all-america.

[pepsi24]

so maybe this isnt the right forum to do this (if not if someone would move it to the right forum that would be appreciated.) and this is in no way to take away from mr. jay peezy who is a stud and one of the best midfielders in the GRLC. But....

how is it that the confrences selected "Player of the Year" joe szostak, number one, is not placed any higher then honerable mention. he is in the top ten in every category...and most of those he is in the top three...in the nation! and was placed at as an honerable mention. secondly...he was the player of the year in his own confrence and wasnt even his confrences highest selection when it came to all-americans. that is just baffling.

so the people that see him play on a regular basis saw what his amazing abilities could do and voted him there best player...and the "west coast bias" that the uslia has decided that didnt matter? i dunno..someone help me here...im thoroughly confused.

[Jolly Roger]

A cursory examination of his stats indicate he scored a lot of goals against weaker teams but was not dominant against the better teams he played (including 2 out of conference games).

No doubt he can score, he'll just have to consistently put up great numbers against better opponents to garner the level of recognition you believe he deserves. I hope Harding can schedule accordingly.

[pepsi24]

i agree. he did have trouble against some better opponents...especially at the begining of the season when teams would try to shut him off and his two other attackmen were a freshman and a first year attackman. thats not said to completely justify his playing...but only to bring a better understanding.

but my point still stands that the confrence viewed him as their best player...and they saw him every week against the good and the bad. they also saw that he carried the team...even when he wasnt scoring goals he made off ball plays that allowed others to score. and i can guaruntee that if you asked anyone associate with harding that they wouldnt have accomplished near as much as the did without. all that to say again...the confrence thought he was the best...why is that not good enough?

and even still you dont think that montana played alot of weak teams that they were able to beat up on...san diego? st. thomas? they all played weak teams that they beat up on and it affected their stats. scoring nearly four points a game is amazing reguardless of who its against. he also played in more games then most of the guys leading stat categories. i dunno...its all relevent. and its really hard to judge anyone in anygame that you didnt see...because you may not see that he has a badly sprained ankle and played through the pain and maybe only put up one assist...but was able to do other things in the game to help his team win (not that that happen, but as an example.)

[LaxRef]

I posted this in another thread, but it seems appropriate here:

A few points that people are missing in this discussion:

(1) There is no "best" player at any position, at least not in any objective sense, since "best" means different things to different people. In other words, different people place different values on different things. Thus, no amount of tinkering with the system, getting people to see more games, etc., will ever end the annual controversy.

(2) Even if there were some objective "best" player at a position, people would be voting on the selection. There's a famous theorem in economics called Arrow's Impossibilty Theorem ( http://tinyurl.com/hyaa4 ) that states that if there are at least 3 choices, no voting system can accurately reflect group preference in all situations. Thus, no matter what voting system you use, there will be situations where it fails.

In other words, the problem isn't with the nominating, or the voting system, or teams not getting nominations in on time. The problem is holding the belief that any such system could ever produce anything but controversy.

[Rob Graff]

Laxref's post is one of the best ever on this topic. I fully concur

[culax]

pepsi, the way i see it, the honor is in receiving all-america recognition. what is irrelevant to me, is the ranking of individual players between 1st team, 2nd team, honorable mention, etc. i assume that this ranking is voted of the national exec board. it is probably difficult for them as the only opportunity they have to observe the players is at the national tournament.

congratulations to those grlc players named to the all-america team.

congratulations to those grlc players earning academic all-america honors. even though none were included on the released list, i know our conference has quite a few. commissioner mosher is working to rectify this situation.

[KnoxVegas]

First off, thank you for finally using "All-America!"

[LaxRef]

First off, thank you for finally using "All-America!"

The team is an "All-America" team; an individual on it are is an "All-American."

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-America

[pepsi24]

pepsi, the way i see it, the honor is in receiving all-america recognition.

i agree...its an honor to be selected at all no matter what team. and maybe in a perfect world that would be the end of it. but lets be honest. when you get into elite teams/players/coaches...whatever. it becomes important. ask any guy playing on your team if given the choice would they rather be a first team all-america...or an honerable mention all-america. i think you know the answer you will get. these awards arent just a cool story to tell your grandkids...they help in alot of areas especially in the area or recruitment. especially when you arent allowed certian benifits of a varsity program. about the only way you can get a good lacrosse player to come to searcy arkansas is by showing them what they can do in your team.

I posted this in another thread, but it seems appropriate here:

A few points that people are missing in this discussion:

(1) There is no "best" player at any position, at least not in any objective sense, since "best" means different things to different people. In other words, different people place different values on different things. Thus, no amount of tinkering with the system, getting people to see more games, etc., will ever end the annual controversy.

i agree and completely disagree. i definitely agree that there will never be any end to controversy. thats part of what makes sports so great. and i do definitely agree that the term "best player" means different things to different people. but i do think that every once in a while there comes a player that everyone just stops and watches. my understanding laxref is that you arent a grlc person so you probably dont know who im talking about when i say this...but the grlc's player of the year the past two years was another kid from harding named john tomassoni. and to anyone that saw this kid play knows that he was head and shoulders above anyone in the league at any position. this kid was just a complete player, im pretty sure that you could have stuck him in goal and he would have been an all-american player. he was just that good. that being said...i understand that people view some confrences as stronger then others and that there are alot of top teir talents playing and its hard to get a list thats concrete and relatively unanimous across the country...but again my question stands...how does a player that is voted by the confrence as the player of the year...their highest recognition for a single player...not the confrences highest all-american.

[LaxRef]

how does a player that is voted by the confrence as the player of the year...their highest recognition for a single player...not the confrences highest all-american.

Because different people voted. Because those voters interpreted the statistics differently, or weighted them differently, or had different objective functions. Because the voting systems were likely different.

Just to throw it out there—no disrespect to anyone involved—but you're assuming that the all-conference vote picked the correct player. What if that's the vote that went the "wrong way."

[pepsi24]

Just to throw it out there—no disrespect to anyone involved—but you're assuming that the all-conference vote picked the correct player. What if that's the vote that went the "wrong way."

i have said and you have said it...but im going to echo it...this is not meant to disrespect anyone, nor to take away from anything anyone accomplished.


as you said...you can never erase controversy...but i guess my big problem is going against a confrence decided award on the sole judgement of how you are interpreting stats. i understand that if you sit down three people to watch a game and at the end you ask them the same set of questions...you will get three seperate answers because they are all going to be watching the game from different places and be looking for different things.

so in a situation where you are looking at a player that you have never seen play...and you are only looking at a stat sheet, why would you not say oh well...the peope that saw this kid almost every weekend thought he was the best player in their league...that means that regaurdless of his stat line...he was doing something on that field worth noting. because again a stat line doesnt show you what happened in the game. harding has been blessed to have a very solid core group of players. at almost every position they have talent. but everyone knows that joe is their number one guy...so he always had the best pole on him and was double frequently. and i know that a good player gets finds ways to contribute...but i have been playing this game along time and one of the things that i know is that if a man is playing you that tight...and if you have two guys on you...you want to pull them out because its one less guy to be able to help in a slide...and in the case of being doubled...there is someone open. (again not to excuse certain behaviors...just to play devil's advocate.)

there were alot of people that could have gotten the conference award, mullaney fete and metcalfe from crieghton, murphy from augustana, and hoogendoorn from dordt just to name a few. but i think...and obviously the conference agreed that szostak was the best, and he showed that all year...even in his low statical games.

anway...i dont seem to be expressing my problem with the system correctly because we keep going in circles. so ill retire.

[Madlax16]

In every level of honor recognition there is allways some controversy. Its all politics, some say its not but in all honesty thats all it is. At St. Andrews, my previous school, a solid D freshman was made all american. he was nothing amazing, didnt have the most "take aways", the best stick skills, or even the most ground balls, he was a just a "solid" player. and from playing highschool, some college and coaching my highschool's team ive found that It all depends if A) your a solid player and B) how much your coach is willing to pull for you. and sometimes the better player (on paper) may not get the level of recognition that he may deserve. sometimes its not fair, but hey, thats life.

[DIEHARDLAX]

Some people just have better networking skills than others. Joe Szostak obviously doesnt care about any awards, which is how players should be anyways. He's a very classy player

[Madlax16]

i dont doubt it, and even being HM all america is still a great acomplishment.