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

Do you use preseason rankings? End of the regular season rankings? Final rankings?

NCAA Basketball:
2015 1st Team All-American
D'Angelo Russell Ohio State (didn't end up ranked in the top 25)

2014:
2 of the 5 1st Team All-Americans ended up ranked in the top 10. The other 3 were ranked 14, 20 and 22. Kentucky was the runner up that year and only had a 3rd team All-American

2013:
National Champs Louisville didn't have a 1st or 2nd team All American.

I know what you are thinking. "This guy has too much time on his hands or knows way too much about NCAA basketball" and you would be right about the too much time.

Just because you win and end up highly ranked doesn't mean you have the best individual players.
Lexington boys a few years ago were a .500 team and end up making it to the championship. Was it because of the All-state players (I didn't research that so don't know if they had any) or was it a team that got hot at the right time?

Right, the problem with using the rankings is that they are also subjective. Also, is the team in that position because of all-state players or because top to bottom they are solid (most likely a combination of both). But you can't exclude the all-state caliber player that has no talent around him or her and as a result isn't on a ranked team.

Another problem with using the rankings is that the vote/selection is done before final rankings are complete. Say a team enters the playoffs unranked but wins 2 maybe even 3 games they should finish the season in the finals rankings. I just don't agree with the a teams rank being tied to an all state selection. Certainly there is no doubt that the bulk of the players should/would come from those teams but it should not be the end all be all like it seems to have been this year.

What if there's a region that doesn't have a nominee. Should they have a rep since their region has no players being nominated? I do like the idea of having someone who's seen the player being nominated represented to give those who haven't seen that player an idea if he does stack up to be one of the top 18 in that class

I think you will run into issues any way it is done. The issue with allowing each region to have a player on All-State is the fact that each region varies in terms of its difficulty. I know in AAAA that Region 2 and Region 5 are very strong. This will change on a year to year basis as realignment continues to be a topic. I really prefer the idea of doing a 1st and 2nd team list. There is a lot of quality out there for soccer in SC and I think at least at the AAAA and AAA levels (or AAAAA and AAAA in 2016 and beyond) this should be something we address at the Summer Clinic. But what Kyle referred to earlier is that we need more participation and attendance at these meetings. We can't vote on a message board. If you are a parent and know your coach doesn't attend these meetings then you should be voicing your frustrations to your AD or to that coach. It is hard enough to get the SCHSL to listen as it is, but much harder when there is less participation by coaches.