Starting with the 2019 collegiate baseball season, the Student Printz will be a founding member of the new Collegiate Sports Writers Poll. The poll is a network of collegiate student newspapers, and the sports editor of each participating newspaper will serve as a voter and that paper’s representative to the poll. Each voter will serve as a representative of their geographical regions and conferences as well.
As of now, there are a total of 16 collegiate newspapers that will be participating in the poll. Those newspapers, including the Student Printz, are: The Temple News (Temple University), The Miami Student (Miami University), The Setonian (Seton Hall), Daily Titan (Cal State Fullerton), The University Star (Texas State), The Minnesota Daily (University of Minnesota), The Daily (Ball State), The Daily Texan (The University of Texas at Austin), The Daily (University of Washington), The Daily Gamecock (University of South Carolina), Kentucky Kernel (University of Kentucky), The Daily Wildcat (University of Arizona), The Daily Northwestern (Northwestern University), Indiana Daily Student (University of Indiana) and The Daily Athenaeum (University of West Virginia).
Poll founder and administrator Andrew Abadie, current executive editor of the Student Printz, talked about how the poll came to fruition.
“A friend of mine said how interesting it would be to see collegiate sports writers vote in a collegiate baseball poll, given that they see and report on teams so heavily,” Abadie said. “I thought that was an interesting idea and got to work on making it happen.”
For the first edition of the poll, Abadie, along with the current Student Printz sports editor will both serve as voters. A new administrator will be selected from among the member newspapers before the 2020 collegiate baseball season.
Included in this special baseball edition of the Printz is a preseason poll highlighting the top 25 teams in the country, according to the poll’s voters.
The poll will officially begin during the opening week of college baseball and will continue until the end of the season. At the end of the season, the poll will vote on a coach, pitcher and player of the year.
Eventually, the goal is to create a full representation of all regions and conferences to be published weekly and included the other various participating newspapers, if they choose to do so.
“My hope is to create a network of student newspapers and hopefully for future reporters, to network with each other,” Abadie said.
Additionally, the poll will be released every Monday on the Twitter account @CollegiateS1.
Collegiate Sports Writers Poll Preseason Top 25