How late is too late to run all area teams?

Well, the whole paradigm has changed: in years past, all-area teams secondary purpose may have been to fill up some empty sections in between sports seasons with huge pre-packaged productions.

But these days the open news hole you used to need those pre packaged advance projects to fill is mostly gone.

And the extra staff members you used to be able to bust off for a week at a time to do the teams are mostly gone too.

And due to those smaller staffs, the number of games you can cover during the season is cut down too, and in fact your reports on most games are probably down to capsules of a couple paragraphs (few stats, minimal quotes).

All of which cuts way way down on the ability of your staff to credibly pick all-area teams.

Which comes right back to the reason you're doing the teams in the first place. I always thought it was to reinforce the reputation of your outlet as a leading authority on prep sports in your area and thus boost readership and sales.

If you're not covering regular season games with enough regularity to make credible all-area picks, it's really an open question whether you ought to do them at all.

 

As a reader and fan, two weeks at the most. One of the local papers just ran the all county and all area for baseball. The season ended two weeks ago, summer leagues have started. Guess most fans will read it whenever it comes out, but news should kind of be current.

 

So do you do your own teams or players of the year or just run the ones supplied by coaches/AP for state, district, conference?

IMHO, you should your own teams for the area at least because the coaches often vote for reasons that have nothing to do with who the best players are.

 

In an ideal world, you'd have at least 3 reporters/stringers who could come up with the team. Coaches will vote for their buddies and against their enemies. Years back, I would sit in on the meeting for All County wrestling at one of the local papers. One coach, who was a pretty good friend, told the others if his kid wasn't 1st team, the kid said he didn't want anything. I said, 'Ok buddy that decides it. He has to be 1st team, because he said if it's the other kid he doesn't want 2nd team or honorable mention.' Usually wrestling is cut and dry but this was one of the few where it was a tough call. They split 4 matches and the one who won the most recent finished lower in states than the other (didn't meet in states).

 

If you hand over the selection process to the coaches, I would call it the "COACHES' All-Area team."

As noted above, when you hand it to the coaches, you open the doors for all kinds of politicking and sandbagging, pro and con, and I don't think it's a good idea to attach the paper's name if you hand it to somebody outside the staff.

 

I don't get the wrestling example. Were you being sarcastic with the coach?

 

Yes. He stated his case for his kid after the other coach stated his case. It really was close, the best solution was co-1st team, which IIRC was what they went with. I was kind of telling him, that the kid said he wants 1st team or nothing doesn't mean jack.

 

Thus x1000. There's too much horse trading and cases where Coach A won't vote for any of Coach B's kids because the day ends with a y to make me distrust the process.

That said, have no problem consulting coaches for advice, especially when it comes to choosing in some positions, such as the lines in football.

 

Gotcha.

 

Some coaches are great, and I would feel comfortable with them picking the team's themselves in some sports.

OTOH, you have coaches meeting to select the team, and the coach of the best team in the district doesn't attend. So none of his players make the team. Explain THAT to the parents.

 

Most of the ones I've come across are great, especially in the so-called Olympic sports. Always ready to give a positive opinion on another school's athlete, even if it means costing their athlete POY.

But also thinking about something many moons ago when one juco football coach not only wouldn't vote for someone from a rival school, he bragged about it in the hometown paper. Made great bulletin board fodder. I know this to be true because the coach of the team I covered showed me the bulletin board during our weekly meeting.

 

When I held all-area coaches' meetings, we made it clear the coaches' input was "strictly advisory."

It was very rare that we'd go against the majority opinion of the coaches, but we reserved the right to do so.