Gad, so many great performances to choose from. So many people did so many wonderful things during this winter sports season.

On March 16, Stripes will honour its Athletes of the Quarter for the winter sports season.

Requests for nominations from coaches, athletics directors and school administrators were sent out Tuesday.

But Ornauer wants to know what SportsBlog Nation thinks.

Sound off! Who deserves the honour above and beyond anybody else? And why?

It doesn't have to be somebody at your school; it can be anybody of your choosing, based on the same criteria I use for final selections:

-- Outstanding achievement on the court/field.
-- Outstanding performance in the classroom.

Sure had fun with this. We'll do the same with soccer ratings, starting at the end of March.

Here's the last of the basketball ratings:

Boys
 1. Seoul American, 50-7. Twelve-game winning streak to close season with third Class AA title in six seasons.
 2. Kadena (Okinawa), 36-14. Closed 10-1, only loss in the Class AA championship game.
 3. Yongsan International-Seoul, 20-8. Closed with an 8-1 rush to seize Class A title.
 4. E.J. King (Japan), 25-8. Tired legs kept Cobras from finishing Class A title climb.
 5. Faith Academy (Philippines), 23-9. Couldn't bring fourth the Class A title, but still a great four-year run for Vanguards.

Musings and mutterings from the Dragon Hill Lodge on Yongsan Garrison, as Ornauer looks around for the guy who sells the eye toothpicks:

-- Many contributed to Seoul American's boys' third Class AA Tournament title in six years, perhaps none greater than senior Shawn Grandy. His chief ingredient: Defense, particularly his third-quarter clampdown on Kadena's Jamil Barney, who simply played an unconscious first half.

-- Grandy. Block on Barney. 2:40 left. Not a bigger play in any tournament anywhere the entire week. Period.

Each Far East High School Class A Basketball Tournament awards ceremony held something in common -- players receiving MVP awards who played for teams that did not win championships.

Brandon Spencer was so honored from sixth-place Daegu American in the boys tournament. On the girls' side, Leyna Arbour has garnered the award in consecutive years for second-place International School of the Sacred Heart.

The debate has raged for years, ever since I began covering Far East tournaments in 1982, and Duane Paul of Yokota was passed over for Torey Bauer of Faith Academy. The argument? You guessed it -- Faith won the championship.

Three days down, two to go in Class A, three in Class AA:

-- Is there anybody out there ... anybody ... who doesn't believe that Kadena will meet Seoul American in the Girls Class AA championship game?

-- Is there anybody out there ... anybody ... who doesn't believe that International School of the Sacred Heart and Faith Academy will reprise their 2007 Girls Class A title clash?

-- Is there anybody out there ... anybody ... who can somehow figure out who will win the Boys Class AA tournament?

Single-elimination basketball playoffs: Total sense of urgency. Bring your 'A' game every time. Far East is, after all, a state tournament. The bad: Eliminated on the first day and have to think of all kinds of creative things as a coach to keep your players motivated and interested.

Double-elimination basketball playoffs: A second chance if a team has an off-game. True test. Cream eventually rises to the top, anyway. The bad: Too few teams end up playing too many games in the last couple of days; you can only give up to third place at tournament's end.

Which do you prefer?

Boy, these are heady times in Daegu American Warrior country.

Two days off the best finish in school history in the Far East High School Wrestling Tournament (seven out of 11 wrestlers medal), Brandon Spencer and the Warriors boys basketball team knocks off a juggernaut on Monday, a 71-52 win over Faith Academy's boys basketball team.

Spencer, he of the 38 points, and the Warriors may have finally shed that "also-ran/perpetually rebuilding" label that coach Phillip Loyd has always used for his ballclubs.

Welcome to Contenderland, fellas! Matmen and cagers.

Musings and mutterings from Day 3 of the 2008 DODDS-Pacific Far East High School Wrestling Tournament:

-- Time to call Kadena a dynasty? They've finished second, first, third and first in the last four individual freestyle team title chases. Pantherland has done well, going from five wrestlers in the practice room -- Kubasaki's -- in 1996 to three banners today. With the dual-meet phase of the tournament still to come Saturday.

-- Kadena's 20-point romp over Kubasaki (68-48) was the biggest runaway in 17 years, since Kubasaki ran and hid from St. Mary's International by nearly 30 points.

Congratulations, Emily Albonetti, the Osan American 108-pound senior girl wrestler who made Far East High School Tournament history on Thursday.

For the record, the moment came at 2:03 p.m. Thursday, when Albonetti stepped off the mat after pinning Champaigne Tatman of Robert D. Edgren in 2 minutes, 31 seconds. She became the first girl to sign a bout sheet as the bout's victor in the 33-year history of the tournament.

"Finally," she said as she put pencil to bout sheet.

Turns out there was little debate during Tuesday's pre-tournament coaches' meeting after all in the Lanai Room at the Awase Meadows Golf Course restaurant.

After all the disagreement over the new double-elimination format in the run-up to the Far East High School Wrestling Tournament, coaches decided to give it a chance, if not fully embrace it.

"We've heard some good things about it and some complaints about it," Nile C. Kinnick coach Nico Hindie said. "We'll give it a year and see if it works. Change is not always a bad thing."