Varsity Kansas - The Blog

by joanna

How could I not have written about this? The Greater Wichita Area Sports Commission had its award ceremony on Friday night and the winners were Andover Central’s Bailey Gee and Southeast’s Jordan Cyphers.

I appreciate that these awards are given. I’ve voted most every year. But I always waffle on who to vote for. Should it be the most outstanding athlete who excels at a high level in more than one sport? Or should it matter if the athlete is a one-sport athlete or not?

(Feel free to state your opinions on this.) I tend to think if I’m going to vote for the athlete of the year, they’ve got to be leaps and bounds better than everyone — and I like the multi-sports athletes. Which is why, as talented as Cyphers is, I didn’t vote for him. Yet I go against this when I voted for golf stud Katy Nugent and swimming sensation Jamie Bruce. As I’m trying to dissect my own reasons for this, what I come up with is that they were so far above their competitors.

OK, so Cyphers was clearly one of the state’s best basketball players in the state, much less the area — which is why he was All-State and All-Metro. So why not vote for him? The way I felt was that there were quite a few multi-sport athletes that excelled in a variety of sports — such as Andale’s Ethan Ungles (football, basketball, track) — who deserved that honor. But on the girls side, I don’t think there were as many standout athletes that fit like Ungles did.

So clearly I’ve set myself up for quite a few of you to ream me. Feel free. But it is a decision that you have to figure out when you’re looking at athlete of the year honors. So who would yours have been?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 9:38 a.m. and is filed under Basketball, Football, Golf, swimming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.