All-area team complaints: How do you respond?

Tell the parent that maybe if they sprung for that extra conditioning coach and a sports psychologist instead of healthcare for themselves then maybe their kid could have made first team. Then tell them politely they have ruined their child's chance for a scholarship.

 

You know, when you isolate one sentence from the rest of my post, it makes it look like I was saying that. Maybe you only cover a few schools and can get away with doing just 10. I guarantee you there are more than 10 in our area (and in most newspapers' circulation areas) worth being honored, and naming just 10 would be doing a disservice to our readers and those athletes. We would never honor someone who wasn't worthy of it, but we also aren't going to shy away from honoring kids because someone gets left off.

 

I'm helped by the fact that our all-region teams are picked by a vote of 20 or so members of media including TV, radio, and daily and weekly newspapers. So, there's always someone from the other end of the peninsula to blame, so to speak.

Our organization prohibits anyone who received a suspension for a violation of their school's athletic code during the season from consideration. So we're not setting our arbitrary rules, we're using their arbitrary rules.

 

Chip: Can you explain what you mean by "our organization." It's unclear to me what you mean.

 

Our paper doesn't select the all-area team itself, it has a vote as part of a larger organization of roughly 20 or so media outlets within the region.

 

I am not trying to be snark here, and I don't necessarily disagree with eliminating kids who have school disciplinary issues, but it's the organization that picks the team which sets the rule?

 

Yes and no. Yes, our organization requires that to be eligible for consideration for the All-(region) basketball and football teams that they not violate their school's athletic code. However, we don't set the code. It's up to the school to decide to suspend them.

 

Failing to make readers happy is why newspapers are dying.

When in these situations, it's always best to listen to the reader. So every single suggestion a parent makes, I follow to the letter.

No one knows their kids better than the parents, so if they say a kid is deserving, who am I to argue?

If the other kids were good enough, their parents would be calling in as well. But they're not.

 

OK, got it.

 

When I am in control of selecting an all-area team, I do it like this:

1) Initial selections based on what I saw with my own damn eyes.

2) Input from staff members who actually saw games.

3) Input from coaches, with a HUGE grain of salt. Coaches must realize their input is merely advisory -- they DO NOT have final call over who makes (or does not make) the team.

4) Select the Player of the Year. The best player in the area.

5) Select a Dream Team which would represent the ideal starting lineup for an "all-star" squad from your area. Five basketball players, 24 football players (including kickers) and 10 baseball/softball players, etc etc. Players selected by position (offense and defense in football.) The POY is the honorary 'captain' of the Dream Team.

6) Select a First Team which represents a typical full roster for the sport in question: 12 basketball players, 21-25 baseball players, 45 football players.

5) Select Honorable Mentions from any other players suggested by your sources. Anybody and everybody else suggested as an all-area possibility makes Honorable Mention. (In football where you may have 65 players on your first two teams, HM is optional).

6) Players are judged on their overall performance for the WHOLE season. If they miss games for any reason, disciplinary, injury or whatever, by necessity that degrades their overall performance and MAY (although not necessarily) result in them dropping on (or dropping off) the lists. It is not the job of the newspaper to act as an enforcement arm for the schools' disciplinary codes. However it is also not our responsibility to speculate how well the player might have played in games he missed in the theoretical case he had been able to play.

7) The decision is based on how the player performed in HIGH SCHOOL COMPETITION. Opinions of 'recruiting gurus' on the player's future and ESPECIALLY a player's performance in off-season competitions, camps, etc etc, are explicitly disregarded.

8 ) All decisions are final. We made the decisions based on a variety of credible sources. We understand you may disagree, but too bad.

 

That primal scream you hear is me weighing in on all-area teams.

 

This cat has publisher written all over him.