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All-Area (or county, etc.) teams

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by KYSportsWriter, Mar 20, 2009.

  1. Simon_Cowbell

    Simon_Cowbell Active Member

    Take everyone's votes, but identify the few objective and knowledgeable coaches and apply your own vote.

    Don't ever just add up coach voting and let it stand without making sure some horseshit hasn't happened.

    We have a private school that wins everything every year and coaches from the poor private schools try taking it out on these kids every season.
     
  2. I Digress

    I Digress Guest

    we take nominations... but we do the choosing.. in fact, it's a gigantic pain in the ass....before I started doing it, i figured the staff in general chose.. nope, whatever writer is doing a particular team, picks it....there's one guy on staff, been on a million years, if you don't 'check' with him, he bitches about what you do.. if you do check with him, he never has any advice to offer.....
     
  3. KYSportsWriter

    KYSportsWriter Well-Known Member

    The only problem with wrestling, though, is I'm usually the only staffer who covers meets/matches/tourneys/etc., so our staff voting for wrestling is out and I don't want to be the only one voting.
     
  4. doubledown68

    doubledown68 Active Member

    Coaches send in nominations and stats... who is on the team is completely our decision.
     
  5. I am my shop's wrestling writer and I chose the team myself. We do a metro and area team. I gave co-Wrestlers of the Year to both the metro and area because two from each category won titles -- in fact, both metro wrestlers were undefeated. I chose the teams based on state qualifiers, then the rest on regional and sectional champions. In my opinion, wrestling is one of the easiest sports to pick because the best individuals are determined on the mat.
     
  6. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    publicity and retarded. nice.
     
  7. Some Guy

    Some Guy Active Member

    I would never let coaches vote for my paper's All-Area team. Pick them yourself. I might take nominations from coaches, and I might call a couple of them I explicitly trust to get some info that might be helpful ... but in this case, democracy sucks. Be a dictatorship. Pick your own.
     
  8. Sam Craig

    Sam Craig Member

    I agree. I always knew the top players on all the teams (22) in the county and the challenge was to figure who goes on first, who goes on second and who goes on HM. The coaches knew the top players on the teams they played but not the teams they didn't play. So I'd ask for nominations to see how they ranked their own players and ask them for their thoughts on other teams (although many coaches wouldn't name players from tother teams). I always had a basic idea, so most of the teams, depending on the sport, would be set. For any questions, I always knew what coaches I could trust who knew all the players and could also be fair.

    I've been to meeting where coaches voted on an area team, and I saw how uniformed or petty some coaches could be. For instance, the coach of a softball power nominated his first baseman for first team but didn't expect her to win. She ended up with the votes because some coaches who didn't know the players voted for the player because she played on the best team. After one vote, I heard a coache say that he wouldn't vote for players on another team because that coach wouldn't play him.

    I always wanted the coaches' input but since we were saying it was our paper's team, I always had the final say-so.

    Wrestling, track, swimminig, golf, tennis and cross country were often easy you could use the results from the county tournament as a starting point for the events or weight classes. Of course, you had to make adjustments but it was a good starting point.
     
  9. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Long ago, I worked at a paper which allowed coaches to nominate/elect its All-Area teams. One year, one of the players had the dead-bang best player in the state -- 30 ppg, 15 rpg, etc etc. ended up starting at a high D-I school and eventually playing in the NBA (not for long, but he did play).

    Last game of the season, the kid's team lost. Some kind of shouting match in the locker room afterward. At this point I should mention the coach was a cockflogger of long standing -- one of these HS coaches with a runaway Napoleon complex, always moaning about coverage, he'd get in snits and refuse to call in games, etc etc.

    A few days later, I call the coach to talk over All-Area. He starts running down the list -- a couple guys all-conference, a couple honorable mention All-State. "Those guys probably ought to be on your team," he says (he was right -- probably his whole starting lineup could have been our all-area team).

    I'm waiting for Shaheem Superstar.... nothing.

    "What about Shaheem Superstar?" I ask.

    "Ahhhhh, I'm not nominating him."

    "Hmmmm. Want to tell me why?"

    "No."

    "He played in every game, did you kick him off the team?"

    "No."

    "Well, he's obviously the best player in our area, it'll look weird if he's not on the team."

    "Not my problem. I choose not to nominate him."

    "Well, we're probably going to put him on anyway."

    "No you won't. You state right in the paper your team is based on coaches' nominations, and I choose not to nominate him." (He was right again, our SE wrote columns to precisely that effect.)

    "Well I'm going to talk to the SE about this -- that makes us look ridiculous."

    Our SE at the time was one of the good ole guys who has been buddies with all the area coaches since Jeebus was a baby, and he'd sooner drink flaming sterno before overruling a coach.

    "You are aware, aren't you, how idiotic we will look without the best player in the state on our all-area team, aren't you?"

    "Rules are rules."

    He moved on a couple years later, and I became SE. Just about the first thing I did was ditch the coaches' nominations/voting for All-Area. They provide input and information; that's it. WE pick the team.
     
  10. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    wow, dog. that story made me grit my teeth. i hope you were able to fuck that coach over along the way.
     
  11. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    yeah, it was pretty apparent after the fact the coach was bent on fucking over not only the kid, but us (the newspaper) by making us look idiotic.

    But the SE, ME and publishers were in the pockets of the local school districts, so the idea of telling the coach to piss off (my personal option) never gained traction. Not only that, in the story, we were ordered simply to ignore the existence of Shaheem Superstar. So one of our first team selections was Sammy Secondbanana, who was "instrumental in Dicksmack High's 28-2 season, averaging 11.7 points and 6.8 rebounds." (Not quite as instrumental as the guy averaging 30-15, but never mind him).

    Of course we had to take hysterical raging phone calls for the rest of the school year, "you morons, why didn't you put Shaheem Superstar on the team??"

    We did talk to Shaheem and determined that the post-game argument, as we suspected, was about 85% the coach's fault. Coach Bunghole moved on before I took over as SE, as did our ME and publisher. Luckily the new guys were not fixated on ass-licking.
     
  12. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    i became the se at a paper where the average guy had been employed for about 15 years, and each one of them loved them some area coaches ... fucking took story assignments from coaches until i walked in the door.

    i made more than one of them cry actual tears because i made them ask uncomfortable questions.

    the editor there had no clue what was taking place there until one of the local college's AD's asked that i be fired because i wasn't "pubicizining" their program enough.

    it was pretty pathetic.
     
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