Andres Torres of the Norwalk boys soccer team and Caroline Edison of the Fairfield Warde girls cross country team were selected today as our BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Fall Players of the Year in a vote that was held during the past seven days.
The process generated some feedback, some pro, some negative about choosing the winners by a vote, rather than by having us name the winners like we do with our weekly award.
One FCIAC coach, in a sentiment that was most prevalent by critics, wrote a nice note expressing an appreciation about having an award like this, but a concern that this is nothing more than a popularity contest.
It is probably a good time to explain why we opted to go with this process — and will continue to do so.
First of all, the most important thing we do in selecting the finalists is say to ourselves: if this person wins, is he/she deserving or will it make the award less legitimate. I think if you read the bios on all 12 finalists, you can see that each one of them would be a worthy winner.
Second, by opening this up to a vote, it allows all the readers to be a part of the process. The blog received about 21,000 votes during the past week. Sure, we welcome the traffic, but not at the expense of quality.
The biggest complaint, of course, is that this is nothing more than a popularity contest. On a certain level, of course it is. There are people who vote for the person they think is most deserving, and many more who use email and social networking avenues to campaign. But I can also guarantee you, if we picked the winners, we would get just as many complaints by people that we selected the wrong person.
I think a little perspective is in order. While we are ecstatic people have taken to this award, let’s keep in mind that this is a blog award, nothing more and nothing less. There is just as much politics in the All-FCIAC and All-State voting, which is a far more important honor.
The reason for doing this — and the other awards we hold — is to recognize the accomplishments of high school athletes. This provided a forum for the cross country runner and swimmer — two sports that do not generate a lot of publicity — to be on an equal platform with the football and soccer player. There are 12 athletes here who may not have been as well known as a week ago — and deserve to be.
So let’s try and keep this all in perspective. There is no perfect system to do this, and we think between our selecting the players of the week and you selecting the players of the year, we have the best system possible.
Thanks to all of you who took the time to vote and have been supportive of the ideal behind it.
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