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. 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 by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter, and our producer, Daedalian Lowry. And gentlemen, over the last week, as we wind down a semester, it just keeps coming back to me about fairness. And, you know, we've talked a lot about consistency and trust, and those, again, are at the forefront of what I deal with every day. And fairness seems to fit right in there with those two. And again, reviewing budgets for the year, making sure we're all set for moving forward with a plan, dealing with some discipline issues as we wind down. And, you know, just thinking how fairness fits into leadership, a lot of different directions because there's the discipline component of it, there's the management component of it. I always live by life not fair and embrace it. I don't like adversity, but it does challenge and grow you. And I like how educational, athletic teaches you how to handle adversity. So I like the mantra, life is not fair and just embrace it, fight it, and, like, compete against it, like that's your opponent. And like, I always think of Big Ten basketball whenever you. You're playing a Big Ten basketball game, they always think you get gypped on the road by officiating. And, you know, I think embrace it, because if you win a Big Ten game on the road, it's like two wins. It's like, you know, one you. You're not supposed to win and get there. So. But as a leader, I try and live by fairness. One of the best compliments I ever received is a kid would come up and go, I thought my sport was your favorite sport. Because I try and treat all sports as their number one. To me, I try and help every sport be the best they can be and we can dive into that. So, Cutter, what do you think of fairness?

Well, I love the life is not fair. I use that in my own house all the time.

Me too, as a parent.

Sometimes it's a great excuse. Sometimes it's very true.

True.

I Think as far as, like, from the coaching standpoint, fairness is giving everyone the opportunity to succeed. Fairness is not guaranteeing the outcomes.

Yeah. Again, just like we've talked about in this podcast, outcome is it comes down to byproduct.

Yeah. What you do basically.

Right. When I researched for this podcast, it talked about having transparent communication, consistent standards, inclusiveness and division making, balancing equality and equity, and bias awareness. I'm gonna start with transparency, because that's something I think we've tried to do here when we came to LCC at similar times, is make our athletic department more transparent. And I still struggle with it because one of the parts of being transparent is being clear. And sometimes in my own life, I sugarcoat things. I'm too positive and try to find a positive outcome. And everything that I've had to learn to be more direct and more clear. And some of it goes to the second thing of standards. But I do like to explain decisions. I do like to share information. It goes back to truth. Like my former principal always told me, like when you had to respond to an angry parent or angry kid, start with the truth. And I know you're big on the truth, but it's hard to go wrong there if you give the truth, and we know if you don't give the truth, how many issues that can create down the line. But I also think in sports, when lineup changes or suspensions, as we talk about, it's not easy, but being clear, focused, it builds the trust that set the foundation for future decisions and for people thinking that you lead fairly.

Yeah. I think with the players, I'll tell them to not ask for fairness, but ask for a shot and then prove that you're someone that you can count on and bet on yourself. And so instead of talking about fairness, we talk about coaches don't necessarily have favorites. Fairness and favoritism gets confused a lot of times, but it still comes back to what I said in the beginning of the show. It's about what you do. And if everybody is giving an equal opportunity, then it comes down to what you do, and you've got to be able to bet on yourself for that.

Yeah. I think actions do speak volumes here with fairness and what your patterns have been, which leads to even having those standards. I know, again, you're excellent at having standards for your program. And you taught me, like, again, back to me being too nice at some times that it's okay to be kind, but if they're not meeting the standards, you can be kind and let them know that they're not meeting the standards where if you don't have standards, that's where inconsistency comes. That's where a lack of fairness can lead to inconsistency. That that key word. And in our sports, dealing with star players or bench players, dealing with men's teams or women teams or teams that win at a high level or that team that don't is having that standard for your program that you can go to. And it's nice to look at hey point right. Too. This doesn't meet our standard. And that if we're not meeting this standard, there's consequences for that and being consistent with that.

When I think about fairness, I think about last season's team. We won 35 games in the regular season and we were one of a handful of teams across the country at any level in baseball that did not make the post season. Is that fair? No. But we didn't meet the standards of what the qualifications were to get in the post season by being one of the top two teams in our division. So instead of saying it wasn't fair, we just understood we did not meet the standards of what was required. Which has then helped this year's team immensely.

And that's a great example. Exactly. Because it was. When you look at overall, it is unfair, especially again, especially when you look at teams that just, you know, in tournament that have selection processes that might not make it or have a higher ranking or a better strength of schedule. That's where you see a lot of unfairness in sports. And again, but switching it or the narrative to your own standard or these standards as they weigh to help navigate forward in a positive response, which is a good time to plug erosion because how you handle your response gives you an outcome that's led to everything. But that's tough because the one thing about sports we've talked about too is it's public. Everyone's watching, everyone sees your decisions you make. So you have a lot of outside noise or even noise from you. I mean, our kids are smart. They know that where we belong or don't belong, that I think that's hard. But if you can get your leaders to lead that way too and walk the walk, that that helps them move forward and help them grow and compete and be fair in the future on the handle things. And that includes captains, leaders, having kids on your team that are leaders and lead fairly and lead with trust and lead with consistency because that helps manage the team win. Because we're dealing usually with things that go wrong or things that there's A lack of fairness or a lack of communication, that having the kids be able to understand fairness or that life isn't fair as our parents have taught us to manage, that helps that narrative and moving forward. Another thing that I think big in fairness too, that I've also tried to incorporate is inclusiveness. And that leads right into a captain. I've had coaches tell me before that I good at leading when I need to lead, but I'm also good at letting them lead if they need to leave. And an example is like if we were hosting a wrestling tournament, I would do all the office stuff and management stuff, but the specific wrestling part of the tournament, I would let my wrestling coach do it. And I felt comfortable stepping back. But the other side of that too is even with this really happened in our league, if there's going to be a decision made, I try and get feedback from those that are affected by the decision, whether it's a student athlete, our student athlete advisory council or our captains on our team, but even a coach because they're the expert in that particular sport. For me that I try and gather information before I make that decision. And I think that's worked well for me in leadership and showing that I try to be fair. Whether you agree or disagree with that final decision, it still I think helps with buy in and accountability by giving people a voice that might be impacted by that decision. You have a leadership team and a council. Do you give them the help on decisions or more just dialogue?

Yeah, I think there's bumpers there for sure. But you know, leadership is something that you learn how to do. And with 18 to 21 year olds, you know, they're learning how to do it. They weren't necessarily born like that. When I think about fairness in our program, we often talk about the word entitlement and a lot of times entitlement sometimes gets bled into fairness. And so we somewhat try to teach them that they are not entitled to anything. That includes playing time. And everything that you get is not always going to be what you deserve, but everything you get is going to be a byproduct of what you do and who you are.

I don't like the word entitlement, but I like because I do believe that can determine fairness and whether it's happening or not. And it goes back to even leading right into. Our next topic is self awareness. Implicit biases. The biases we all bring to the table. Equity, you know, equal versus equity. I always like the chart on the wall that shows equal being like three people standing On a fence and one short, one tall one and they, well, short person can't see it where equity is more. The short person gets the, the tallest bench, the tallest person gets the shortest bench. And there's a difference there. And that's similar to the fairness that it should be more equity than equality. And that's something we deal with a lot as a team. But even me more as an athletic leader when trying to manage our sport, especially resource wise, I try and communicate regularly because it's about meeting the needs and giving everybody the same thing that I try and use a rotation pattern. I try and be clear on what they need. And again having a plan and working hard on executing that plan so that each program has what they need to be successful. And in some years it might be a set of uniforms, other years it might be equipment, in other years it might be staffing. But just managing that, but having that self awareness or even knowing what you bring to the table. I've seen a lot of accusations when an ad the coach of that same sport that oh, that board always gets the majority of funding or the majority of the tension or even some of the high level sports. And again, working hard at being present at every sport or showing the providing resources for every sport helps develop that pattern of fairness and equity and the same with each kid on the individual team. I mean even communication. I encourage our coaches to talk to every kid and every day. So that's not only your best player, but maybe your least talented player or your player that that's struggling.

So but that's also the beauty of sports is because it parallels life and we were all taught that life was not fair. And if you can go in with a mindset of not having entitlement, you're going to see that in sports are not fair either. And you may have 15 kids on the roster and only five play at one time and they're all given opportunities typically before the games start, even at the highest levels. But coaches are going to put the best team on the field. At the higher levels, you know, maybe the little league, the coach's kid plays shortstop and you know, all that stuff. But at the higher levels the best players play.

And that's an interesting. I wasn't even thinking about that as I prepared for this podcast, but I have dealt with that a lot actually because in youth sports I believe everyone should get the same opportunity. Everyone should play every position. It's about developing and having fun because I think we lose kids if we don't help them get better or have fun. Now, having said that, I still believe it's always about developing and having fun. But as you move up to higher competitive levels, it becomes more about competing. And coaches get accused of a lot of playing favorites. And, you know, one of the excerpt I saw is, yeah, they do play favorites. Favorites are the kids that come to practice every day, work hard every day, do what the coaches ask, listen, and is a good teammate. And those kids usually are the ones that end up performing better. But over time, when playing time becomes separated and more, you start to lose that fairness perception. And coaches are playing favorites, and I hear it even at our level of those issues. And I truly believe. And there's issues. And that's why I don't mind meeting with parents or talking to people, because maybe we're missing something or maybe, you know, we do get focused that we forget to give some kids an opportunity that might be working hard because, you know, we also go with what we're comfortable with and feel like. But for the most part, coaches are trying to put the best kids out there. I had one baseball coach tell me in the past what a parent wants is the eight best kid to play, and their kid, that'd be the ninth one. And. And that's true. And you got to understand what they're. Where they're coming from, and that they're an advocate for their kid. But, yeah, another truth of playing time and showing favorite by who. Who might get more playing time or get more opportunities. But overall, I believe the averages show that most coaches, almost all coaches, look for the one that give them a best chance to succeed. And that's as you go at a higher level. Again, I would think at the youth level, it should be more. Everyone gets that opportunity. But that also leads to frustration and how you handle that. And like, when we dealt with kids that might not be giving the opportunity, we say we, you know, obviously the easy answer is, you know, work harder. I would encourage our coaches to be clear and communicate on what they need to do to get better.

That's a great spot when you can just start with personal accountability.

Yeah. And it is like day after, are you staying after practice every day to get better? Are you in the weight room longer? Are you doing the little things? Are you, you know, eating better? And there's so many things that you can hopefully do that again, back to life. It's not fair. There are some kids that work really hard that just don't break that lineup, and that's not fair. But that's reality in a certain extent.

In the game in general is not fair. It's not who has the most talent when they line up, you know, on the court or on the field. It's who plays the best that day. So in a lot of ways, it doesn't matter if the team that's on the right side of the field, you know, practice seven days for three hours and had the best lifting and, you know, mental performance and nutrition and the other team didn't have any of that. It's who plays the best that day. And so a lot of times that fairness can get looked at like, are you, you know, are you kidding me? But that's also the beauty of sports, is you can see the. What shines through on that certain day, and that's why the game's not fair either.

And that, back to a point you kind of talked about a little bit earlier, is taking advantage of your opportunity. If you are given that opportunity, take it and run with it. And we've seen throughout the history of sport people that have done that.

Absolutely.

And never have looked back.

And we've had players that had sporadically played through a season, play in College World Series and just go off. So it's. It's about taking advantage of the opportunities you're given. And then when the lights come on on you, if you put in the work and you've been diligent and intentional with what you've. Your processes, then you have a great opportunity to succeed. That doesn't mean that you're going to succeed. That's why quotes are like, hard work does not equal success all the time. You're going to fail still, but you're given a better opportunity. And so that's kind of why sports and life are really similar, because you're going to find a lot of things in life are not going to be fair, but it's going to be about, you know, how are you, what are you doing? And if, if you keep working, you're going to be given opportunities.

Yeah. Because some of those opportunities are tough situations, bases loaded and two outs, or you're going against the best picture of the other. Could you. Obviously the coach needed a change. That. That's when that opportunity comes. But it's consistency over those opportunities, not maybe just one opportunity. And also back to something I wanted to elaborate a little farther on is frustration. The motto I see a lot nowadays is us versus the world, Lansing versus the world, or Michigan versus Everybody. And it's because of fairness, you know, like, everyone's against us. You know the rules. Only you know, they're only applying certain rules.

Sounds like a true Cleveland fan talking right now.

You know, it seems like a lot of my sports teams do have that motto, so, man, yes, Cleveland is against the world. We're going to beat them, too, sometime. But. But you see it in a lot of, you know, that seems to be a cliche nowadays of what each team uses that frustration of not being treated fairly against that. Oh, they're against us that.

Well, I think that plays into the. Tim Grover, who trained Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and really was cutting edge and has, you know, talked a lot about those times and what he did to help them become basically extra special. And he said the. The world is not fair, and that's your. That's your advantage, and most people aren't ready for that. And, and so that. That somewhat comes from the us against the world.

And that's what I. Back to the original premise of. I like the life that's not fair. If you know that heading into it, bring it on, you know, and yeah, maybe I have to go four miles and you only have to go two miles, but when I accomplish that, it means so much more. So, yeah, I think that's a nice way to kind of to wrap this up. But again, it's so important in our world because of, again, us being a public entity and us having to navigate resources of making sure everyone is getting, you know, what they need, not necessarily what they want. And so it's something I feel like I deal with every day, whether it's, again, we didn't even talk much about the discipline aspect of dealing with student athletes that might break some of those standards, or we probably didn't dive into enough about, again, just managing the resources so that, you know, we have Title IX parameters we have to follow to make sure our men and women's sports are treated equitably. But in the end, it's about, I don't want to think it's a bad thing either it's not being soft or not embracing the life that's not fair thing. But the more you can show that you're being fair by being intentional, consistent, I think it helps lead to success, helps lead to accountability by people, and it helps, you know, with the experience of you as a leader of getting buy in, which we all know helps be successful. Anything. You're awful quiet today.

Yeah, I'm just. I'm just taking in everything you guys are telling me, man.

That's.

That's it.

Well, hopefully it's something worthwhile.

So, yeah, that's fair.

I had four different food questions here. Man, he's hard on me today.

I mean, I think it's because. I think it's because you're always food centric here.

I think they're fun. We could talk.

I know everybody likes food, right?

Yeah. I mean, we could do favorite song or something, but what do you got? Let's go with food fusion. If this one doesn't go well, we'll go on to the next one. Like, I eat Mac and cheese, and I put ketchup on my Mac and cheese.

Oh, okay.

And I just always have. And my family has. But some people, like, get grossed out by me putting ketchup on my Mac and cheese.

See, I'm not a huge ketchup fan, but I do put mustard on my Mac and cheese.

Well, that's interesting. That kind of grosses me.

Yeah, and your ketchup kind of grosses.

Me out, so there's that.

But I'm also the guy. I will put mustard on my fries. I prefer mustard on my fries than I do ketchup.

Okay, well, you're a mustard.

I mean, I'll eat ketchup. I just don't really dig it.

Okay, is there another food? Like, two food combinations you put together that is.

I'll toss it over to cut and let me think about that for a half moment.

Okay, cut.

Man, that's a tough question. I. I'll go back to pizza and definitely, like, ranch. So there's some.

Okay, that's becoming more.

I learned that back in college. Yeah, that became a thing ever since then.

Yeah. I have one kid that I think he. He had more ranch than pizza when he dips it in and. And eats it. But now, what do you think of the Mac and cheese and ketchup thing? That. That kind of like.

I grew up with a mother who just put ketchup on everything, so I became accustomed to it at a very early age. So I do not put ketchup on everything but ketchup with steaks, you know, just the whole nine yards. But I don't mind ketchup by any stretch.

It became a ketchup question instead of food fusion question.

And I know there's other stuff I do it with, but fries are what I think of the most because I also. I've actually been known to put mayonnaise on fries.

Okay.

I'll put ranch on fries, barbecue sauce, you know, just all sorts of weird things. But I don't really care for ketchup on fries.

Interesting, because some people put ketchup on like their breakfast potatoes on everything.

Makes sense.

I'll do salsa related, you know. But one of my questions was salad dressing. So we'll do that next week.

But French.

But fries, you know, because I think of salad. How bizarre salads that come and they put so many different ingredients in salad, which some are really good, but same with fries. How many different things people like. Do you like vinegar? I do not like vinegar on my fries. But I have one kid that does like vinegar.

See, that's funny because I don't like vinegar on my fries except for one place in particular. And actually I'll name it. It's Penn Station Subs.

Okay.

Their fries are awesome. Awesome with. With vinegar. And actually that would be a point where I also use ketchup because I'll take it. I'll dip it in the. In the vinegar first and then I put it in the ketchup and it adds to the flavor.

You like Penn Station fries?

I think for every home game.

They're easily my. They're easily. Yeah, they're easily my favorite fries before every home game.

So that's what tradition for you close to muni. Do you get something else besides or just fries?

Subs.

So that's like your meal as a sub. And Plantation fries. So my son, he likes them with five guys have great fries too. But he always puts vinegar with his five guys fries for some reason.

The other thing I thought of is I do have a jalapeno chip dip that I will put on almost everything. Yeah, it's called Helluva Good Dip and it's like jalapeno cheddar. And I will put it on like tons of stuff just because it's good.

Again, another nice compliment that we use some of those we like like queso and chips and cheese in our family. So we like. My wife is big on using those dips for a lot of her ingredients too.

So I still think we ought to change it to Stars on food. I'm just saying.

Well, still not meeting our time quota. It's not fair. It's not fair right now because it's only a quarter of the show. When it becomes a half a show, then we'll. Then we'll switch it.

Nice that you ended on "It's not fair".

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. 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!