The picking of the Hamilton Ultimate Team is far from an easy task to take on. Thousands of athletes have walked through the halls of Hamilton High School, all of which deserve their fair shot at achieving Hamilton Ultimate Team status. There is a lengthy process that is conducted by the committee that guarantees fairness for all athletes considered.
The process starts off with a committee of 9, so there are no tie decisions, being named to the task of creating an ultimate team. From there we must establish a base of knowledge for who has found success in the past as an athlete. We looked through yearbooks upon yearbooks to see if MVP or All Conference/State accolades are mentioned. In most yearbooks there was a mention of such topics that would help to set a base knowledge for the committee going forward with meetings.
The process was centered on who should we ask to meet with us? Who would know the history of Hamilton Athletics the best? In order to gain credibilty for the final decisions, multiple people were invited to speak about each sport. Following this guiding principle, multiple opinions could be taken into account to help the committee make the best decision possible. Before meeting with each person, different lists of questions are formulated for each sport that would help advance the process of picking the HUT. Each list is directed at a specific sport, so there are very few generalized questions that could give non specific information that would change the results of the meeting.
After the meetings are finished, there are multiple very important decisions to be made. A week of plain discussion was taken for the committee to discuss the results of the questions and meetings, and where that leads us going forward with the deciding of HUT members. Not every player was a unanimous decision and there was almost always a debate of some calibur when deciding who to be named. But with there being an odd number of committee members a vote was able to be cast in these situations for a final athlete to be named for our team.
So great, we have the teams? But how do we announce them to the community? Graphics. Photoshop was another skill that the HUT team must learn how to use! We make graphics specific to each sport that will show the sport, years they participated in the said sport, and their name. We make them all and have to determine that they are made to the standard that CHS holds ourselves to. The last step of the entire HUT process is to post our final graphics on the CHS social media platforms.