Weekly Word: He Got Robbed!
As the season winds down, it’s that time of year again for all-conference, all-state, and all-star teams to be voted on, selected, etc. Instead of being supportive of the kids who are honored and make those teams, we tend to…
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Continue ReadingAs the season winds down, it’s that time of year again for all-conference, all-state, and all-star teams to be voted on, selected, etc. Instead of being supportive of the kids who are honored and make those teams, we tend to turn our attention to the “snubs” who don’t make it. I get it; trust me. I’ve been a travel coach and an individual instructor who wanted to see his kids win awards. I am a high school coach who wants to see his kids rewarded with honors. I get it. The only thing I haven’t been in this situation is a parent. Regardless, when we are emotionally attached to players, we are undoubtedly going to at least have a little bias towards the people we care about.
With that said, when it comes to these postseason awards, I ask you to take a step back from the emotion of it all for just a moment, and consider three key things (which I will address more specifically below). Do you understand the process for selecting these teams and understand who is selecting the teams? Of the other kids who were selected to these honor teams, have you seen each of them enough to make a fair assessment of them and their game? And the person you are closest to, the one you feel like was deserving but didn’t make, are they THAT much more deserving that you would be willing to take an award away from someone who was voted to one of these teams? There are unique situations where that truly could be the case, but we like to take the rare 1% and make a much bigger deal out of it.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS
All-Conference: In most conferences, all of the head coaches within a conference are asked to nominate players from their own team to receive all-conference awards at the end of the season. Based on my experiences, most of those coaches “over-nominate” and add an additional kid or two who probably shouldn’t be considered, hoping that maybe they’ll end up honorable mention. With that being said, I’m guessing any worthy player is highly likely to be nominated by there own coach. From that point, each coach in the conference usually gets a ballot of all nominees. They are then permitted to select however many players their conference stipulates (8, 10, 12, maybe 15 players) but they are only allowed to vote for players from other teams, not their own. The votes are then tallied, and the players with the most votes make the all-conference teams. Please don’t blame your head coach for your players not making all-conference unless they weren’t nominated by your head coach (or your coach did something to cause a major conflict with the other coaches in the conference). In nearly every conference in the state, the all-conference teams are selected by the other coaches within the conference, so your fate is in their hands.
Academic All-Conference: As it relates to Academic All-Conference, these teams are typically selected with minimum requirements the athletes must meet concerning their academics. In the four conferences I have been a part of, there hasn’t been a limit to the number of players on these teams, but there have been tiers as far as high-academic and regular academic all-conference. Again as it relates to my experiences, usually the Athletic Director or the Athletic Director’s Administrative Assistant do this for the head coaches in all sports. Just make sure it’s getting done if you are a high-academic student-athlete.
All-State: There are various coaching associations spread throughout the state, and each one tends to do a year-end all-state team. First, to be very clear, your head coach must be a member of an association for the players to be nominated. Agree with it, don’t agree with it, form whatever opinion you want, but the association is allowed to make the rules for their memberships and honor teams. I mean, if your car breaks down on the side of the road, can you call AAA for assistance if you are not a member? Moving on…towards the end of every season, the associations your head coach is a part of (like the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association, or IBCA) send out a nomination form to nominate their players. At that point, there is typically a meeting after the State Finals for a selected committee to get together and vote on all-state teams. With regards to the IBCA, they have a 20-person committee made up of coaches from throughout the state and from various school sizes.
AP All-State: This is another form of an all-state team, but this one is specifically voted for by members of the media. There are media members throughout the state who get the opportunity to vote, but not every newspaper, television station, or radio show is represented. Also, not every writer at each newspaper gets a vote, only those who have been selected. If the media who cover your team don’t have votes, then it is tougher to make the AP All-State team. If that is the case, I would make sure to mention something to your local media so they can pass your name along to a voting member.
Junior All-Star Team: The Junior All-Star team is sponsored by the Indianapolis Star, but the Indianapolis Star has no one who contributes to the voting of this team. The team is actually assembled by an IBCA committee. There is a “Core” team of six players who participate in all three contests. There is then a “Red”, “White”, and “Blue” team of six players each who take turns combining with the Core group to participate in one of the games. The Juniors play one game against the Senior All-Stars and two games against the Kentucky Juniors. It has not been announced which group (Red, White, or Blue) will play in each game.
Indiana All-Star Team (Seniors): The traditional Indiana All-Star team, that everyone is familiar with, utilizes a voting system that encourages high school head coaches and media members to vote online. From there, a committee headed up by the Indiana All-Star Director uses those votes as an aid to assemble the team. I don’t know that there is a set number of roster spots by rule, but 13 has traditionally been the number of team members over the last few years. The Indiana All-Star team now participates in four games each June…two against the Indiana Juniors and two against the Kentucky Seniors.
Mr. & Miss Basketball: A couple of years back, the Indianapolis Star began the IndyStar Indiana Sports Awards ceremony where they honored a variety of different high school athletes for their accomplishments. It is now at this award ceremony that Mr. & Miss Basketball are announced. Those individuals will come from a pool of the top vote-getters to the Indiana All-Star team. This year the Indiana Sports Awards will be May 5th at Clowes Hall on the campus of Butler University.
WHO HAVE YOU SEEN?
If you think your player got “snubbed”, then who are you willing to take off the team? I think in this day and age, we emotionally get so caught up in what our player can do that we forget there are other quality players out there. If your player is “snubbed”, have you seen all of the other players who made the team enough times to make a fair evaluation and assessment of them? I’m not talking about half of a game or even one full game; I’m talking about three to four times this season or six or more times in the last year. Can you say that about EVERYONE who made it? College coaches often need that many (or more) viewings of a player to determine if they’re good enough to play at their institution, so why does the common person think they can make a determination after one half or one full game?
IS YOUR PLAYER THAT MUCH BETTER?
This is where we get into the “trust me” portion of this article. I get it; there are players left off of honor teams who work harder, play smarter, and are more talented than someone who made it. But when you consider all five categories of talent, skill, basketball IQ, coachability/maturity/character, and productivity with each athlete, is your player THAT much better than someone else to where an unbiased person who doesn’t know either player would see it as obvious to switch them out? That has been the case before, on rare occasion, but probably not as often as we’d like to think. In today’s “participation trophy” era, we get so attached to players who work incredibly hard and are great kids, that we are almost too willing to quickly overlook deficiencies they might have when it comes to talent, skill, or productivity. A great kid doesn’t equal a talented kid. A hard worker doesn’t make them overly skilled. If you can honestly separate your emotion and make a fair, unbiased decision, then I respect that. The problem is most of us can’t do that in every situation, including myself.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Let’s celebrate the players who do make honor teams and appreciate their accomplishments. Just because someone doesn’t make it doesn’t mean they aren’t a great player themselves. Like any system, there are always going to be flaws, so instead of sulking and trying to make sense out of how a player got “snubbed”, why don’t we get back in the gym and continue working? If you don’t like the results, control the “control-ables” and do something to change it.
Header photo of the Indiana Mr. Basketball uniform; photo courtesy of www.indystar.com.