All-Area (or county, etc.) teams

What she said.

 

I poll the coaches to get a consensus and make changes if there are any dubious selections. Usually, we're close to agreement.

In my area, I'm the only reporter who watches my sport. It's always better to get several opinions rather than go with my opinion when I may have only seen some top players once or twice.

 

We ask coaches for nominations, allowing them to nominate their own kids or others they've seen during the season who are from our coverage area. But we tell them up front -- it's in the information we send to them asking for their nominations -- that their input is only one piece. Our staff's observations and stats are the other factors we look at, and we don't place any specific amount of weight on any of them. Our area is around 30 schools. In big sports like basketball and football, we get maybe half or two-thirds of the coaches who actually make nominations. In other sports it's a lot more spotty.

You're always going to get complaints no matter what you do. We get them all the time. I had two basketball coaches call me today pissing and moaning that their kids didn't make our first team. But what's really bugging me -- and I wonder if others have experienced the same -- are the number of coaches who lobby on their own behalf to be selected coach of the year. We had two basketball coaches who kept nagging us about it, and not good-natured joking, but earnestly pleading their cases. And we had a wrestling coach, who did the same and then turned into a massive prick when he found out we didn't pick him. How arrogant do you have to be to pick up the phone and call the paper asking for an honor for yourself?

 

I take coach votes, but my opinion can trump theirs if I strongly disagree. For example, with the volleyball team, there was one clear player of the year, but she was a sophomore. She got no votes for player of the year, but I gave it to her because she deserved it the most.

 

See, that's why we have a player/wrestler/whatever of the year and a sophomore of the year award.

 

The paper I used to work at, it actually was the Coaches' all-area team.

 

Head-to-head meetings, accomplishments, strength of individual schedule, where they floated in the weight classes, injuries -- takedowns, reversals, pins, other scoring -- and the size of your area all should play into your selection process for wrestling. We've got 14 weight classes, and wrestling is very strong. It's not an easy team to select. Certain spots are gimmes, while others aren't.

 

You're all winners!

 

We run the All-County teams with the disclaimer that the teams are selected by the county coaches associations...not us.

 

Same here. Too few bodies in my shop to hassle with it.

 

the last place i was at, we had something like 60 high schools in three states. the prep wrestling guy headed up putting the team together. any person who had anything to do with prep sports met -- including part timers -- and they created the team. the prep wrestling guy had final say since he, you know, covered the damn sport all season long ... but he gained plenty of good info from other staffers. it was that easy.

coaches have agendas. they should have zero input.

 

Unless you are a metro paper that covers a ton of different leagues, having one's own all-area team is redundant and retarded. Take a look at your list (any sport) and compare it to the all-league teams selected by the coaches. Notice a lot of similar names? Yeah, I thought so.

Again, if you have 20 leagues to cover, it might be a worthwhile project for someone to do on their furlough week. You comb the all-conference teams and basically go from there.

Once I worked at a place that covered basically three small conferences, all of which overlapped with another paper's circulation area. New SE comes in and wants to make a splash, so decides to do "The Podunk Herald's All-County Team". Basically, a rewrite of the all-conference teams that came out two weeks earlier, only deleting kids from schools outside OUR county.

His logic was it promoted the paper and gave the kids some extra publicity. Problem was, by the end of the season, we had run way too many stories (gamers, features, etc.) on these kids already and everyone knew who they were, their stats, their life stories, etc. So it was just rehashing old material and eating up space that could have been devoted to more noteworthy matters.