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 today by our assistant AD and baseball coach, Steven Cutter, and hopefully our producer as we talk about things going on in LCC sports and things across the nation. General last time we talked about parking, and I want to follow up on parking. I don't know what order these podcasts will go, but I am proud of my parking. I am backing up in the spots and staying in between the lines. I've shared the story with other people. I had baseball players come up to me after the game and ask and check out my parking at the baseball field. So, I mean, over the last week, you talk about accountability and making an effort, and I feel. Nice touch today. Yeah. Yeah.

Well done.

What do you think, Mr. Carter? Have you seen my parking in the last week?

Well, I think you're doing better. So if we had video here, you'd also saw me clapping for you. That's good stuff. I love it. I love that you're trying to be intentional about getting better. And we've joked around about it on a few podcasts podcast, but it's really just one of those things where you're trying to be just a little bit better. And you can start with the really the most simple things you'll see. A lot of our baseball players, if you were to go into their apartments or their houses or whatever, you're gonna, you're gonna see some things on their bathroom mirrors and it's gonna be words and it's gonna be words that are super intentional to them and it holds them accountable. And so they, they like to go and, you know, hold other people accountable too. So. And kind of make it a little bit fun. And you know, so I love that they were checking your parking job at the baseball stadium.

Do you do that yourself? The word on the mirror? Because I actually have up on mine right now enthusiasm. And that is because I just want to embrace more things with more enthusiasm.

Yeah, absolutely. We, you know, I'll pick individual words usually on A yearly basis. So instead of making a New Year's resolution, I'll pick a word. And we won't necessarily be in January. It could be in late November or December, you know, whatever it might be. But you pick that word and that word stays with you. And enthusiasm's a great word. You know, one of the bigger words this year has been, for me, has just been intentional instead of kind of glossing over a lot of things and having a lot of things happening at one time and then having a schedule where you're just like, oh, my gosh, I don't know whether I'm coming or going. If you're really intentional with things, you can be like, okay, for this 40 minutes, I'm going to be really, really focused on whatever it might be. And then for the next 20, I can answer emails, I can take, respond to texts and that kind of stuff. And so it's helped me be a little more disciplined and detailed in the stuff that I do. And then by doing that, it helps me become more organized. And, of course, Greg has inside the lines on his mirror.

Right. Actually, my word is resilience. You know, you get hit a lot in this job with many things, and you got to stay resilient. But back to inside the lines, I am doing much better staying inside. Maybe it'll carry over to my coloring, but it takes me a half hour to park, and sometimes I get afraid when everyone's watching if it's really busy. But it's crazy where you only move a quarter of an inch and it's a struggle to get over that half an inch, so. But I've gotten a lot better.

Station created some anxiety for you?

Yes, but I feel better. I am backing in, improving. Yeah. And even at home, I back in the garage for the first time ever this weekend, so it built confidence, too. So. And that's part of the intent. And, you know, one of the neat things I saw, and I like your word too, dad. Alien enthusiasm, I think, is huge because I believe happiness is a choice. And everything starts with being positive and happiness. And, you know, I like, look at my grandkids smiling every morning on my refrigerator, they're two school pictures that look kind of funny, but it just makes me happy. And, you know, too many people aren't enthusiastic about the day. They wish for 5 o' clock to come, they wish for the weekend to come, and they're, you know, it's just important in athletic that you can't overlook those things. And I like your word, too, Steven. One of the Neatest things I saw this week, and I wasn't going to share it with you, was at our baseball game this past weekend. We lost a tough game and you and I were helping with the officials and you could have been. I don't know what emotions you were feeling, but it was a tough game that we lost and there was a water bottle sitting on the ground and you still picked it up and went and threw it away when you could have had so many other things. And I'm sure you did have many other things on your mind. But it stuck with me that, you know, that's important to him. I know both of us go around and pick things up, but you did it in a moment when no one was watching and you had so many other things on your mind, I would think, after a difficult loss. And I thought that was just a very telling moment over the last week that stuck with me. And even again, holding me accountable when I look at things on the ground and try and pick things up. So, you know, kudos to you and your word of being intentional, because intentional is very important in athletics, too. You can practice every day, but if you don't practice with intention, you're probably not going to get better at the things that you want to get better at.

Yeah, there's definitely. If you coach, there's some dark days in coaching. You know, there's some roller coasters and. And we really are super focused on not being wrapped up in the wins and the losses, but being wrapped up into the standards and the processes. But that doesn't mean that when you win that winning makes you happy. I say it all the time. Winning and losing is a sum zero event. Winning makes you happy, losing makes you sad. And so even if you are wrapped up into standards and processes, when you do lose, I mean, we had the nation's longest winning streak going on at any level of baseball, and we lost. And it was weird. The players said it was surreal. They went through a college baseball in the middle of the college baseball season for 45 days without losing a game in the game of baseball. That's incredible. So it is surreal. But then if you do things and you're really consistent with things, you don't necessarily change, no matter what's going on. And if you're enthusiastic, it doesn't matter how many times you get hit with negative stuff, you're just like, I'm going to overpower that and I'm still going to be happy and I'm still going to be enthusiastic. And when we talk about Details, that's one of those, those things. It doesn't matter if, if we're sad because we lost a baseball game. They're still going to clean the dugouts the same way they're still going to pick up the opponent's trash and anything else. And that's, that's the mark of a good team. And, and as leaders, student student athletes look to their leaders not necessarily for their words that they say, but for the actions that they do. So I think that I appreciate you bringing that up. I had no idea that you were being very observant at that time and really didn't think anything of it, to be honest with you.

And you didn't. And I shared with you one of my favorite stories over the last couple years is when Michigan coach John Howard went out and wiped the floor up with a towel. He just grabbed it and went out and did it. And in today's society, even in sports, we expect a lot of people to do things for us. And I was joking with a parent the other day. In some sports, parents carry their kids bags for them to and from the dugout to the car. And you know, what are we teaching kids if we allow that to happen? But it was a telling moment, Marie, because there were a lot of emotions going on and your focus was elsewhere, but you could tell that you weren't doing it just the show off or whatever you do it because that's what you do every day. And that is important. And picking up trash is important to me too. That if we all picked up after ourselves, we'd have a lot cleaner place and wouldn't need so many other people. But. And to your point, dadaly and about having the word on the mirror, Deborah, seeing it is believing it. You and I have talked about that, that you got to see it first before you can and then do it. And so it is important having that word up there to see it and remind you of what you have to do because it is a choice. And it is important to have that reminder to make that choice and make the right choice. And you made the right choice. You know, picking up that water bottle when you had so many other things going on in your mind. And then the next thing it led to is how we responded. You know, we're both believers of E R equals O. And your team came back and responded after a tough loss, which it could. You know, we've seen some teams that it's gone in a whole direction and led them, you know, they beat you again. They say, don't Let a team beat you twice when you lose that next game because you're still dwelling on the previous game. So just a lot of little lessons we've learned in the last week that we talk about. Apply to parking, apply to school, apply to sports, and most importantly, apply to life.

Yeah, good stuff. Really good stuff.

It is good stuff. And you know, seeing our kids buy into that is important because that's what we want. We want them picking up after themselves. We want them respecting their facilities and their sport in the, in the game itself. And, and when you lose, you know, losing revealed a lot about character and class too.

You know, that's one of the big, you know, bigger things that we talk about in our program is to make sure that you win with class and that you lose with class and you don't necessarily change by results of a scoreboard or, you know, umpires or anything else that you just have class and you stay the same. And, and that's something that we don't always see because it is a, it is a pretty big thing when some of our athletic teams get beat by other teams. And, and it's, it's, it's a big deal. And so that class is really important to us. And we want to make sure that, you know, we do, the baseball program wins a lot of the games that they do play, but we want to make sure that when they do lose, because they're going to lose, they're playing a really tough, self defeating sport just like softball, you know, that they lose with class and dignity. And that's something that you constantly need to work on because they're, they're young adults, you know, and they, they can forget things pretty quickly.

And that's what excites me about sport and life, is it, it teaches us how to handle adversity in a game, not in life. You know, there's a lot more things they're probably dealing with at home that they bring to the ballpark every day or the basketball court or to the running track. But sports teaches them how to handle adversity. And you know, we haven't seen a lot of teams win with class on the news in the last couple years in the field of sports. And some teams do have targets on their back because of their success. And at LCC, we've had our share of success, you hear in our opening of how much success we've had on the, on the field, the court and the track. And so we do have a target on your back. We usually do get people's best games but, you know, that's a great reminder too, of winning with class and losing with class. Because that's about character. And that's something, you know, in educational athletics that is the utmost of importance of teaching our student athletes character. And you're right, it has to be taught. It's not just something that's inherent. And it has to be taught in some of the most difficult game situations.

The same as leadership or being positive or mindfulness or whatever it is. It's. It's all muscles that are grown by, you know, continually working on them. You're not just naturally born a great leader or anything else. So all those things are constant things that you're working on. And whether you're 65 or you're 18 years old, you just continue working on that stuff, trying to get a little bit better. When you see teams that do are able to do some of that stuff, whether the scoreboard is in their favor or not, you tend to see fans just, you know, put some hands together because it is one of those things that, you know, you can appreciate. And even the common person that doesn't have much vested interest in either one of those teams can see that, those pieces of it, because they really, really stand out more than what people realize they do.

And that's true. And it definitely stands out. And it's important. And it's what we want, you know, LCC to be known for and represented. I mean, every school I've been at, one of my models is represent your school well. Represent LCC well. Represent Mason well. Represent Eaton Rapids well. Because we are out there in the public eye and have people watching us. And I always joked in my previous job that people aren't coming in watching people taking a calculus exam. They're not coming in the classroom to watch the lecture that day.

But they are music and sports that bring people together. Yeah.

And I saw during COVID when so many people were scrutinizing healthcare people and teachers because of the change in their organizational structure, there are people out there saying, welcome to coaches world, welcome to band instructor, choir instructors world, where so many people are just sitting back there and saying, why did you pitch that guy on that day? Or why, why that kid in that lineup or shooting those free throws.

So.

But it's important, back to character, that our student athletes understand that because they, they do have LCC. That's the other thing that's different. We have LCC on our jerseys, on our warm up, that people, hey, that's an LCC baseball player. I always heard this Joke where this high school student goes in and rob something in the gas station and he had his varsity letter coat on with his name on it, you know, and we dealt with.

Do you think it's because I've been asked this question at least five or six times, along with winning and streaks and different things, but do you think it's a good thing that LCC has the proverbial targets on their backs, that people tend to want to beat Lansing just because of the success, all those national championships and everything else?

That's a great question. And as an administrator, I have two answers actually. Yes, because as an administrator that's competitive and wants to be successful. I want to win. I want to be at the highest level as an administrator worried about game management. It creates tension because as you've seen, when the other team has success, it can add other dimensions to the game, such as sportsmanship, such as over celebrating or a lack of or frustration on our part. Because some teams feel like they won a championship when they win a game. And I've experienced that at other levels at my high school level too, where when you have targets on your back, it can create a challenging game management situation, which I don't mind.

Do you think it's easier to manage a program that doesn't win as often? Do you think it's easier on that side of the coin versus managing a program that wins very consistently?

Not to me, because I want to win. I mean, if you. If you have that standard of you don't care about winning and you just want to participate or have opportunity, then it is a pretty average or meteor standard. But when you're trying to strive to be better every day it's more difficult and you want to get to that winning attitude. And I've been in programs that have experienced both sides and there's pros and cons to all parts of that, of whether people are happy or not happy or are people just want their kid to play or do they want the team to win and you balance that. Because I had my high school baseball coach one time always said the parents want the eight best kids and their kid to start a game. And most parents get that. You know why kids are starting or playing or if they're getting subbed in. But to me, I want to get better. So I want to manage our program that we are getting better. And it's hard to get better some days. I mean, there's difficult days on the job and every job has that. But we have a scoreboard that measures a lot of that for us. But when you dig deeper, there's a lot of other things. Retention, you know, graduation transfers, good grades that also play into the success. So I don't always judge what's on the scoreboard. I mean, I've had coaches think when I come in the first year, oh, you're going to fire me because I had a bad year? And no, it's fluid. I mean, you know, there's people that jumped off our bandwagon after that loss on Sunday or Saturday thinking, oh, this team's headed in a different direction. But sports gives you time. Back to our Kobe Bryant failure quote of, you know, it's what you do from that failure, not letting that failure define you. And again, I think sports is a great avenue for that. But I wanted to get back to my parking because I think I had. That's a win, too. You know, I did win in the parking world. And I just remember I listened to our last podcast on LCC Connect, and I'm pretty sure Dadalian titled it something about Greg parking. Is that correct? Dadalion? I'd have to look again. I'm pretty sure he did. The last topic of, of our, of our podcast was, I know it came up for sure. So hopefully this is our last podcast. We can talk about Greg's nice parking. Greg.

Yeah, but you're right. I mean, whether it's with parking or anything else, you're trying to win. And you talked about Kobe Bryant and somebody asked him, what does winning mean to you? And when we're talking about winning and what they were asking him was not, you know, what's a 97 to 92 win mean to you? But what's winning mean to you? And trying to do, you know, what you were talking about there or anything else that we talk about? And he said one word and he said everything. And that's a really powerful statement because it means everything to try to win, whether you're, you know, packing groceries at the store, being the best person, the best person that you can possibly be to put the groceries in the bag, you know, as good as you can be.

And I wasn't a Kobe fan, you know, fouling, because he didn't play for one of my favorite teams. But the more I learned about him, everything meant everything to him. He, he would get there early and work. I mean, I heard stories where he'd get there at 4am and shoot and he would be on free throw lines asking other players what are they doing to. To be better. So, you know, when you talk about that, everything. It meant a lot to him. And back to winning. One of my, you know, in sports, you get a lot of cliches and a lot of mottos and, you know, catchy phrases, but one of my favorites always was win the day. You know, win the day wtd. And that's more than winning the game or winning on the scoreboard, but back to our earlier conversation about trying to get to 5 o' clock or trying to get to the weekend. Win that day. You win that day. It's like doing your job, you know and I know.

So you, you take it one step further. Win the day is great, but how about win w I n what's important now? And you win the moment. Pretty soon you start stacking all those moments and then you've, you've won the day. And then pretty soon you win the week, you know, the, the month and the year. And you look back and you're like, holy smokes, look at how many things have transformed for my inner circle.

And you're right. And we talk about stacking wins. And last week I, you know, I had a good morning going for me. I sent you're on the road at a baseball game. I sent you a picture of me parking. I sent you a picture of our video working that hadn't worked since we moved up there. And you text me back, stacking the wins, you know, and I felt good. You know, that was a good way to start the day about winning, winning the moment. So I feel I won the moment in parking. That wasn't even the conversation I thought. I was actually trying to get to our partnerships in Team Dynamic in sports for the last two podcasts, but that will be saved for another time since, you know, a great topic on lessons in sports and the things that, how we respond to them and our words.

So good stuff.

Anything else to add? Anyone? Congratulations once again on your fine parking.

The crowd loves it.

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!