We just published our all-academic teams. It’s one of the most important things we do. After all, that’s why the kids are in school in the first place — academics. The athletics part is more entertaining to watch, however, so that’s why we cover basketball games and not math tests.

Here’s how we pick our all-academic team: we don’t. We ask for nominations from schools, which send us one male and one female each season. The students they send are automatically on the team. Schools in a co-op can send their own students. For example, we accept male and female athletes from Bluffs and Winchester, not just one male and one female for the West Central co-op.

If no one from your school appears on the list, that means the school didn’t submit anyone. That means either they had no one who met the criteria (3.5 GPA or above is required), or they just didn’t submit anyone. Different schools have their own processes for selecting nominees. Sometimes it’s the principal, sometimes it’s the athletic director and sometimes it’s a coach.

There are three criteria: Athletes must have a 3.5 GPA on a 4.0 scale; they must have participated in a sport during that particular season (we pick one for fall, one for winter and one for spring); and they must have participated in community and school activities in addition to sports.

That last one is kind of a big one. When we select a team captain (I usually select the captains after talking with other members of our staff), we usually give community and school activities more weight than grade point average. Good grades in themselves are commendable, but the students who volunteer for community activities have taken the extra step. They understand that education is important because it gives you a foundation for helping others in your community. Our all-academic team captains have figured that out already.

Athletics gets zero weight when we’re selecting our captains (you’ll note that stats are not among the criteria). As long as the students participated, we don’t care if they scored zero or 1,000 points. However, I’ve noticed that many times the best athletes are also the ones who are the most involved in their communities. And that’s great to see.