's official, that doesn't always mean it's final. You're right. Something we could spend many podcasts on with the transfer portal or the specific LOI process, but it's definitely something we have to do better in helping our prospective student athletes understand that process better.

For sure.

Well, that's all I had today, a great conversation on recruiting and you know, we'll continue to discuss other topics that are impacting our athletic department. So thank you everyone for joining us. Until next time, you can check us out on LCCstars.com for more stars on Sports. 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!