All-Area teams

You should go per event. If someone wins pole vault, and then wins the 400, the second place person in the 400 goes.

You've also got to include entire first place relay teams. Likely, there will be duplicate winners in the 4x1, 4x2, or 4x4, 4x8. And duplicates for many of the top finishers like 100 and 200, mile and 2 mile. It shouldn't be too bad.

That's how we select all-league for our league awards.

 

I would think track is pretty straight forward. Either you take the state (or district) champ or whomever posts the best time/mark all season in a given event.

 

So what do you do if your top finisher in, say, the pole vault finishes 15th?

Sounds to me like everyone gets trophies.

 

For ours, we look at times and distances for the whole season, giving emphasis to the three postseason meets.

Then it's the best kid in each event and I don't care if the same kid has the best time in the 100, 200 and 400. He or she is on the team in three events because they were the best in that event.

 

Haven't seen it mentioned yet, but have you thought about grouping it by events? Top sprinter, weightman, middle distance, long distance, leaper/jumper?

 

I haven't made an official decision yet, but I'm leaning towards picking the best 11 athletes for first, 11 on second and then honorable mention regardless of event.

Example
John Smith, Podunk High, Sr.-Smith finished third in the long jump, fourth in the high jump and sixth in the triple jump at the state meet.

 

Pick it by event. If you cover track worth a hoot you almost certainly keep an area honor roll with the best marks in each event.

That's your all-area team.

If one person has the area's best mark in more than one event, then he makes the team in more than one event.

Out of all the headaches of picking all-area teams, this one is cut-and-dried.

Clock don't lie.

 

This.

We do an All-Area track team every spring. I collect nominations from the coaches and they do the voting -- including individual awards: athlete of the year, sophomore of the year and coach of the year.

Voting for the team is simple: the top 10 make it, everyone else is honorable mention.

 

Instead of calling it all-area, I'd just go with fastest times in each event. Track is the sport that lends itself to the least subjectivity regarding talent in each event.

 

That's a bad idea. Why bring subjectivity into it?

Then you have to decide if a guy who finished third in three events is better than a guy who finished fourth in four or whatever or someone who won the 3,200 meters.

 

If you're going to fall back on results from a season-ending meet to determine your all-area team, then you shouldn't be in the business of picking an all-area team with your paper's name on it to begin with.

The local paper thought it had the right idea by using the state qualifier meet as its sole criteria for picking the all-area wrestling team. This worked OK until the state started introducing wild-card entries to the state meet so that there would be no more first-round byes.

Athlete "A" won the state qualifier with a close decision over Athlete "B" to (in theory) lock u the all-star berth. Two weeks later, "B" wins the state tourney as a wild card without having to face "A" head-to-head.

Upon further investigation, "B" also beat "A" two out of three (all close decisions) in the two months leading up to the state qualifier.

Paper ended up going down the path of throwing them both onto the all-area team.

So they went from abdicating and responsibility at all to taking over the decision-making process -- and then failed to make a decision.

 

I think a track team should be based on results -- but not from one meet.

If someone regularly high jumped 6-4 during the season but was hobbled and only went 5-10 at state or district or whatever meet you used, do you leave him out?

To me, you would pick the athletewho consistently did the best in each event but weight toward the season-ending meet(s).