Hey, everybody, I’m back. Did you miss me?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I took a week off from my weekly Monday column to defer to Micah Rice and his column capturing the excitement of Camas’ state championship in football.
And that was fine. It was fun. It’s always fun watching a team reach the pinnacle in the state.
In fact, we watched three teams hit their pinnacles this fall — Camas football, Camas girls soccer and Columbia River girls soccer.
It was a special fall. And you’ll be able to relive some of those great moments in our special commemorative section “Season of Champions” which will appear in the Dec. 25 edition of The Columbian.
But before we talk about what is yet to come — which we’ll do next week — let’s talk about a little about the past.
This past week, we celebrate six special students as the outstanding athletes of the fall season: Savanna Craig of Mountain View cross country, Yacine Guermali of Camas cross country, Zoe McBride of Prairie volleyball, Ellie Walker of Columbia River soccer, Kara Noftsker of Columbia River swimming and Jack Colletto of Camas football.
And we also celebrated the best of the rest with our All-Region teams.
And with the selections in “team” sports, we asked for help from coaches and fans.
The visible piece of the process is the fan vote, so some people have questioned the process to be a popularity contest. So I wanted to take some time to explain how we construct these teams.
So let’s take soccer as an example. First, we, as a staff, make selections on the 12 players we feel should be on the All-Region teams.
Then we send a ballot out to area coaches to make their choices. From that process, we take the top 12 vote-getters for the coaches’ picks.
Then we do the same with the fans, taking their 12 top choices.
If a player appears on at least two of those three top-12 lists, that player makes the All-Region team.
The fan vote has been wildly popular, drawing between 3,000 and 6,000 votes. And we’ve received good support from coaches, normally drawing between 10 and 14 voters among the 18 coaches in our region.
As a general rule, at least half of the final All-Region is comprised of players who appeared on all three lists – Columbian, coaches and fans.
Also, about three-quarters of most All-Region team are comprised of players who appeared on The Columbian’s and the coaches’ list. The fan votes usually include more “wild-card” choices.
Very often, the No.1 vote-getter in the fan vote doesn’t make the final team, because that player did not appear on lists by The Columbian or the coaches. So that negates much of the “popularity contest” talk.
When the fan vote often comes into play is when we and the coaches don’t agree. Then the fan vote could send a player onto the team.
And in the event of ties, The Columbian gets to make the final call, although often we will consult the results of the coach and fan votes when making that call.
So I hope that explains the process.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at 360-735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
