How do you go about selecting All-Area/All-Bi-City teams other than football?

Obviously there's no perfect way of doing it, but I'm curious as to how you all pick All-Area/All-Bi-City/etc. teams for sports that aren't as heavily covered.

 

Use the all-league teams as a guide. Talk to coaches as well. Some will be like playthrough noted, pushing for their players, but most, in my experience, will give you an honest evaluation, especially in minor sports.

 

I rely on all-league teams although they can be taken with a grain of salt as well, sometimes there is a push to recognize seniors, especially those who haven't made a college selection. In soccer and ice hockey I have a group of coaches I can rely on for input, who won't go overboard pushing their own players.

 

All-league teams out here in our area are a joke because there’s so much pettiness between the coaches. They can’t be trusted. I’d say find the guys you can trust and informally poll them.

 

The advice for polling coaches you trust is the best idea. When all else fails, use the all-district/league/conference teams so you have some reasoning. Best way to do it is with collaboration from others, whether it's fellow coaches or a shop that still has multiple people doing preps (bless those places).

 

The advantage I have covering boys soccer is soccer coaches are generally pretty straightforward. I didn't play the game so there are a lot of things coaches will notice that I wouldn't, particularly when I'm in need of a quality defender or two to fill out the team

 

Soccer is insanely frustrating to pick. I can look at a stat sheet and see who led the team in goals, but that often is not their best player. In high school, especially on less-talented teams, coaches often use their best players on defense where there are practically no stats to measure things by.
For that reason, soccer is the one all-county team where I largely defer to our coaches. Our area player of the year is usually obvious. After that, I tell the coaches to tell me who they think was good enough to be in that category. We only have four teams and about 12 all-county spots, so most times it takes care of itself.

A similar approach works for our other sports, although I have a better sense of who deserves to be there.
For basketball I pick the best seven or eight and a player of the year. With so few schools, it's usually obvious which players are pretty good or at least contributed enough to be there, and which ones would be a stretch.
I break baseball and softball down by position (with generic IF and OF positions), which occasionally leads to some tough decisions, but you can add things like designated hitters or finagle people who pitch and hit to make it work.
Track and field is easy. Anybody who makes the state meet gets on the all-county team. If there are any spots left, you try to fill in missing specialties from the folks who reached the state semifinals.

 

I felt the same when it came to picking water polo teams as well. I saw all our teams enough to know who the studs were, but when one didn't stand out for a POY, or I had a close decision, I'd check in with the coaches.

We used Batman's rule on wrestling as well: Make state, you're on the team. I'd fill out the other weights depending on their postseason.

 

USA Today would tell you to just have an intern look to see what MaxPreps did and then change a few names here or there

 

Twenty people? How long ago was that?