Strike 2: There’s a right way and a wrong way to honor high school kids – the last remaining true student-athletes – for an outstanding season. The Colorado High School Activities Association does it the wrong way, at least in baseball.
In this case, the wrong way is the easy way.
In this case, it’s not about the name on the front of the jersey.
To be fair, CHSAA has a lot going on, especially at the end of a season. Deciding the best way to select All-State baseball teams is just one of a hundred end of school year tasks. So, they make the selection process as vanilla as possible, asking coaches in each classification to simply vote for the best and second best nine players, regardless of position, and that will be that. Check a task off the list.
But that’s not right or fair.
Now, we already have a major problem in this country when it comes to the sheer number of under-educated voters casting ballots. We can only hope that voters take some time to educate themselves so they can make informed decisions when it comes time to vote. However, for that to happen, education has to be available, and while it might be when it comes to political matters (depending where you’re looking) CHSAA doesn’t provide anything more than to point the voters/coaches to the Max Preps website.
In other words, you’re on your own.
On the other hand, the Colorado Dugout Club Coaches Association also votes on All-State baseball teams for all classifications. However, rather than taking the vanilla approach, the CDCCA engages coaches in back and forth discussion about players from around the state before coming up with their first and second team selections. And the results come out much differently.
CHSAA’s undereducated email vote resulted in brand name schools dominating their selections. In Class 3A, the 14-team Patriot League, home to the very best teams in the state but also several that weren’t very good, garnered 13 of the 18 first and second team selections – from just four of their teams. The eight-team Metro League, which produced seven playoff teams, got just two second team selections.
In other words, the undereducated voters – with nothing more to go on than the brand name on the front of the jerseys and some stats off the internet – pretty much emailed it in, literally. If a kid played for Eaton, then he must be All-State, right?
Except some outstanding and deserving kids didn’t play for Eaton. Or in the Patriot League.
When the CDCCA gathered to vote, there was solid discussion with back and forth arguments made. In other words, education at work.
The result was a far more balanced and representative group of players from across the state being honored as All-State baseball players.
This whole thing might seem meaningless to those who don’t follow high school athletics, but you can bet it’s not meaningless to the kids involved.
And that’s CHSAA’s mission. To serve the kids, right?
It would take extra effort, and perhaps some additional manpower hours for CHSAA to make their All-State selections processes – in all sports – more fair and accurate, the way the CDCCA does it. That’s because there aren’t coaches associations in all sports, so there aren’t groups like baseball’s in every sport already in place to correct what was done wrong.
Therefore it’s up to the leaders at CHSAA to find a way to create representative groups of coaches – in all sports – who’s specific task is to get together, educate and discuss worthy players, and handle the All-State selections the right way. Because it does matter to the kids.
The student-athletes deserve that.
