Published: August 16, 2008 12:04 am         

Player of the year award should go to state’s best player

Time will tell if Noah Cottrill’s decision to transfer to Mountain State Academy was the right move.

I’m thinking it will prove a positive, smart move on Cottrill’s part.

But if you listen to some, he’s totally thrown his career away. Why, he can’t win a state championship. Gasp! (like Poca was going to with Wyoming East and Oak Hill firmly entrenched as the state’s top two programs as I write this).

He totally turned his back on his community, coaches and teammates. Yeah, why better yourself when you can score 30 points a game and attempt to build up a coach’s win-loss record.

And, he can’t win the state player of the year award. This one is absurd.

That Cottrill can’t win the Bill Evans Award — given annually to the state’s top basketball player — is as ridiculous as it is wrong.

I cite precedence.

In the 1990s, the goalkeeper of the year came from Linsly Academy, a private school. Granted, it as given by the state’s soccer coaches association. But I had always been under the impression that we in the sportswriters association did a better job of picking such teams. See the ridiculous MSAC baseball postseason awards for a perfect example of why coaches and their politics should never pick awards.

Those in the press up north have brought up the fact that Linsly has always been considered and are therefore “grandfathered” in because it had been that way so long.

That doesn’t make it right.

As expected, MSA coach Rob Fulford doesn’t agree either.

“It’s a legitimate question,” Fulford said. “I certainly think he should be eligible. It would be different if it was one of my international players or a kid from Atlanta. But you’re talking about a kid from West Virginia and he is the best player in the state of West Virginia. Whether you agree with his decision or not, the state player of the year award should go to the best player in the state. Put politics aside. If he is not eligible to win the state player of the year award, it should probably be the first one, in this day of asterisks, to have an asterisk beside it.”

There is time to rectify this situation, though it probably won’t happen.

If we sportswriters don’t allow him on the ballot?

“Then the sportswriters will have to look at themselves in the mirror and ask if they really voted for the player of the year,” Fulford said. “It becomes an ethics question on the part of you guys.”

Indeed.

They can throw out my ballot if they want, but if Cottrill is not on said ballot and he has a season like he did at Poca — averaging 20 (maybe less) at MSA is like averaging 30 at Poca — I’m writing him in.

One other thing. The anti-Beckley venom being spewed is almost as laughable as it is incorrect. Make no mistake, it’s out there.

One state scribe — for whom I do have respect — noted that Mountain State Academy’s 35-5 record last year this way:

“The junior guard is going where the competition is better — supposedly — even though MSA had such state powers as Mount Hope, Teays Valley Christian and Montcalm on its schedule last year. OK, so the Falcons are still building their program and will play Oak Hill Academy and St. Benedict’s this season, but who could resist a shot at last season’s schedule?”

Really.

That makes it sound like MSA played an all Class A schedule. Not to mention it’s a direct shot at small schools.

In fact, MSA played Oak Hill Academy, Hargrave Military, The Patterson School, Massanutten Military, Mount Zion and Our Savior of New York. Typically, that was not mentioned.

Of its 40 games — better than a dozen Cottrill could play at Poca under a best-case scenario — only seven were against in-state schools.

And to the person who said Woodrow Wilson has been recruiting players for 40 years, the last time I checked Raphael Cruz and Javier Gonzalez were never members of the Flying Eagles squad.

— E-mail:

demorrison@register-herald.com