Springs Sports All-Area All-Stars will be announced June 19
By Tom Arviso Jr.
Navajo Times
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There's a large folder sitting on my desk that contains the names of hundreds of some of the most skilled student-athletes in the southwest United States.
These names were submitted by coaches from high schools located throughout the Four Corners area, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Flagstaff and Page.
The Navajo Times staff will now assist me as we sift through the many nominations for our spring sports All-Star teams. This is a long, tedious process and it's one that takes a lot of concentration in order to select the most deserving student-athletes and coaches. It can be fun but it sure isn't easy making the final selections.
The Navajo Times will list its 2008 Spring Sports All-Area All-Stars in next week's edition. This will be for the high school spring sports of baseball, softball, track and field, and golf.
This year we will not have a formal ceremony to award our individual All-Star selections. Rather, we will send our award winners their certificates and plaques to their respective high schools where they can pick them up from their coaches or other school officials.
We're not having a formal awards ceremony this year for several reasons but the main one is the overall costs of staging the event and the high cost of travel for our student-athletes, coaches and parents to attend such a ceremony.
The cost of fuel alone is so expensive today and it's going to get much worse during the summer months. A lot of our student-athletes are already working or are on family vacations or attending college.
To be honest though, I guess what has been most disturbing to me over the last few years has been the dwindling attendance at our spring sports awards ceremony. I know that there are conflicts at the end of the school year with proms, testing, baccalaureates and graduations.
But what has been happening is that a lot of student-athletes from about a 50-mile radius from Window Rock would not attend the spring sports awards ceremony. Yet, we would have athletes, coaches and parents travel from Page, Kirtland, Tuba City, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Flagstaff and Winslow.
These folks took their own personal time and money to travel many miles to get to Window Rock for the awards ceremony because they cared and were happy to be here. It wasn't fair to them that selected athletes and coaches from the local area couldn't do the same.
So, to save everyone the hassle of expensive travel and time, we decided to forgo the awards ceremony this year. We continue to have great turnouts for our fall and winter sports awards ceremonies and we are grateful for that.
Not having an official awards program does not tarnish the honor of being selected to our 2008 Spring Sports All-Area All-Star teams. No, not one bit.
In fact, we are quite proud of all of our All-Stars selected throughout the school year. I still know and feel that we have some of the greatest athletes, coaches and fans in the whole country right here in our area.
In fact, many of former All-Area All-Stars go on to do bigger and better things in college and then later on, in life. They succeed in college and eventually return to the local area and become teachers, coaches, principals, athletic directors, doctors, lawyers and much more.
That makes us even more proud.
So, to all of you spring sports fans, please pick up a copy of the June 19 issue of the Navajo Times and help us honor and acknowledge our 2008 Spring Sports All-Area All-Stars.
Enjoy your summer sports fans - be careful and stay cool!