>>[24/7 Soccer] I don't understand the "slippery slope" statement.<<
I apologize for not being clearer. The problem is that when you start questioning one aspect of statistics, you find yourself on a "slippery slope" questioning a lot of the aspects of high school statistics. A major reason for this is that high school soccer is just so disparate. I agree that "9 goals" seems like a lot; but then again "3 goals" against a lot of teams seems like a lot to me. Scoring a goal against Dorman, Mauldin, Wando, Riverside, or Eastside (for example) is very different than scoring a goal against Orangeburg Wilkinson.
In addition, on a message board, it's difficult to find someone who doesn't have an agenda when pushing her or his opinion; so you have to take that into account as well. For example, I like Lexington -- so when I say that Lexingon does well you have to suspect that I have a bias toward that school. It doesn't mean that Lexington didn't do well; it just means that my opinion is more than a bit suspect.
In my opinion, it's a lot safer to celebrate the goal scoring accomplishments and any other individual accomplishments without an attempt at a lot of rigor -- that's best saved in high school for team accomplishments such as winning a region title, winning state, winning a tournament, etc. I like these kids getting recognition -- I think a lot of the problems we have in this area is when one poster believes that a compliment to one player is some type of implicit insult to another player. Heck -- for most of these ambitious kids they get rejection at some point -- from the national team on down -- so I figure we don't need to spend time rejecting their accomplishments here.
As "purpleandyellow" said, there are other venues in which to form opinions that are probably a bit more accurate. A premier or challenge team is a great place for that as is a state ODP team. Heck -- the best place is probably watching kids who make region and national pools. I remember last year watching Enzo Martinez have what I thought was a very average day in a high school game and then in the space of a few minutes he showed why he is a national pool player.
Besides, the truth is that there are people who get paid to make the individual judgements at the state and regional level -- from college to ODP coaches -- so in the long run, it's hard to escape the actual reality of all of this.
