SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums SCHSSCA 2015 SCHSSCA All-State Teams

4A Girls Nominations???????????????

First let me start off by saying this is not an attack by any means. Simply, I am trying to understand the culture of our SC Soccer culture and the virtue of the All-State committee.

I was a little caught of guard when Emmalee McCarter was not selected by the All- State committee. So this email is to help me understand a little more as to the justifications necessary for her to be selected - "a what more does she need to do" question.

Admittedly, I am a bit confused by who and how the committee is selected, which I am sure is legit and merited. At least I hope so. So I was looking at facts as objectively as I could.

Upstate Selections: 12
Lower state Selections: 6

Committee coached players: 15
Non-committee coached players: 2
"The biggest fact that I am struggling with"

Mann - 5 (Made to semi, Great team) #2 On Committee
Dutch - 3 (Made to semi, Great team) #1 On Committee
Lex - 2 (Made to semi, Great team) #3 On Committee
S. Aiken - 2 (2nd Round) unranked On Committee
Blythewood - 1 (3rd Round) #9 Not on
Dorman - 1 (3rd Round) #5 On Committee
Wade (G) - 1 (1st Round) unranked Not on
Wando - 1 (Made to Semi, Great team) #4 On Committee
Fort D - 1 (2nd Round) #7 On Committee
River Bluff - 1 (3rd Round) #10 On Committee

Members who voted who did not have a player represented on the final selection:
Megan Williams, Ashley Kunkleman, Carley Victor, Kelsey Geary, Steve Lea

For example, Caitlyn Reilly, Fort D, is an awesome player. She has great stats and a team player for Fort made the selection (and should've, unique ability), but Emmalee who has similar or better did not. Very curious about what else she or I could've done to get her this awesome recognition.

Emmalee ended up with 37 goals and 14 assist on the season in a tough 4A region 7 and schedule. What more could we have done?

Again, this is not an attack by any means. I am just looking at the facts and inferring with an open mind. Please advise.

Thank you all for a great season and good luck to the teams alive for the rest of the way.

I had a player who I nominated for the Girls 2A/1A group who i felt a had shot but was not selected, Vanessa Schoebel from Andrews High.

She had 53 goals and 25 assists in the regular season and helped lead our Girls to a 15-4 regular season record. We ended up losing in the 2nd round of the playoffs to Waccamaw. This was a great improvement from previous years. Vanessa was a major reason for this improvement. She played many positions and always encouraged her teammates to be better.

I am not posting this to complain or discredit any of the accomplishments of the other girls. Just wanted to add my piece to the discussion.

Congrats to everyone who was selected and good luck to everyone still playing.

Can someone explain how you are selected to sit on the selection committee? It seems at the very least there should be one representative from each region and not multiple from several.

Also as far as statistics go I looked at the boys 2A that are listed online and obviously those aren't complete with all of the seasons stats being updated and some aren't listed at all but below are a list of just the statistics with no names of kids that made All State and those that did not.

Made
31/17=79
24/8=56
20/5=45
14/10=38
9/14=32

Didn't make
23/19=65
23/6=52

Again this is a small sample size based on the stats that are submitted on scsoccer. All of the stats listed are on teams that at the very least were in the playoffs as an 8 seed or higher. I would like to see statistics listed for all of those selected and not just the team they play on.

I post all of this to ask what is the selection criteria and how does a coach become a member of the selection committee?

We have tried multiple ways to offer representation over the years. The first criteria is that you must be a SCACA/SCHSSCA member. We still have several coaches (some at prominent programs) that are not. We invited appr

The second issue is that we have tried to have coaches from programs that have achieved (typically #1-2 in region) as they more than likely have the greater number of top players (thus finish). Most committee invitees ranged from 9-14 coaches, but some selection committees only had two-three representatives in attendance.

Also, we try to get coaches that have exposed themselves and their teams to statewide schedules. It's one thing to be a top player in a region/area, but another to be truly all-state. All-State is NOT an all-region or all-area award, it's ALL-STATE.

I would encourage anyone who wants to get involved to draft a proposal for All-State reform and post in this thread. However, it will never be an exact science and always have room for debate.

Kevin,
Is position taken into consideration or does the team try to represent the best 18 players regardless of position?

What if each region selected a coach to "report back" to the committee and each region ranked the top 10-15 players in that region. That way each coach in the region could feel like they had a say so in the process.
Once it got to the committee, then the guys that have more of a knowledge about the state wide teams could decide.

We aren't in a financial situation to be able to go to out of town tournaments or even play games out of town so I don't get to see many teams outside of the Charleston area.

This might also stop people from nominating players that don't truly deserve it. I feel like coaches nominate players that "muddy the waters" and do it just for political reasons. (All star games included)

Region coaches could nominate players to the representative or just submit a list. If they have a player they think it worthy of the list they will put them on there and see how he stacks up with the opinions of the rest of the region coaches.

Just throwing an idea out there. As you said, no system is perfect and not matter how it turns out people are going to scream that politics are involved.

We use to do it by position, but then it evolved into simply trying to identify the Top 18 players per classification.

I have no problem with region representation. I do believe that the Region Player of the Year from each region should be on the All-State team. However, that is not a steadfast rule. One of the problems with the region representation is that many regions don't meet before the all-state selection meeting. If we were to adopt that direction, then the onus would be on region coordinators to make this information available prior to the all-state meeting.

Another issue is that some regions hold their all-region team until all teams are out of the playoffs -- I guess for 'political' reasons -- but at any rate, if you don't release it, then others simply don't know.

We do have too many nominations from certain schools. We had seven all-state nominations from a particular school this year and while they may have a couple of deserving players, unless they post a 31-0 record and have an unbelievable strength of schedule, then really they should have no more than 2-3 nominees.

We've had proposals for offering a First Team (11 players), Second Team (11 players) and Third Team (11 players) per classification in order to share the wealth. However, this has not been passed.

If you're asking when these votes are taken, then the answer would be the SCACA Clinic in July and the SCHSSCA Winter Clinic in January. Unfortunately, we only average about 50 coaches per year at the summer edition and around 85 coaches at the winter one. We really need much better participation from our membership and we need some coaches to join!

Our region is one that normally doesn't publish the list until the last team is eliminated from the playoff and I have no clue why.

The list of top 10-15 players would be separate from the all region list because all region is different for every region. I know in ours the first place team gets 4 and second place gets 3...and every team gets at least one.
If you asked me to make a list of the top 10 players in my region, the list would look a lot different.
If we got all 6 coaches to submit a list and gave 10 points for a 1st place vote, 9 for a second.... and calculated the points to come up with a list of the overall top 10, it would be a better representation of a true all state team.

Our region also doesn't give out player of the year.

As mentioned, I was just throwing out ideas. Please like to talk about a broken system and criticize the process but don't try to come up with solutions.

I am criticizing the system but I was naïve to the process. I am appreciative of the information that you guys are sharing. I just look at the 2A Boys list because that is where my concern lies and a lot of the selections or non selections don't make sense if it is truly based on an individual players merit and not the team that he plays on and what said team achieved. I understand that perhaps a kid that plays in a weak region yet a not so great team could have outlandish stats but I believe that would be the exception and not the rule in most cases.

I just think the system is broken just like the system for seeding the teams in 2A boys, where once you get outside of the top 8 seeds your record and season performance doesn't matter, it only matters where you are located on the map, but that's an entirely different discussion for another day.

Thanks again for sharing the information above.

My two cents (adjusted to 4 1/2 for inflation):

-Our region was (until this year) one that waited until every team was eliminated before posting the list of all region players. I liked it that way. I've had girls get upset over the all region selections and I don't see a need to cause internal strife until the season is over - certainly don't want it during the playoffs. Yes, I'd love for my team to be a utopia and not be distracted by the all region team but they are high school kids. Bound to happen on occassion. Conversely, what is the benefit to announcing it immediately? Not trying to be confrontational, I fail to see a benefit to releasing it as early as possible (when we're only talking about 1 or 2 weeks) but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

-I categorically disagree that the committee should be made up of coaches from the top teams from the region. Let the other coaches acknowledge the players from those teams, it will add WAY more weight to the selections. It's very difficult seeing the team is made up almost entirely of players from schools that have coaches on the committee. It doesn't mean the players aren't deserving, but I think it means a lot more when the players are selected by other coaches. We're all biased towards our own players because of our familiarity to them, but we also (should) have enough integrity to select the most deserving players.

To expand on that, I think far too often these lists are unbalanced towards the best teams and not necessarily the best players. Often times there's going to be a correlation between the two, but it hurts players that may be elite but play on a weaker team in a stacked region. Put another way, I think you could pull the top one or two players of a lot more of teams in the state and put them in the conversation, but when those players play on a team where the 3rd and 4th best player would be the 10th or 11th (or maybe even bench players - if rostered at all) on some of the top teams they are not going to be able to influence many games. Does that lessen a player's quality? Yet we immediately remove them from the conversation because of the team they play for.

-I understand wanting coaches to be SCACA/SCHSSCA members as an incentive for them to become members (and I agree that we all should be). That said, if you're acknowledging that some coaches still aren't members then clearly the incentive isn't working and all you're doing by limiting coaches that can serve is ending up with a limited selection committee. That doesn't benefit the sport.

My proposal would be to offer spots on the committee on a rotating basis. If a coach/school turns down the opportunity then move on to the next one. At least that way there will be some diversity in the committees.

Ok, i'll be the bad guy here... a hypothetical player who scores 35 goals and has 20 assists for a team that is 14-2 versus a schedule that includes only one team with a winning record is not necessarily an All State player! Nor is a player who was the "heart and soul" of a team who finished with a 6-10 record. Just because you have a good player on your team and they play well against your schedule does not mean they are an All State player.

Yes, the committees should be made up of coaches from the best teams b/c #1-they are most likely to show up to the meeting and have productive discussion #2-they most likely played a schedule that included the widest variety of teams and thus saw the most players and #3-if they are the best teams, they most likely had the best players!

I have been involved in this process for a long time, and i think the SCHSSCA does an excellent job of selecting committee members who are going to be able to speak to the widest range of players.

This is not about giving every kid an award... All State is about picking the best 18 players. The top 1-2 players off every team in the state may not deserve to be in the conversation! Yes, if the 5th best player on a top level team is better than the #1 player on a below average team, then the 5th best player should make All State! The coach from that #1 player does not necessarily deserve to be on the committee b/c they most likely did not play a schedule that allowed them to see a variety of other players. Go on SCSoccer.com and look at schedules.

Look at 2A boys.... every team ranked in the top 10 at the time of the meeting was represented with a player on the All State team. There were 2 selections from teams without coaches at the meeting... but there were only a couple of players nominated from schools not represented. In fact, Whale Branch did not nominate their GKer who is in the Clash. There were 7 coaches at the meeting. The committee members saw every player from a non-represented school play and agreed via discussion that players not selected were not worthy of All State.

Before you criticize All State, know that most likely multiple coaches on the committee saw that player play and agreed that they were either All State material or not.