Locals left out of honors list

[Guest SETXsports.comNews]

Locals left out of honors list

Gabriel Pruett

The Orange Leader

Even though our little neck of the woods has once again become a popular place for college football recruiting,Southeast Texas still gets the shaft in respect.

Lets face it, the Dallas area along with San Antonio and Austin are kings of the hill right now and look to stay that way.

One major reason for that is our local coaches, parents and even us in the media forget to do one thing - send our local athletes’ statistics into various polls and honor lists.

Of course a handful of locals get selected to the All-State team each year, but that list is practically made up before the season even starts.

Taking just a quick look in this month’s Texas Coach and it was apparent once again our area was forgotten about once again.

The Texas High School Coaches Association’s publication put out its final regular season statistical leaders for each classification in the state in all the major categories.

There was only one player from our area who was privileged enough to have his name crack the lists but a slew of guys had the numbers to rank among the state’s best.

The lone athlete within 100 miles of here to have his name sent in by his program was Trey Burrell of Hardin-Jefferson.

Burrell did have a very nice sophomore season with 951 yards and nine touchdowns to come in at No. 21 on the 3A list.

Orange County alone had three players go over the 1,000-yard mark.

DePauldrick Garrett at West Orange-Stark had 1,389 yards and 17 touchdowns, Johnny Dishon in Bridge City had 1,178 yards and 11 scores and Orangefield’s Brett Ramsey finished with 1,016 yards and 19 touchdowns.

Garrett’s final tally is slightly off the pace due to playing in two playoff games.

In 2A, Deweyville’s Justin Williams was no where to be found after posting 2,294 yards to go with 31 touchdowns.

The top rusher listed in the state was A. Griffin of Aubrey High School with 2,079 yards and 26 scores.

Another close-to-home guy not seen was Nederland’s Micah Mosley who tore his way for 2,432 yards with an 8.0 yards per carry average.

The top guy on the 4A list had 2,046 yards, E. Hearn from Plainview High School.

The no-shows do not stop with rushing leaders.

There was no WO-S quarterback Andre Bevil and his 2,069 passing yards or his two receivers in Earl Thomas and Jacoby Franks.

Franks had 719 yards receiving and Thomas had 861.

Now it is true there are way too many lists and publications thrown at coaches after the regular season is over.

The Orange Leader itself gets tons of requests for nominees to various state rankings and lists and I’ll be the first to admit we do not fill out each and every one of them.

We would be doing it all the way up to the basketball playoffs and the start of baseball season.

So I do side with the local coaches on that aspect of the situation. Too many lists and too little time to fill out all the paperwork.

It would just have been nice to have seen a few other names from any school in Southeast Texas on these lists.

[AHUDDLESTON]

Look in 1A and you will see the names of several players from Hull - Daisetta.  You may not consider us in the area, but we are much closer to the Beaumont area than some of the other schools you refer to.

[cats55]

The reason many of our local players weren't on the list is because their coaches did not submit their stats.

[DP#1FAN]

Cat55 hit the nail on the head. Example of a good one : Coach Griff at LCM He does everything he can to get his players rewarded for there hard work. We need more coaches like him in football.