Colonel Mustard wrote: ↑April 24th, 2020, 9:35 am
Congrats to FH Coach Cecere, they had an excellent season and the honor was well-deserved. I'm not crazy about teams moving-up to avoid competition and hang banners, but can't deny that this team is deserving. You know you have built a good program when you have people willing to pick-up and move their families so that they can play for your team.
Nothing at all against the player, but how do you get picked all-state having only played in 10 games?
I've coordinated/chaired the all-state girls' team all but one year since the 1990s, so I'll explain the process to you.
About 60 media outlets throughout the state nominate players from their coverage areas by writing up thumbnail descriptions that include their stats, college signing or interest and other notable items. Those thumbnails are put onto a ballot that's then sent to representatives from all of those outlets who return a weighted vote.
The girls player you mentioned played 10 games, coming back from summer knee surgery after 8 months. Her team was 8-9 without her, 8-2 with her, losing two games by five combined points to teams that still were alive in the PIAA tournament. Her team also still was alive in the PIAA tournament. She averaged a double-double, leading her team in both scoring and rebounding, along with 4.0 assists, 2.6 steals and 2.1 blocks.
She was an all-stater the previous season, and she is signed with a Division I college.
I can't speak for everyone that voted, but, at least to me, that seems like a pretty good resume, especially playing 40 percent of her team's games on a bad wheel.
The other thing is that it's not done in a vacuum. She's being measured against all the other players being nominated.
Regarding the other post questioning about more representation from the western side of the state. You pointed out Class 2A, where 10 of the 18 all-state players were from traditional western PIAA teams. But the thing that I think might get overlooked is that 60 percent of the schools in the PIAA are in the traditional eastern districts ... and that doesn't even include another 20 schools in the Inter-Academies and Friends League around Philadelphia, which play really good basketball and also are eligible for the all-state team.
It's done with the idea of recognizing the best 18 performers in each classification, not everyone getting proportionate representation.
Hopefully that will give everyone a little more insight into how the process works.