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. 25 national championship wins! Over 190 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, we're going to be talking about the importance of showing up. And just a little side note, I was this morning coming into work and overwhelmed. We were starting this semester here at LCC and I was going to cancel this podcast. You know, they're thinking, I don't have time for it today. I got to cancel it. And then I was on my way in and I put on one of our old podcasts and it inspired me. No, I got to go and do it and give it my best today. So here we are, and I'm going to make sure it's one of our better ones. But this could go a lot of different directions. And the reason I think a lot about it right now is because we are starting the beginning of our spring semester here at LCC and I try to really emphasize to our student athlete the importance of attendance, the importance of going to class. That's half the battle. You know, being there every day will get you a long way and in a lot of ways, good grace, knowing what's going on. I mean, there's a significant quote out there that says 80% of life is, is just showing up. So I wanted to talk about that today with.

Well, there's another famous quote out there that says showing up is half the battle. So I think they're saying 50%. So 50 to 80. I think we're close.

Okay, now we're going to debate fractions. Now this is just turned into math seminar for the semester. And you're right, I've heard half the battle too. But I've seen 90% too out there of what's showing up, but how important it is. And even like today when you're not like, I wasn't in the mindset of thinking I was going to have it. And there's some days you're just ready and want to attack it, but either way, how important it is to show up. And then once you show up, there are so many things you need to do, which we talk a lot about in this podcast, about being focused, being present, committed, giving effort. But take away the fractions and the debate of how much, how important is it?

I feel like you're one of the. One of the things that you struggle with. Maybe this morning when you're driving in and thinking, you know, I don't have time to do this podcast, is you probably just like we all do, you're getting distracted by noise. And noises come in all different fashions. And sometimes it's really loud noise, which is heavy stuff that you need to deal with. And sometimes it's not that loud, but it's still noise, and it provides distractions and you end up with basic feelings and words in your mouth, like, I don't have time, I don't feel like it. You know, that kind of stuff. And it's because of noise. And so that showing up, I like you said, we can go in a lot of directions, but man, is it important.

It is Journey. You got anything to add to that? Do you want to debate fractions? Whether it's 50% or 80% of what you think is to being successful?

I think it's the situation, like I said, when my daughter showing up was 80% of the battle or 90%, because if you got the talent, sometimes you got to get yourself to get on stage so you can shine.

That's a great point, because that's the importance of showing up, because you don't know when it might be your time to shine. You might not know when that opportunity arises, but if you're there, you got a chance to capitalize on that opportunity. I think that's one of the biggest reasons actually to show up, is to be ready for that opportunity. Another thing that is pretty common when you talk about showing up is what we talk a lot about on this podcast is stacking bricks. Even when you don't feel like it, you show up. It's stacking a brick. It's leading to. A word we've talked a lot about recently is resiliency. It builds resiliency by doing it every day about maybe doing something you don't want to do. And this is dumb, but I've never used a sick day in my life. I don't get sick very much, but even if I'm not, yeah, now watch me be out the next week with the flu and everything going around, and there's days I haven't felt 100%. But my goal is to go in and give my best of how I feel. You know, you've shared some literature with me how important that is, that you're not going to feel your best every day, but you can give your best every day. And your, your best might differentiate between 100% and 80%. But if you're still giving your best, you're still getting going to get something out of that.

Yeah, I think it's important to try to stay away from, like, how. How do you feel and more locked in or focused on what's the process that you need to do for where you're trying to go or what you're trying to get or whatever else. And if you listen to how you feel all the time, man, it's gonna be hard to show up pretty consistently.

And I think that we started this podcast talking about the classroom, but I think that's where it's even more important in athletics. When I was in my previous job and level, kids would come down to my office, go, man, I don't want to go to practice today, man, we're going to run a lot in practice today. And I would try and help them change that perspective about go to practice to get better, go to practice to have fun, make the most of it.

I thought you were going to say that. I would go talk to their coach for and tell them not to run as much.

Funny though, this is a whole side note, but there were some that wanted a kid that would, like, come down to practice because it's easier when you're in there. You know, these are our toughest days of practice. Mr. Laddig, can you come in those days? Because it just seems that, you know, the coaches are easier on us when you are in there. But no, I like going to practice and watching practice. But it is the process. If you're not there, how do you build the process? You know, and part of that process every day is, you know, the things you is your commitment, show that you care and give effort. And I believe those are important in practice every day in athletics. And if kids back to. We've talked about intentional practice before on this podcast, about how important practice is preparing you for that exam or that competition, that if you don't show up to practice or you don't work hard at practice, your performance is going to reflect that. So even showing up is half the battle. And then you got the other side of what you do once you get there. There, you know, another thing, I think it helps. Do we Talked about. It helps with opportunities when they arrive, but it helps with relationships. You know, if you're not there, you can't build relationships. And we've talked a lot about, like, with zoom meetings or coming out of the pandemic, how that has been a struggle of building relationship back up because we don't meet in person as much anymore. And I believe you and I coach Cutter and I don't know where you stand during we like in person meetings. But in person, showing up helps you build relationship, build trust, build camaraderie, learn together, come together. And so I think that's another important thing about showing up, because how important relationships are and seeing body language as I know you've done a lot with your team on body language and how important that is in sports, how you respond to things. So anything to add to the opportunities or the relationship piece or a whole other direction you'd like to go?

I think showing up, it definitely rolls with the consistency as a superpower. And I pretty certain that consistency builds discipline and discipline builds results.

Yeah, it's so true. Again, back to just building on, stacking bricks, how important consistency is. And I started cross country when I was a freshman in high school and never run before in my life. And the coach just said, hey, come out for cross country. I think you'll like it. And I remember the first practice, he says, don't walk. Go slower, but don't walk, because once you walk, it's easier to walk that next time. And I believe that's also true about showing up once you don't go or once you even, you know, like I always told kids when they came into my office and quit, I said, that's the easy thing to do. The hard thing to do is stay. And once you quit one time, it's easier to quit the next time. So I.

There's a statement with even that where if you're thinking about not doing something, just frame it as, I'll quit tomorrow. And tomorrow never gets there.

Yeah, put it off another day.

Gives you some time. And that's. You know, we talked about the benefits of procrastination too, where, you know, a lot of times you hear procrastination and it's a negative kind of tone. But there are some extreme benefits to procrastination as well. And don't quit today, quit tomorrow. Don't not show up today, just not show up tomorrow.

And that's a big Navy SEAL training thing, either about not ringing the bell or whatever. Like, just put it off to the next session. Do it after the next session and you keep going. But it is about developing that consistency and building a foundation and making you stronger. Just like we know in sport, the more you give something, the harder it is to quit that. That helps build that too.

I was just thinking about. Cause you somehow delayed, almost like delayed gratification. Because if you learn to put things off, like salesman's jobs are to try to get you to do something right away.

Yeah.

But if you actually take the time to what they call sleep on it, you'll realize you don't want it as much as you thought you did. So that's the same thing with quitting. Like you realize it wasn't as bad, it was just that day.

That's why when you go to buy a car and they want you to drive it home for the night, no thank you. Right.

I do. I usually end up buying.

You got that car.

Got that car in the driveway.

So back to the being present and showing up. The other part, I think that's big is, and I know you're a big component of mental performance when you show up. We talk about that half the battle, but the other battle is showing up physically and showing up mentally and how so many people might do one or the other. And if they do one, it's probably the physical component of showing up, but also the mental component of showing up and how important that can be. Back to my analogy earlier of 80% or so. But if you're all in, both physically and mentally, that's when you're going to have that best result. And being focused, being present, being ready, being prepared is again, I don't want to downplay just showing up, but then showing up mentally too is another whole component of them.

Yeah, there's certainly a lot of curiosity for the outliers in my world. And if you look at people, teams, towns, businesses, whatever that had success, you will see that the verbiage that comes out of them when they talk about the success they will attribute their achievements to their willingness to show up. That is a tribute. Achievements to willingness to show up. You hear it all the time. All the time. If you kind of look at this stuff and so it goes right back into what you're talking about, how important it is. And of course there's other things beyond just putting your feet in the room and your butt in a chair. You have to do more with being present and actually putting some action into whatever you're supposed to be doing versus just showing up to show up. And I think that's what Coaches are constantly looking for. They don't want kids just to be at practice. And of course, they always want their kids to be at practice, you know, and when somebody's not there, that's an issue. But they want more than just players at practice. They want them to put some action behind their presence.

And if you're not at practice, then the rest can't even happen. Back to showing up as part of that battle. If they're not there, they're missing things, they're not being a part of things. They're not understanding what's going on, and then they got to make up for it, which I think leads to. Another part of showing up that motivates me is stress. If you care and you don't show up and that stress of what you missed or that you're behind or someone's ahead of you, that it can lead. I believe it can lead to stress. But the more you do it, the ease, you know, the less you care and the less that what's showing up.

Ultimately ends up being just about an opportunity. It gives you an opportunity to learn, to grow to, you know, whatever it might be. It just gives you an opportunity. And, you know, we all, we all want opportunities.

Right. And I also, like you said about showing up mentally, I think that's huge because being present is one thing that I struggle with sometimes. So I could watch a movie, but if I'm on my phone and am I really present with that situation? So same thing as practice. You can be at practice bar, you present and intentional with everything you're doing.

Yeah. And I think that's harder and harder.

For noise, mainly because of noise, like the phone's noise as well, you know, and so it's the distractions of the noise. Instead of beating yourself up because you're being distracted, recognize, acknowledge it and be like, oh, yeah, okay, back to here. And the more you catch yourself acknowledging it. Yeah, it's. It's in a positive way. Oh, yeah, I just got distracted by this phone or whatever it might be. You catch yourself, you bring yourself back to where you are. That's building a muscle too, and you get better at it. It doesn't mean that you're a bad person because the noise is getting to you. It's more or less just recognizing, getting away from it. Right.

Making that just.

Yeah.

And. But showing up to be able to do that over time, experience, that's another way of showing up helps over time. It gives you experience on handling those things. And when I talked about reflecting on the stress of missing the common thing of FOMO fear, missing out with social media. But I don't think we have that same application the practice. I think sports is probably more even to some important academics unfortunately. But that fear of missing out of practice doesn't seem to correlate or transfer over how important it is to your phone. If we could teach kids that that same fear of missing out is the same thing that would happen in practice or in algebra class, that maybe it would help motivate them to get there. But there's also the other side of it inspiring them. Fun medina, you know, things that they want to go there, you know, and that's been my fortunate thing. I've loved my job so I want to be at work, I want to go there regardless. And I think the good teams have that built in them that showing up pretty easy because that's where they want to be. That's where their home is, their, their safe haven. And so I think the good teams make it easier for people to show up and want to show up. And it's difficult on each team because as we know, the law of averages, it's not true for 100% of those student on the team. If a kid not playing or if they're injured, I mean those outside that noise that you know, might prevent them from showing up. But I know the good coaches, you know, include them every day, have them do something that around their injury or other issue that they're dealing with to help them, that it would even be more important for them to show up because that's the one place they can go that help them overcome that stress or issue that they are dealing with in life. So I think that's important and I think sports has an advantage there because like academically some kids have to take algebra even though they don't like it. Where usually kids are playing sports or student athletes are playing because they love that sport that naturally lends to maybe helping them show up. The difficulty thing we have at our level is the length. It's just, it's a lot, it's full time. And so that, that can take your toll and that you know, over time keeping that intrinsic motivation of wanting to go every day. So yeah, you know, at the college level and unfortunately even club and high school are trickling down where it's year round and, and you see, you know, kids quit or whatever because they lose that motivation or it's easier to show.

Up when you enjoy doing whatever you're doing. So it's easier to show up. So Then that, you know, the conversations about getting outside of your comfort zone. There are plenty of things that are going to be in your life that you're going to need to do that you don't enjoy. I mean, that's just part of life. It could be you do not enjoy your drive to work in mornings or in the evenings or whatever, but there are going to be plenty of things, but you need to do them because you need to go from work to home.

Right?

You know, so you need to do that. And it's so much about just getting that you can show up for the things that matter that you don't necessarily like, but you know, they're important for whatever it might be. And it could be sitting at the dinner table and not having, you know, your phone sitting on the table, vibrating or going off or whatever, when you've got, you know, maybe just one person across from you, or maybe it's the whole family being, well with. To remove that noise in just that situation that's showing up. You know, there's a lot of ways that we can practice showing up beyond just walking into a room and sitting down or being at a practice.

And again, that's a good point. And over the last year, there's been a lot of construction on our way to work, and that can be frustrating. But finding ways to make the most of it, listening to a podcast, listening to great music, I forget I'm even going down a lane that's not big enough for my car to fit in. You know, that. Oh, I already went past that section. Or the same with, you know, the snow or something. You know, just keeping, you know, bringing that back perspective or focus. Because one of the reasons back to quitting is it's not easy to show up every day. And so training yourself or teaching yourself to do that does make it.

Consistency builds discipline. That, I mean, that's where that comes from. It's. It's because it's not easy. But then pretty soon, you keep taking those steps, you keep stacking those bricks, whatever it might be. It builds that discipline. And then it just keeps going.

I sent you a thing the other day. Like, was it January 10th or 11th National Quitters Day? Because from New Year's resolution, that's when most people quit their resolutions. And like, even in my own family at home, you know, some of them got Planet Fitness memberships for the new year. It is nice, but again, I'm encouraging them. Hey, three weeks, get a habit. Show up every day for three weeks, then it should get maybe not easier but better of wanting to go every day. And back to your point of the Navy seals net. Just don't ring that bell yet. Just go one more day, you know, and then it becomes a habit, you know, back to consistency, building discipline, building.

Results, and we all want them. Yeah.

My pastor was just talking about how he was like, man, I went to Planet Fitness to get my usual workout, and all the machines is cooking up. He said, I can't wait for three weeks from now so I can get my stuff back.

He should be encouraging the congregation to.

Go state the facts.

It is. It is.

But he's just saying that's what happened. People go, yep.

He's right on.

He knows that after three to four weeks, I'm gonna get all my stuff back. It's gonna be back to normal.

I hope he's getting an update on that.

It's gonna be, like, two or three extra people that actually stuck to it, but that's gonna be it. I had a question for you guys, though, because you talking about showing up, how do you guys deal with this? Happens more in a youth, but kids who naturally are very talented at something, and it comes easy to them. How do you get them to show up more when they feel like it's just coming easy to them?

You want to start?

I can start. The key is, again, challenging them, making it worth their while to show up. And I think we struggle with that sometimes because we just generalize and make everybody do the same things. But you got to push them. You got to challenge them to get better, because you don't want to pull them back into the rest of the group. You want to pull the rest up to them. But we've talked about in the podcast before, your best player needs to be your hardest worker. So you got to, you know, find ways to keep them engaged and not let that. Let it be easy for them. Because I think once it gets easy for them, that's when they start feeling like, I don't. What do I need to come for? I don't like this. Or I'm so much better than. Than the rest of the team, but just to try and keep that integration important. But I'm sure you got a better. You're more experienced with that, then.

Wouldn't call it better. But. But outliers at young ages, those are tough ones. When you speak about outliers, they're just a little bit different. Their talent levels are just different. And those are extremely challenging because it comes somewhat easy for them and what would be called somewhat natural. And so you try to push them and get them outside of their comfort zone, they typically do not respond very well. So those are some of the more challenging ones to work with as they typically will get older if they're still remain an outlier. Usually it ends up being a driver for them. And so it's pretty easy to get them to get outside of their comfort zone. But at young ages you really have to be careful and make it more specific about the person and find out, you know, why they're playing. Beyond that, they can just shoot or they can just dribble really well.

Right. And we talked about that before, about how having success at a young age helped them want to do it more and get better. And they usually get better because of that. But it is, that's what I tried to say. It's more individual and I think we struggle with that even in the classroom. Like you put all six year olds in second grade class, but their mother might be really smart kid that should be in third grade class. So how do you keep them interested?

They usually get, you know, I'm not talking about in school, but usually the outliers get pulled back to the middle and that's not a great thing.

And I think we're learning that. Move them up. I've seen kids now skip grades. I've seen athletics move a kid up to the fourth grade team if they're that good because again, it's still challenging them and keeping them interested and keeping them work. But you're right to some that could scare them and like, oh no, I like being the way better and best. So those are the toughest ones to navigate. Great question. We could have a question and answer segment on this podcast in the future. But again, back to whether it's 50% or 80%. I love this saying that showing up is a lot of the battle, whether 50% or up to 80%. And it could be somewhere in between there like we talked about earlier. But it is very important because that's the start. The start, the leading to consistency and discipline is the first step is just like the first brick or the foundation is showing up. All right, so really was struggling to find a question here for the end. I have a lot, but some of them are just dumb. So I don't wanna. And I try and listen to other podcasts. Oh, that's a good one. But if you had to eat one food the rest of your life, what would it be?

Pizza.

I knew you would say that. Even bad pizza.

It's always a great day for bad Pizza.

Okay, all right. I mean, like, what's your record of eating pizza?

I don't keep track.

But have you eat it? Could you eat it? I mean, have you shown to eat it every day? I mean like when we go buy pizza at home on like a Friday, I hope there's leftover that I can have it Saturday and Sunday too. After that I'm probably done with pizza. And I actually like pizza on Fridays for some reason and that, you know, I can have it for lunch or breakfast on Saturday and then Sunday, but Monday I'm ready to start new. So I. But that's a good one. That's a good one.

That pizza is really good because you can do so much with a piece pizza.

I, I got home late last night, my wife made me like a had flatbread pizza that she made, you know, so you can get it in kind of different ways too.

Yeah, that's the thing about pizza. Yeah, right. My kids make good flatbread. I'm not a big flatbread pizza. I'm going to try it though, because.

Stuck on an island, one thing to eat and pizza.

To go away from. Pizza. Cuz pizza. That's really good.

That's a good answer. We'll give Cutter credit.

Something is like a pizza where you could do a lot of things with it, like a stir fry.

Okay.

Yes.

You can put veggies in it. You put chicken.

That's a good, good, good angle of something that you can do different eat. But that pizza too, you can have macaroni, curry, sweet chili.

You can do a lot of things.

Okay, all right. Wow. That's a little sophisticated. I'm more simple, you know, like when I first think of what I could eat every day, it would be my pop tart, man. Really, Cutter? No, Second, you know, I think in my favorite food, like hamburger, hamburgers or tacos. But then I think in simple, like, you know when you talk about, like when you go home at night and want to eat something, that's a grilled cheese to me, you know, pretty easy. Or a cheese taco. Something easy that I can eat. And I have, I know I have. And it's simple. So you know, my first answer when I came into this was, you know, pizza was up there too. But tacos are a hamburger because those are my favorite. But as I think more about it your way, just. But you know, because of grilled cheese, I could add, you know, different ingredients on it. Pickles or something vegetarian. Grilled cheese. I've even thinking macaroni and cheese back to that same thing of adding different things to it. So I'm going to go with a grilled cheese now. I changed my answer.

Okay, great.

I might not have a grill, but I better have a fire on that aisle, right? So. All right. Well, I'm glad I showed up today. I'm glad you two showed up today. Hopefully somebody gets something out of this. And then, until next time, go Stars.

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!