Coaches, fans always encouraged to nominate area’s brightest stars

Within the last few weeks, we’ve received a number of inquiries regarding our Athletes of the Week feature.

Most of the questions related to the process by which athletes were nominated and eventually selected as Athletes of the Week.

Though we’d like to say that there is a complicated formula that we feed tons of raw data into, the truth is that the process, like much of the newspaper business, is more of an art rather than a science.

The individuals who contacted us were wondering why a particular athlete — in most cases their child — wasn’t listed as one of the top performers. These legitimate concerns were one of the reasons why we had been somewhat reluctant to launch such a feature.

Any list by its very nature is exclusionary. It’s not our desire nor our intent to slight any athlete by leaving him or her off our list.

When we opted to go ahead and introduce the feature last October, we decided that the positives of spotlighting some of the area’s top performers and their accomplishments outweighed the potential negatives of occasionally overlooking some individuals.

Unfortunately, the latter was inevitable given our limited resources and the number of schools and sports we cover.

Our circulation area encompasses two counties (Snohomish and King), three public school districts (Edmonds, Everett and Shoreline), seven public high schools (Edmonds-Woodway, Jackson, Lynnwood, Meadowdale, Mountlake Terrace, Shorecrest and Shorewood) and four private schools (Archbishop Thomas Murphy, Snohomish County Christian, King’s and Shoreline Christian).

Spring is perhaps our busiest season as the two-man Enterprise sports department has been trying to keep tabs on eight different sports — baseball, softball, boys soccer, boys track, girls track, girls tennis, boys golf and girls golf.

We’ve received some feedback from coaches but frankly not as much as we would like.

This is where you, the reader, can help us out.

Though our combined circulation is 80,000 with an estimated readership of 180,000, some coaches do not reside in our circulation area and aren’t aware that we spotlight a pair of athletes each week during the school year.

Please encourage them to nominate any athlete whether it be on their team or the opposition’s. We take submissions for the previous week’s games until 11 a.m. every Monday.

Athletes and spectators also may submit nominations. The easiest way is to send an e-mail to entsports@heraldnet.com or you may call us at 425-673-6529.

At the end of the school year, we will evaluate the various aspects of our prep coverage to make sure we continue to provide a well-rounded and fun-to-read sports section.

As always, your comments are welcome.David Pan and Charlie Laughtland cover sports for The Enterprise Newspapers. Questions and comments may be sent via e-mail to entsports@heraldnet.com, by fax to 425-774-8622 or by mail to: Sports editor, The Enterprise, 4303 198th St. SW., Lynnwood, WA 98036.