Column: Faults lie in the systematic picking of this year's girls soccer All League teams

With only the integrity of high school athletics in mind, the voting system that determines the 4A boys and girls soccer all league teams must be changed. Whenever a coach can vote for his/her own players, and a team that finished 0-16 (Wooster) puts more players on the all-league teams than a team that went 14-1-1 (Carson), something ain't right. And to avoid blatant finger pointing, I'll just blame the system.

In every sport, except for soccer, the coaches from the two leagues meet in a room and together, decide the first and second teams along with the honorable mention selections. In soccer, however, coaches rank players individually by position (forwards, mid-fielders, defenders, and goalies) and on a 12-point system, 12 being the best, one the worst.

They vote in the privacy of their own homes and then fax their ballots to Jim McCollum, commissioner of 4A Northern Nevada Athletics. McCollum then adds up the top point getters at each position. The players with the most points make the first team, the next batch make the second team, and the rest make honorable mention. And Carson's Ali Banister, unquestionably one of the top forwards in the Sierra League, makes none of the above.

Because who's to stop one coach from contacting another coach, and then agreeing to rank each other's players high? If that does happen, which it certainly appeared that it did, then deserving players, like Banister and teammate, defender Sarah Carmona, end up with nothing, which they did.

I just find it hard to believe, without mischievous behavior among a few of the coaches, that Hug and Wooster, with a combined record of 2-28-2, puts more players on the all-league teams than Carson and Douglas, with a combined record of 26-4-2. But if coaches don't get together and vote, then oddities like this will occur.

In past years, soccer coaches did in fact try to meet. But last year, only seven coaches among the two leagues showed up at Galena High to decide the teams. So either coaches don't care about representing their players or coaches don't want to. Either way, kids are the ones who suffer.

"I would love to have the coaches meet," McCollum said. "But Elko doesn't want to come over, the same with Fallon, and some Reno schools don't even show up. So if the coaches don't all come, then the current system is the best way."

Also, coaches shouldn't be able to rank their own players. While coaches can only vote for two of their players, if a player is that good, the league's coaches already know. One coach even admitted that he voted his players really high and ranked other players of the same ability really low, so those players wouldn't make the first or second team over his own players. If it sounds borderline corrupt, it is.

It looks as though some coaches don't care about what happens to their players once the season is over. If a high school kid can sacrifice two hours a day for over two months for a coach, you'd think in return, that coaches could sacrifice two hours one night in November to do the same for their players, to reward them for their efforts and talent. Sadly, though, that's not the case.