We declare it official. High school softball in Chattanooga has gotten too good for its own good.

Today the Times Free Press presents its annual Best of Preps all-city teams. See D6.

Yes, that’s teams — plural. We stress that because there are so many good athletes playing softball locally, not everyone who deserves a first-team honor gets one. It’s not mathematically possible.

Each year our goal in picking the first team is to choose first a player of the year, then select 12 others we would fearlessly put up against any other all-star softball team in the state. We’re so assured of Chattanooga’s talent level that we’ll put our second team against any other city’s first team.

How about that, Knoxville? Did you get that, Mid-State?

Keep in mind that each year our attempt is to assemble a team, not a collection of girls with the highest batting averages. Our final account of softball statistics received for the regular season showed 25 girls with batting averages of .400 or better. And because players such as GPS’s Megan Wagner and Hixson’s Dawon Millwood made the first team because of their pitching prowess, not all of those .400 batters can be found on the first or second teams.

There are also those such as Hixson’s Ruth Blowe and GPS’s Amy Campbell, who could easily be considered all-city candidates based on what they did, had injuries not limited them to half-seasons. East Tennessee State-bound Campbell and multiple other college-scholarship signees can be found on the honorable-mention list. See D3.

Among our criteria for Best of Preps softball and baseball teams is that there must be at least one catcher, four infielders and a pitching staff. There is a little flexibility with the allowance of labeling one or two selections designated hitter or utility player, but the three we call outfielders must play there regularly. That’s why we didn’t take perhaps equally deserving first-team infield candidates such as Boyd-Buchanan’s Lauren Cline or Ooltewah’s Kristin Whitmire and call them outfielders.

Look at the page. Of those not on the first team, whom do you add? Whom do you drop?

Because students often take off on vacations once school is out for the summer — or in the case of softball players, immediately join their travel teams — Best of Preps spring sports teams have to be selected not long after regular seasons end. We would like to take into account how well players and coach-of-the-year candidates do in postseason, as we do for fall and winter teams, but if we waited until the Spring Fling was over, the words “picture unavailable” might be the most prevalent text on the spring all-star-team pages.

Teams from Chattanooga have done historically well at the state tournament, beginning with East Ridge in Class AAA in 1979 in the first one.

History also shows us that Class AAA is the most difficult classification to sustain any run of dominance, illustrated by the fact that no school has won three consecutive championships in that class. Five times the title has been won back-to-back. Want to guess what county those schools are from? Hixson won in 1983-84 and 1987-88; Baylor won in 1993-94; Soddy-Daisy won in 1999-2000 and 2006-07.

Hamilton County has had at least one state champion in 26 of the tournament’s 30 years of existence. It has been represented in at least one final every season except 1986 and 2002. Did we mention 22 runner-up finishes?

The mastery has only been fortified in recent years. There have been 11 Class AAA state championships decided since the public-private split started with the 1997-98 school year. Hamilton County schools have won eight, including the last four, and that was by three schools from District 6.

No schools that play in the same district in every sport have had three state champions in the same sport in a shorter span. District 15-AAA came close in girls’ soccer with Germantown winning in 2001, Houston winning in ’04 and Collierville winning in ’05.

The two large local private schools, GPS and Baylor, have matched local Class AAA schools in combining to win eight of 11 Division II state titles since the split.

Since there is no school from Hamilton County in the newly formed Division II-A classification, the ratio of cashing in state-championship opportunities over the years has been 33-of-101. That’s a success rate of .327.

That’s lofty, but not nearly as impressive as the local batting averages. We’ll consider a .327 hitter for one of our all-city softball teams — if she’s a whiz in the pitching circle.