All-Area Athletes & Teams
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1503113
Page 2 www.yoursun.com O K, so this is it. You've seen all this before. This time, we're just putting it all in one place. Within these pages, you'll find the Sun Preps players of the year and all our first- and second-team honorees from the 2022-23 school year, plus our over- all Athletes of the Year and Coach of the year. In all, there were 23 player of the year honorees. Technically it's 24, but North Port's Malia Hambrick is featured twice as the Runner of the Year for Girls Cross Country as well as Girls Track and Field. Venice took home the top honor in seven sports. Charlotte is a close second with six. Every area school had at least one for the second year in a row. Of course, originally this was all going to be meted out at CoolToday Park in the third annual Sun Preps All-Area Awards show. Not being able to celebrate this year's great ac- complishments with all of you in a venue like that hurts my soul. Though the reasons were a series of events that spiraled quickly beyond our control, the Class of 2023 didn't deserve our failure. We should and do take the blame for not putting on the event this year. All I can really say at this point is that lessons have been learned and we'll be more adaptive in coming years to prevent this from happening again. While we rightly can be criticized for this, I would also remind one and all that there is probably no sports staff anywhere who does more for our high school athletes than ours. All local papers knock it out of the park on their football and boys basketball coverage. No paper does what we do – provide that same level of coverage for volleyball, girls basketball, wrestling, soccer and weightlifting We've probably written more college signing stories than any paper in the country. We have, on many occasions this school year, featured entire sports sections that have no state, national or world content, just local sports. Our mission is to bring you local sports content that you cannot find anywhere else. I'd say we're crushing that assign- ment. Does it make us a less interesting paper to our overall readership? Yes, it absolutely does. The transplants and Snowbirds among us pay a pretty penny for a subscription to The Daily Sun and they would like to see Big Ten football, Detroit Tigers baseball and everything Notre Dame. I get it. But we're in the era of pick-and-choose. If we try to serve all masters, we'll end up disappointing everyone and failing miserably in the one area we should always excel – local content. Summer is here, but when the calendar flips to Aug. 1, we'll get cracking on bringing everything back up to snuff. We had some huge plans for this year's All-Area content that we never put into action, but most definitely will next year. The Awards will return. They will be epic. Our coverage will be even more thorough than it already is. This is my promise to you. I can't wait. I hope everyone has a great summer. Congratulations to all of our area athletes on a year like no other! Email Obley at patrick.obley@ yoursun.com and follow on Twitter: @PMOWriter Celebrating our area's very best SUN PHOTO BY PATRICK OBLEY North Port's Malia Hambrick had an outstanding freshman year, winning two big awards this year. She is the Sun Preps Cross Country Runner of the Year and the Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year. PATRICK OBLEY Sports Editor