LSA All-League Division A

[Karl Lynch]

LSA All League

1st
Attack Harig (TSU)
Attack Polminski (Tulane)
Attack James (A&M)

Midfield Reid Singleton (UNT)
Midfield Corbin Emberey (UNT)
Midfield Gentry (Tech)

Defense Leiss (UT)
Defense Shimanek (UNT)
Defense DuFour (A&M)

Goalie Kurzweil (Tech)

LSM/FO Singleton (UNT)

2nd
Rice (Tech)
Zissman (UT)
Carrington (SMU)

Tabb (A&M)
Swann (UT)
Brochu (Baylor)

Matthiesan (Tech)
Mellow (TSU)
Walsh (SMU)

Galvin (TSU)

Widmer (Tech)

3rd
Greene (SMU)
Saunders (TSU)
Keenan (Tech)

Hiemenz (SMU)
Kroviak (UT)
Perales (TSU)

Sukhulsky (UT)
Hiemenz (SMU)
Colwell (A&M)

Cox (UT)

Sarchet (A&M)

Coach Shaw (Tech)

MVP Kurzweil (Tech)
ROY Rice (Tech)


AA Polminski (Tulane)
Leiss (UT)
Harig (TSU)
Kurzweil (Tech)
Singleton (UNT)
Tabb (A&M)


Honorable Mention All League:

Attack: Olson (BU)
Midfield: Flores (TSU), Guttierez (UNT), Sklar (UT)
Defense: Salandino (LSU)
Goalie: Dabney (A&M), Haig (Rice)

Congrats to all. I apologize for any misspelled names.

[monkeylax]

First off, Congrats to all players selected to Div. A LSA All-League!! Especially those who were selected to represent the Div. A LSA as All-Americans!!

Wow, a few suprises in there...especially the two UNT middies at 1st team (I think they are deserving of all-LSA just not "1st team"), and Shimanek (UNT) on Defense 1st team. Interesting that all the UNT players selected All-League were all named to the 1st team..personally I believe Tabb and Perales got snubbed from 1st Team Midfield honors (considering how much they bring to their respected teams.) Though, Gentry is very deserving of his 1st team honors.

Despite my complaints, I believe nearly all players that were deserving of the top honors in Div. A LSA were given their respected credit.

Will there be honors for the LSA Div. A Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year? Or will those be named after this weekend?

[Karl Lynch]

The selection is made purely by voting. If you have enough points, you get the spot. The voting was done by all twelve teams. Several teams had so many good players that votes were diluted. Other players had such standout seasons that they appeared on almost everyone's ballot.

The UNT players that received first team are all well deserving. UNT had several standout players this year that the league recognized. Notice that UNT had only 3 players total. Tech, UT, A&M, TSU, SMU all had more total selections because of the depth of their teams.

But to give you some highlights of the UNT players:

Reid Singleton led the league in goals scored this season and received first team votes from almost every team in the LSA at both specialist and midfield. He even received votes for MVP.

Corbin Emberey has been on the All LSA team for the past two seasons. Again, he received votes from almost every team in the LSA.

Mike Shimanek was an overwhelmingly high choice by the voters. His takeaway abilities are amazing. and he had a great year.

Perhaps, the UNT players benefited from playing more cross divisional games v. Div. A South schools; because they did receive far more votes from across the enitre Div. A than other players.

[laxer22]

I was just wondering, not complaining in any way, but how are these teams selected. It seems to me some teams were just looked over. For example Rice and Baylor. Both Rice and Baylor are great teams, and both only recieved one all league vote, and both of these votes were third round or later. From what Ive read Rice lost to A&M in overtime, yet Rice has one all league selection and A&M has a ton. Not saying A&M is not a great program, but is rice that bad? Also Baylor is a good team who again recieve minimun vote.
Again i am not bad mouthing the process in the slighetes, just wondering how it works
Also, how did TAB get second team all league, but all american? Maybe i am reading that wrong, but thats what it looks like. Shouldnt he have been garunteed first team?

[LaxTastic]

With so many UNT players making first team, you'd think they would be playing a game this weekend.
It's too bad that the upper teir teams in this league spend so much time working for their out-of-conference games that they don't have time to play every team in the LSA, thus getting few votes. Teams in the South need to vote only for teams in the South and North for North.
I think that the second team would beat the first team in a pick-up game.

[Karl Lynch]

I think you are missing the point of what an All-LSA award is. It is an individual award, not a team award.

UNT made the playoffs. We played this past weekend against a very good Texas team and lost. We also played Texas State, Texas Tech, and Rice.

UNT also played a non-conference schedule against two top 25 teams. And guess what -- Reid Singleton scored 3 against Chapman and 4 against UCLA. Mike Shimanek was dominate with the long pole. And Corbin was his consistent self.

Your remarks about how teams should vote are in no way constructive. Fact of the matter is that most teams in the South already only vote for Southern teams, and the same is true for the North. As I previously stated, the players that break that pattern tend to receive the highest votes.

I also think the voters did a tremendous job in picking out the best in the LSA.

[Karl Lynch]

All-League selections are individual awards. Sometimes good players on better teams don't get the individual recognition that many of us feel they deserve. Sometimes players on better teams get more recognition because they are on a better team. Just depends.

Rice and Baylor are interesting teams. Both Rice and Baylor had several players that received some votes, just not enough especially from cross conference teams.

Now, Brochu (BU) was a second team selection. That's pretty high for a non-playoff team. To be able to call yourself the sixth best middie in the LSA shows that Brochu has earned the respect of a ton of teams.

And Haig (Rice) is a freshman I believe. To get honorable mention as a freshman goalie in a goalie rich field is impressive. Goalie rich field is right - Kurzweil, Galvin, Cox have all been All LSA winners before with Dabney not too far off.

The voting on midfield was very close for the last spot on first team. Gentry and Tabb were separated by just one point.

The voting on AA was also very close. Spots 4,5,6 were tied. For AA voting, Tabb received more votes than Gentry. Go figure.

Now, when we finally get two teams into the tournment we will get more than 6 AAs at the National Level.

[jessexy]

am i confused.....what happened to Deeke from A&M?

[Karl Lynch]

Deeke is second team. My error. We have four second team midfielders this year.

[Bronson Parker]

No disrespect to Karl, I think he does a fine job. But, he shouldn't have to explain why his players are all-league each year. A few easy things can be done at the league level to take the doubt out of everyone's minds. A few suggestions:

1. Have someone impartial tally the votes, say, Brent Burns. Or have the Division B director tally for A, and vice versa.
2. Have a poll of players to choose from. Have each coach nominate who they think are all-league, so that the correct players get chosen. This way we can avoid things like "UT #14" from last year (who was a freshman backup player at the time).
3. Have a simple form document to enter the votes. Just so that everyone is uniform and there are no questions.

I think this would give some legitimacy to the selections and keep people from questioning the credibility of the selections. Karl should not have to explain how certain players were selected. It is unfair to put him in that position.

Just my thoughts.

[Karl Lynch]

Bronson,

The best way for the All-League Awards to be improved is for the team representative filling out the ballot to stay informed on who is having a "great", "good" or "bad" year. I can tell you that I personally talked with several coaches before I voted and researched every team at both the uslmdia.org and uslia.com sites for stats and game reports.

We use a uniform ballot. It was emailed to each team 2-3 weeks before the due date. It is the same one we used last year.

The LSA voted to fine teams for being late on filling the ballot out. Some of the Division B teams have not turned one in yet.

With the new database for uslmdia, if a vote is for #14 UT, that person will get the vote because I go to UT's roster on uslmdia and check it, then award the vote.

We tried having other people get involved in tabulating the votes in the past. Bottom line is that nobody else is willing to do anything, except those few that are involved with teams. Having John Campbell (Div. A director) or Bill Bowman (Div. B) tally the votes, won't change the scores or the outcome.

Finally, I don't mind talking about my players. I think one of the same routine complainers posted something about "just give Reid" the MVP before we even played a game. I replied that Reid would prove it on the field and he did.

[monkeylax]

Now, when we finally get two teams into the tournment we will get more than 6 AAs at the National Level.

Karl, just curious, could you explain this statement?

[Karl Lynch]

The National AA selection criteria is based on several things, but of critical importance is the overall strength of your conference.

By way of example, if we had four teams in the top 10 nationally and got four teams into the National Tournament, we would have 15 total AAs instead of six that we have currently.

Those OCC games really matter for AA awards.

DIVISION A
Each of the 9 Conferences receives 6 All American nominations.

Each Conference receives an additional 3 All Americans for each additional team beyond one team at the National Tournament.

Each Conference Director will submit the appropriate number of AA's the first day following the tournament field announcement.

[mark3tech]

[quote="Karl Lynch"]I think you are missing the point of what an All-LSA award is. It is an individual award, not a team award.

No kidding b/c we scored 16 goals on average (in conference), and only averaged 4 goals against. We also played every player on our roster in each of these games (Except for maybe 1 of our 4 goalies here and there.)

I think Tech should play all three conference teams combined.

[Bronson Parker]

My point was not that someone else would come out with a different outcome on the voting, but that there would be no way for some "complainer" to come up with a conspiracy theory. We've seen it a lot in recent years, and it's getting old. Of course, the outcome would be the same. It was just an idea that I think would stop us from having to hear all the nonsense.

That's it, I'm done. No more posting. See everyone in Georgetown. Good luck to all the teams and Congrats to the All-stars.