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

When constructing an all-area team for say wrestling, I'd assume you'd pick one wrestler per class. However, one example from a few years back, we had two area wrestlers in the state championship bout of one weight class. How do you deal with that? Can't leave a state runner-up off the team. But probably can't do a co-POY at that class either, wouldn't be fair for the one who won.

 

For wrestling, we just use the best 8-10 guys regardless of weight class. That way, if you have a situation like that where you have two elite guys at one weight and another where you don't have anyone good at all, you can get around it. We do the same in every sport, honestly — just pick the best people. If that means two catchers and no third basemen on a softball team, so be it.

 

I've got 40-plus schools to choose from and our divisions aren't classified; they're broken up by talent.
My philosophy is simple. Teams are positional. You can't make the same team twice (if the best punter is the best QB, he can't be both) and I value a better season over better talent. I'm not blaming a kid for living in the wrong town.
We award POTYs at a banquet, so we created three POTY nominees for each sport, which allows us three extra names and a chance to slide kids in who might have missed a spot. Sales folks loved this, boss did too.
It added names for every sport except wrestling and gymnastics. I just couldn't come up with a formula to balance the additional three names.
-It works in tennis because the two of the POTY noms are the finalists for the individual tourney and the third goes to a lower-division kid who played No. 1 for their team, won a team title, but got bounced in the first or second round at individuals.
-It works for swim because I want the same number of kids on the team every year - 3 POTY noms, 6 individuals - so that way if we have no dual winners all of them can make first team vs. having six on year, eight the next, four the year after, etc. Just figure out which kids scored more points as individuals, use relays as a tiebreaker. Done.
-It works in both tracks because instead of honoring individual races because I want the team the same size every year. Two sprinters, two hurdlers, two mids, two distance, two throwers, two leapers, etc. Track folks didn't get it, then I explain it and now they just don't like it, which I'll take.
I'm lucky because we're basically the state's stat keepers so I'm aware of what's going on everywhere. I talk to coaches from all sports on a nightly basis and I'm aware of what's going on. Sometimes I see a kid who I might think is an all-stater and if they don't play good that night, well, that stinks.
Football coaches hated my philosophy the most. I went to a meeting and a coach was complaining about only QB spot. I told him "well, how many are on the field" and that did the trick. I didn't want to shove our No. 4 QB on the team as a DB because there's DBs who actually deserve the spot. The fun part for me is most of these teams have HUDL, which allows plenty of time to watch film. Watching these kids, it's not hard to find the All-Staters. They're the ones who are fasters and stronger and if you don't see it in their first one or two plays on HUDL, you cross them off the list and move on.
I take it seriously because it's my job and it matters to me and my readers. Looking back I've probably had a handful of picks I may have stretched on, but those are going to happen. The thing to remember is have a philosophy and stick to it. Don't get bullied by coaches, parents or anyone. If you can rationally explain your choices, then you're doing your job right.

 

Our interesting question a few years ago was in girls soccer. One girl was by far the best player in the county. She was on the U.S. junior team, and eventually made the national team for the World Cup and Olympics, clearly one of the best in the country. Because of national team commitments, she played in only about 7 of her school's 25 or so matches. They were a dominant team that won CIF easily. But did a girl who played about 25 percent of the matches for her team deserve to be Player of the Year over other successful girls who played the entire season? It came down to the paper would look foolish if they didn't make her POY. Ask 50 coaches who the best girl in the county was, and all 50 would have said her.

 

I had the same dilemma a few years back with a girls water polo team and went the other way.
One was clearly superior athlete, was on the U. S. Cadet team (essentially Double-A for the Olympic team) and committed to USC. But missed a lot of games on recruitment trips on an otherwise .500 team. Went with the top player on the crosstown rivals that won a second straight Section title for MVP, but the other one definitely made the team.

And, yes, I made the pick knowing I was not costing her a scholarship.

 

That's when you can fall back on the MVP argument. Who meant the most to their team's success? Was it the outstanding player who only played a third of the team's matches, and whose team won big without her? Or was there another player with excellent stats whose team would have been a train wreck without her?

We've had some instances where there was an obvious all-county player or even POY candidate that we had to dismiss from consideration because they got hurt early in the season and didn't have enough of a sample size to judge them on that particular season.
We've also had some that got kicked off their team for disciplinary reasons where we had to invoke a character clause. Like a potential football POY last season who flaked out and no-showed his team's playoff game (a blowout loss where they had four QBs get hurt; he played QB), then reportedly went on a crime spree during the weekend and dropped out of school or was expelled a couple of days later.

 

We had a basketball player in our area last year who was on his way to being the likely POY, playing on the undefeated top-ranked team in the state. But then late in the season there was a game where he went to the FT line and shot free throws when it was another player who was clearly fouled. No one caught it happen in the moment, only after video review of the game later that night. There were team-imposed suspensions for the players involved, who happened to be the team's three best players and likely all-area kids. Without them, the team lost the next game to a BAD team. Even with the players back after a few games, they ended up losing the conference championship game and were bounced early in the playoffs.

We ended up dropping everyone involved a level in our all-area lists. The top guy went from being POY to just on first team, the second guy who would've been first team dropped to second team and the last guy went from second team to honorable mention.