Full Circle: There's No Place Like Home

Hey, it's Coach Kate here, register dietitian and owner of R.D. Kate Sports Nutrition. As a member of the LCC Stars Athletic Department, I teach our athletes what to eat and when to eat it on training days, competition days, and throughout the year. For over a decade, I've been helping athletes of all sports and levels meet their goals. R.D. Kate Sports Nutrition offers individual consulting, team services, on-demand courses, and downloadable handouts. For more information, visit rdkate.com. Hello friends and welcome to Coach Kuts Corner. Streaming bright from Michigan's capital city, this podcast is dedicated to helping you better understand the who, the who, and the why of mental performance, personal growth, and LCC Stars baseball. Coach Kuts Corner brought you by I.I. in collaboration with LCC College. And now here's your host, Stephen Cutter. Welcome back to Coach Kuts Corner, where we challenge limits, push for greatness, and develop athletes who thrive on and off the field. The show runs on discipline, self-belief, and relentless preparation. If you're serious about growth, you're in the right place. Let's get after it. Welcome to the studios this morning. I got Coach Radik back in here, assistant coach with our program. Handles pretty much everything in our program except for discipline. He passes that off to me. And then I have a special guest in the studio. I have Mr. Blake McCray. Welcome to the studios this morning, Blake. Blake was a player on our first team, so he's labeled as an OG now as we speak about him. Blake you've gone from jukehead to division one to the MLB draft league to the Atlantic League. You kept climbing because you kept showing up, and that's really what you did in year one, two. Before we go back to that year one, which was 2022, in that special season that helped shape this program, I want people to hear where you stand today. So walk me through where your game is today, training, playing, coaching. What's it look like for you right now? Yeah, and thank you for the kind words in the beginning. Right now coming off as you know, a wild, wild professional season probably covered almost every location of the United States just about where I'm at right now, director of S&C for 3PD and USA Prime. So that's kind of my day job, if you will. And that's located where? Waterfer and Michigan. And it can be a long off season and that started a month, a month and a half ago and it kind of makes it easy for me because I'll just hop right in with the pro guys, train with them, whether that be in the way room, hitting, throwing, and it challenged me too full because I'm constantly learning. Sounds just like the Blake that I used to know. You know, you got into it a little bit. You were speaking about like your pro ball journey and you played some high level baseball, including with the stars. And just curious, like what were the jumps like and how much did things like consistency and that kind of stuff matter and how many things really stood out as you've been following your dreams? You know, it's funny because one of the things that I'll joke with with guys about it, but I truly believe it. It's like every level I've hopped up, there's almost like a little self doubt of like, I don't know if I can do this, but then there's also the confidence of like, I'm going to figure it out. And I joke about it, but it's like I just wasn't told no yet. I just keep going up. It was the same thing when I got to Lansing the first time. And then it was, it was Eastern, then it was, you know, draft league pro ball. And it's like, I just keep almost surprising myself in a way, not surprising myself, but like everybody told me this wasn't going to happen. And then I just like, nobody's told me no yet. So I just keep moving forward. How big of a difference between, we'll say, pro ball and college baseball is there when you talk about things like pulling on the rope together, team camaraderie, team unity, you know, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So it's almost a different game. College, you're, you all have a similar goal. For every player that kind of looks maybe a little different, like obviously we're on common at Lansing where we're trying to do one thing. It's, you know, winning national championship. Hopefully most of the good division one division two or every go. It's the same thing, but there's some kids that are concerned about getting drafted or whatnot. Well, you get to pro ball and that's kind of flipped on its head. And there's guys that say, this is just my job. Like you're talking about baseball when we come home. What are you doing? Like that's not a thing. And it's cool. It's a different. And it's a little bit of a culture shock because you now are in charge of just yourself and your routine and everybody kind of goes about their business in a very individual way. Yeah. It's kind of transactional. Yes. Correct. I'm just here here. I want to take it back a little bit to that. I remember coming in with our interim athletic director sitting in a room in the athletic department that does not exist anymore. The room was not full by any stretch. I remember thinking, where's the rest of the players at? But there was 20 some guys in there, you know. And I remember you and Bobby and some others like asking questions and stuff. And I said things like, you know, it's just going to be probably the closest team that you've ever played on. We're going to have some systems and some standards and, you know, we're going to kind of start rewriting some chapters here. When I think back to that stuff, it was, you know, it was people like you that really bought in pretty much right away. It didn't mean that you didn't have questions. Didn't mean that you didn't have doubts and stuff like that. But you just kind of said, all right, well, this is what we have. This is the direction that I want to go and I'm going to go all in. We think when we talk about the beginning of that season, so it has been the fall of 2021, late August, early September, you guys are worried about if we're going to be able to go play in the Puma and things like that. And we're just trying to scramble around enough baseballs and, you know, things like that to make it work at our beautiful West Side Field. What really stands out about that fall to you? Honestly, I think part of it's even before that when I decided to come back for third year, my first year as COVID, and had a couple of solid offers and there's something pulling me back, you know, I'm a believer and my faith means a lot to me and I think stuff happens for a reason. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time and, you know, I kind of make the joke maybe it's because there's unfinished business, you know, whatever it may be, but there's something pulling me back. So I decided to come back and then, as you know, everything got flipped on its head with our coach leaving. And then that brings us to the room. I think one of the things that stand out is probably like, all right, I took the bet on myself to come back here and I have a choice to trust this guy, these coaches and the team that I have now, or we can complain about it and where is that going to get us? Nowhere. And then I find out quickly like the things that you're talking about, the things that you're doing, it's like, it just made sense in my mind of like, okay, I had already sought out some like development, my own, if you will. And then now I got a coach who's talking about it who knows what it should look like, who's starting to get processes in there that actually I know we're going to eventually make me better. And I think that was kind of the light bulb with me. It was like, okay, we're on to something here. A lot of that stuff was fairly simple too. I mean, it's not like we had a ton of technology, you know, that we had brought in or anything we did bring some stuff. We started using machines a little bit more and practice plans and, you know, stuff like that. But as I circle back, it's still, I mean, you made a decision, but it's not an easy decision. It's not an easy thing in those transitions. And once you made the decision and some others made the decision, then pretty soon you had a whole group of guys making a decision. We didn't have the best fall by any standards. We played some games or scrimmages and we weren't terrible by any stretch, but I wouldn't say we were loaded and you kind of know what loaded like because you were a part of a squad the season before that had a number of pitchers that were, you know, high-velo guys and a number of players. So it was a probably looked significantly different in October than it did the year before. Yeah. And I think that was another thing that clicked too was you actually were the first one to ask the question of like, okay, why did we lose in that 2021 season? And I think it kind of occurred to me in the moment in that first meeting of like, did I ask that in the first meeting? Yeah. And it might have gotten brought up organically, but it kind of occurred to me where I was like, yeah, like at the end of the day, like everybody wasn't bought in. Like, we didn't try fully trust whether it was a coach or each other, but like, I mean, you guys were 47 and three and ranked number one in the country. Right. And I think it was, I think actually before that playoff series, it was 47 and one. It's just crazy. Anything else that stands out about the fall that first year? I do remember, and maybe it was out of arrogance. I do remember a specific time where, and I don't even know if I had to do a fall games, but I think it was off the field stuff actually. And I just kind of gotten fed up with it. And I'm like, okay, we got guys that are not taking this opportunity seriously. And we probably have, we probably have the most walk-ons in Lansing history that really contributed. Three of our four-week end starters. - It came from walk-ons that year. - Right. - From a tryout. - Yeah, correct. - Which is very unheard of. And I was almost out of arrogance. I was like, do you guys all know what we did last year? Do you know who we were? Is what we're doing right now is this, what you envision your time at Lansing Plain Baseball, one of the best programs in the nation? And we had a really, really deep talk and we were there for a long time and I remember walking up to the shed and you guys were like, what was that about? And I was like, we just needed to air it out a little bit. And I think it was towards the end of the fall. So it wasn't like we weren't trying to win more fall games and it was more of like a mindset and development aspect of like, hey, look around. This is what we got. We're not gonna get a transfer that's gonna save the day. We gotta figure this out. - Yeah, we go into the winner, pretty standard, normal winner, we move inside and we start the spring season with 27 guys, you know and there's so many stories from that first year that really helped shape our program is today. So many lessons learned and so much for people like you that we label as like legacy. Like the impact that you had helped shape our program. And that spring season, I remember a lot of it. I remember going on that spring trip and we went to Mississippi. And that was probably your, was that your first time in Mississippi? Yeah, so we decided to go to Mississippi because there's great baseball down there. And we're currently preseason ranked. I don't know, I think in the top 10 at least, you know somewhere right in there. You know what I'm thinking? I'm looking at the team and we don't have a ton of pitchers and you know, it's just one of those things. We go to Mississippi and boy, I just, I don't remember it going well. I remember a few important things there that helped change our program today. But what do you remember about the spring trip? I remember that it was a test for sure. Like you said, very, very good competition. We played some competitive games. I don't think we won a lot of them. I do remember one specific moment. And I know the team, Meridian. And the facility for junior college, incredible. We might have got our butts beat pretty bad the day before. And it was either rain or we were about to travel. Meridian swings or access to the weight room. And we were taking swings and getting ready for whatever of a light practice. And you kind of told us like, hey, it's going to be funny when they're watching the World Series from the couch and we're playing on it. And it was kind of like one of those, I guess, come to Jesus' moments, if you will. I was like, oh my god, he's going to be right, isn't it? And somebody even wrote something on the board there. And I was like, that's going to happen. And it was almost kind of like a dumb belief of like, this is really going to happen. And I think that's where it first started. I do too. And I remember some guys, returners, as we're losing games, to start that season. And our record to start off wasn't great. That was a team that ended up going like 44 and 11 on the season. But we lost some games early on. A record wasn't great. We had returners saying things like, lancing in the history of the program is never lost back to back games. This is terrible. And I remember after getting steamrolled, and it might have been by Meridian, I actually remember that conversation. We were in their hitting cage the next day. We were going to practice there, but they wouldn't let us on the field because it was too wet or something like that. So we just hit in the cage. And I think the pitchers went down on the warning track and through or something like that. And we got back to the hotel. And I had a team meeting. And it wasn't about us getting steamrolled. But we met in this hotel meeting room. And I started talking about, we need to get bigger and stronger and better because these teams are huge. And that was the immaturity of not understanding development and stuff like that. We're in March at this point. We're kind of past that point. We're playing a lot of games. It's pretty hard. You're trying to maintain at that point, not get bigger and stronger. And it was shortly after that, I realized like, OK. That's not who we're going to be. We're not going to have this roster that's going to have one replacement at every position. And if somebody gets hurt and that kind of stuff, we're going to have a roster that sometimes we're going to need guys, pitchers to play a position. And sometimes we're going to need position players to pitch. And then I thought, you know, I don't know where this is going to go. But I have the strong belief that because this team is so bought in, it wasn't perfect by any stretch. But it was really bought in, then like pulling the rope in one direction. And a lot of people like yourself wanted it more than what the average person wanted it. And we come out of spring and we weren't timing teams. Typically, we're beating them like five to three, two to one and stuff like that. And it was kind of this magical spring where things just kind of fell into place. And I don't think anybody ever looked across the field. I know what this happened in the World Series. But I don't think anybody looked across the field and we're like, wow, this Lansing team's incredible. It was truly at a point where when people talk about environment or culture, it was a premium petry dish of what it looks like. And as we moved into our spring, we moved into a new home field. I don't know if you've seen it today, but all that field work and stuff that we did in year one. We probably do times two at this point on that field. So it's changed a lot. It's pretty sweet, wouldn't you agree, Ryan? Oh, 100%. Ryan spent many a time doing field work. And now he's at a point where he gets to supervise. Thankfully. Yeah. Do you remember the move? I have videos of us moving the Bubba that didn't have wheels or something. Yeah. So moving the Bubba in trucks with him and Bobby and James. Yeah. It's one of those things where you don't see it in the moment. And a lot of guys are kind of like, man, this is I wash or why we doing this. And it's manual labor. But you look back on it as like, OK, that was a program changer. And looking back on it now, it's kind of like a good turning point where, OK, we're literally turning over a new leaf. This is it. I think we played one game at West Side. I did it against Muskegon. Yeah. And then we moved. And it was like, what are we doing moving the muni? Because this field isn't much better at the time. And then, you know, we also put a lot of hard work into it. We put our sweat into just the manual labor of the field. And that kind of forced us to have a little buy into like the future of the program. We go through the season, solid season. And then we get to playoffs. And we get to the super regionals where I think we're the one seed, if I remember right. And we end up playing Kellogg and they've got to beat us twice to win it, to go to the World Series. And we pretty much no doubt we're going to win the first game. We got this. We were the team that was doing X and Y. And that game was a pretty solid game, pretty solid baseball game. We lose it. Do you remember after we lost what that was like? What's going through your mind? Can you go back to that at all? Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of deja vu. Yeah. A lot of deja vu, a lot of like, man, I thought we could do this. I don't know if we can do this. Oh no, it's happening again. Because it happened the year before. Correct. Yeah. And you're kind of looking around at-- I'm kind of looking around at the guys and half of them are defeated or at least appear to be defeated. And it's like, oh no. And then there is kind of the turning point of, all right, we got to find a way to believe. And you're going around saying, hey, we can do this. You got to believe. We've already done it. We've been doing it all year long. It's just another game. But I think for a lot of the guys, it was like, we did everything right. And what do we have left? We're kind of screwed. And I heard things in the dugout, like, we've done all this field work. They didn't do X or they didn't do Y. And then we start game two. And some people are looking like ghosts. Mainly sophomores are looking like just shocked in a state of shock. And we start game two. And I'm pretty sure I remember we went down kind of right away. It was early. What do you remember about that game, too? I remember the first couple of anions. It was like, yep, that's happening again. And then I'm in the outfield. And I'm praying. And I'm talking to myself. And I'm like, there's no way this is going to happen. We got to find a way. We eventually find a spark. I think actually it was like, paying gone on or 100 gone on, I got on. And Bobby hits a backside double at scores two runs. And from there, it was just like, I don't think I stopped screaming the rest of the game. Because I was like, I'm not doing this again. If we got to put up 30, we're putting up 30. And we're going to roll with it. It was kind of a paradigm shift at some point in the middle. We end up scoring 16, 17 runs. And when going away, then we have the infamous dog pile that I think we'd worked on a little bit. We'll talk about that. Yeah. That was a special moment. Because I went from a year before. It's just going to happen because we're really, really good. And we're really talented. We're going to win. And then we talked about it the first year with you. And we envisioned it. And we meditated on it. We visualized it. And it's still kind of in the back of your mind, like, are we going to be able to do this? Even like you said, even after we lost the first game. And then actually being able to do it, it's like, you see the full circle of this stuff works. We are doing this because we believed. And not only with our physical, but with our mental. [BLANK_AUDIO] for that to come full circle and for it to finally happen. It was really, really special. It was the type of dog pile that you don't forget from my perspective watching it. It was super special. It was super genuine. I get to see it the next year with Hunter and Chutei and those guys as well. And that was a different feeling. That feeling that year on that team, the second year was feeling of relief. It was expected. Probably been some degree if you would have had that happen the year before we got there. Kind of same thing. There was a high expectation. You should be doing this. And so that 51 team was like a relief. The first one was just pure joy. Just absolute pure joy because I knew how hard everybody had worked and I knew how hard everybody had you know, bought in and I still tell the story like man that team if I'd asked them to, it wasn't an ego thing either telling the story but it was like that team if I asked you guys to walk through the Red Sea to River barefoot, go to the other side, put on some socks and think about how warm the water is that team would have done that without a single palms up as we move through the season. You just followed suit and that's kind of where the stacking bricks came from and all the other stuff is like okay if you have a dream you got to go chase it. And if you're going to chase it, you got to put everything that you have into it. And it's not going to be easy. It's not going to be smooth. It's probably not even going to look pretty at times and you're going to have people telling you that you can't do this. That history is going to repeat itself for whatever it might be and when it all comes together it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. So we dog pile. We get an extra week of practice. I think Bobby Cavin grew out his blonde beard or dyed his beard blonde. If I remember right, he looked like Santa Claus. Yeah, he did. We go to Enid, we take the 996 mile trip, we go out there, we win our first game. I don't remember exactly who we played but I think we went, yeah, we went our first game and then we draw. Yeah, we draw the number one team in the country and we're playing. I just told the story and leadership last night. We're playing the number one team in the country and we're playing the Memorial Day game. So you get the flag on the field, all the special stuff and you look across the dugout and you watch this team take IO and I doubt we took IO. Did we know that was kind of a thing that we didn't do and still really don't. But watching them and they're big and strong and got 70 guys. Of course, only 40 are in the dugout, but the other 30 are behind the dugout sitting there in all their gear. Do you remember that at all when we played them? Yes. What do you remember? I really remember the game and probably part of it is because a little bit of blackout and just being in the moment. But I remember a couple special moments in the game. There was kind of like a little bit reflective of the season where it's like we know we are without it out. It's supposed to lose this game and I don't think I don't know who we had pitching. But I think we pretty much had to go all the way to guy 27 that game. I think they had a weird kind of run rule there where it was a little different, but we were banging with him for the first about five endings. Yeah, I told a story. I think it was last night where I remember being in that dugout and it was loud and looking to my left and seeing like LCC people, you know, top step of the dugout right to my left and just screaming at the top of their lungs and I couldn't hear them. But I could see their mouse wide open. It was like after we scored, you know, run and we really held with him for a while, you know, five or six endings and then they kind of got away from us because we just were overmatched in the game of baseball or anything else. Like you can hang for a while, but you're going to need some extreme luck to go your way to be able to pull that off because talent does matter at the end of the day and numbers do matter. So it was a heck of experience. We went out there, we got to experience all of that and then you, you know, you move on and you're able to take all of that season in kind of try to mimic it in different ways, but then also try to just help you leap frog. And I know we stayed in touch. We've had, you know, multiple phone conversations and texts and things, things like that. But like what piece of this place still shows up in your life today? I think a big part of it is I probably already had some of it before, but it really instilled the girl's mindset in me and the wants to continue to get better. I think the big game changer in my mind was like the intro and kind of like solidification, if you will, because I was doing some of it on my own of mental performance and kind of like, okay, there's this whole physical side that I've started to unlock. But you're telling me there's something just as if not more important that's in between my ears. And I think that was something that I most definitely took with me and we kept in touch a lot over it was like, okay, how can I keep getting better in this facet because this is making me not only a better player, but a better person? Yeah, I look at you and what you've done and the division one stuff that you did at Eastern and moving into the draft league and all the things that you've done in Pro Ball. And it's always like, I look at you and it's like you've learned how to just maximize your potential. And I've always loved that and I always try to search for that in people, the people that do really just try to maximize their potential and who knows what that potential is. But just you learn how to just, you know, when you're right, you had it in you before or two to degree because of your upbringing and the people that you hung around with and the people that helped train you and stuff like that. And you just kind of learn how to just maximize it. And you're still doing that today with your training and playing and what do you think is next for you? That's a deep question right there. Obviously, being in the present, but I love the coaching aspect of it. I'm not sure long term what that looks like right now. I'm doing a lot of SNC strength and conditioning stuff working with a lot of high level athletes and there's a lot of reward there like we've talked about before, a servant leadership. It's kind of funny because I'm still there myself. I'm trying to get myself to be a professional athlete, but like I almost care the same if not more about the pro guys that walk into our building and getting them to where they need to go. I think there is a lot of gray area there of like what is for sure next. I know it's going to involve baseball. That's for sure. I'm going to impact the game both on the field and or coaching. And I guess that's where I'll leave that. Yeah. Coaching is the best job in the world and once you transition out of playing, you realize like what makes it so great is when you're playing, you're so focused on your development. And when you start coaching, you realize you can help so many more than just yourself. And that's what makes it so great. I love you, man. And I love everything that you've done for our program and the person that you're still chasing to become. So I appreciate you being in the studio. You were a cornerstone of that first year. You're buying and help build the standard for what this program is today and seeing you succeed at every level is just super special. So definitely uncommon journey. Thank you for being in the studio today, fellas. Winning Fades habits last. Excellence isn't a destination. It's who you become along the way. Thank you for listening, sharing and supporting this journey. Lead with intent. Give more than you take. Compete with a purpose. We're all playing a game we can't win. So go all in and go stars. Coach Cuttscorders recorded live in the WLNZ studios with the Dalian Lowry providing engineering and production assistance. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please share it and follow us on all forms of social media. Our program has been built and maintained with the help of many great people. If you want to be part of our mission, you can donate using the link in the show notes below. You can learn more at coachcutter.com and more about our team at lccstars.com. See you next time.