Varsity Awards

[VikingSB]

Our HS athletic dept provides us with 4 awards to present at our year end banquet. One is always designated by our conference for citizenship/community service. The other 3 are at the coaches discretion to name and award. The current HC has bounced around the last 2 seasons with these. As AC I chimed in this year and said how I thought there should be some consistency with what we name these and how we award them. I suggested “The Axe & Shield Award” considering we are Vikings. This would represent our top offensive and defensive performers, hence the axe and shield. We plan to give these to our top pitcher, top offensive and top defensive players. I personally would like to keep these awards objective because if it were more subjective I could find a reason to give an award to every member of the team.
What is everyone’s thoughts or process on designating year end awards?

 

[Rolling Hard]

Give everybody a participation trophy and call it a day.

 

[RADcatcher]

Give everybody a participation trophy and call it a day.

what you throwing in the towel on this...

 

[RADcatcher]

Our HS athletic dept provides us with 4 awards to present at our year end banquet. One is always designated by our conference for citizenship/community service. The other 3 are at the coaches discretion to name and award. The current HC has bounced around the last 2 seasons with these. As AC I chimed in this year and said how I thought there should be some consistency with what we name these and how we award them. I suggested “The Axe & Shield Award” considering we are Vikings. This would represent our top offensive and defensive performers, hence the axe and shield. We plan to give these to our top pitcher, top offensive and top defensive players. I personally would like to keep these awards objective because if it were more subjective I could find a reason to give an award to every member of the team.
What is everyone’s thoughts or process on designating year end awards?

imo participation certificate and awards are two separate things.

Can everybody be outstanding in one category, sure.
Then again you can make up a category for everything and everybody can be outstanding. But at a certain point the categories become less about a sport. Defining how you want to celebrate people vs. Sport becomes the task.

 

[_MIA_]

Give everybody a participation trophy and call it a day.

They have had those for a 100+ years..they are called varsity letters. It is just that nobody complained about them before because people didn't feel the need to blame all of society's woes on "wokeness"...Contrary to popular belief, giving a kid a trophy for taking part in an activity isn't going to turn them into an unproductive member of society. There are plenty of other things we do as a society which do a fine job at accomplishing that "goal"..

 

[LEsoftballdad]

We don't give school level awards. Ours are done at the county level and voted on by the opposing coaches.

Each game, a coach gets three votes for players they felt made the most impact against them. They do not have to vote, so an awful normally gets no votes for an award. After the regular season, they hold a meeting where they tally the votes. The highest get All-County 1st team, the second get All-County 2nd team, and the lowest get All-League. There are individual awards for Pitcher and player of the year and rookie, but that's where the real horse trading begins. Those meetings are legendary for the arguments they generate.

 

[tim_s]

we have 3, in addition to varsity letters:

Most Improved
Outstanding Senior
Coaches' Award

Don't get me started on the all-conference awards......we do a pre vote, can't vote for anyone on your team.....then there's a meeting, and it becomes "well she's a senior, even though your sophomore made 12 fewer errors and hit .250 points higher"......and the lower teams band together to get their "nice kids" over the actual softball players

we could conceivably, based on what i've seen, place 7 starters on the first team if the vote were done fairly......but we won't

 

[VikingSB]

We don't give school level awards. Ours are done at the county level and voted on by the opposing coaches.

Each game, a coach gets three votes for players they felt made the most impact against them. They do not have to vote, so an awful normally gets no votes for an award. After the regular season, they hold a meeting where they tally the votes. The highest get All-County 1st team, the second get All-County 2nd team, and the lowest get All-League. There are individual awards for Pitcher and player of the year and rookie, but that's where the real horse trading begins. Those meetings are legendary for the arguments they generate.

In theory that doesn't sounds like the worst idea for selecting those awards but requires every coach to provide honest feedback. We just had our district playoff seeding meeting last night and even there, when points are calculated off wins and schedule strength, there were arguments about who got shafted...

 

[VikingSB]

we have 3, in addition to varsity letters:

Most Improved
Outstanding Senior
Coaches' Award

Don't get me started on the all-conference awards......we do a pre vote, can't vote for anyone on your team.....then there's a meeting, and it becomes "well she's a senior, even though your sophomore made 12 fewer errors and hit .250 points higher"......and the lower teams band together to get their "nice kids" over the actual softball players

we could conceivably, based on what i've seen, place 7 starters on the first team if the vote were done fairly......but we won't

I am right there with you for all-conference awards. You're saying the team that got mercy ruled 90% of the season has a girl hitting over 0.700? Sure, but I've got my doubts.
We also give out varsity letters, and then pins for each additional year on varsity.
I am curious how you select your awards.
For 'most improved' do you normally look at that single season or improvement over their tenure playing?
And what are you looking at for the 'coaches award?' I feel like there could often be some crossover between that and outstanding senior.

 

[tim_s]

In theory that doesn't sounds like the worst idea for selecting those awards but requires every coach to provide honest feedback. We just had our district playoff seeding meeting last night and even there, when points are calculated off wins and schedule strength, there were arguments about who got shafted...

it is a fine criteria IF people look at it realistically.......stats on both side of the ball, close calls look at what they did in games vs the top teams, etc

but they want kids named "because they played for 4 years", "they were hurt but came to every practice", "they are a senior, your kid has two more years"......and the teams that go 4-12 and honestly don't have a player that should be anything but honorable mention (each team can submit two without vote) all collude ahead of time, and kids that deserve it don't make it

last year we had a SS that was the #1 vote getter among all INFs.....she made 2nd team once all the nonsense happened......she was one of just a few in our conference that committed to play in college, and started 30+ games as a first year lol......