AGC #005 - Tips for tryouts

Running tryouts is rarely the most fun part of a coach’s job, and you can’t please everyone when it comes to team selection.

But you can at least give yourself the best chance of making the right decisions.

Here are six tips for putting on an effective tryout - and minimizing the number of complaints afterward.

Manage expectations

Tryouts are an anxiety-inducing time for everyone involved.

There will always be parents and players who don’t agree with the final selection decisions, but it helps if it’s harder to argue with how the coaches went about making them.

Over-communicating is painstaking but useful. Ahead of time, share in writing what the tryout process will be - how many sessions, an outline of your selection criteria, how you’ll communicate decisions, etc.

You could also put in place contact boundaries if you wish; for example, asking parents and players not to call you until 24 hours after selections are announced.

And then, be true to your word.

Sharing your process in advance and sticking to it benefits everyone.

It gives less room for parents and players to fill an information gap with speculation, and offers insight into the coach’s role.

It also keeps you accountable and projects honesty and integrity, which should help build trust between all parties.

Teach them something

Many coaches see tryouts as a time to observe rather than coach, but you don’t need to wait until your team is picked to start introducing concepts.

Using some of the time to teach something you’re planning on using that season has multiple benefits.

You get to see how players react to your coaching style, and whether they can make changes when asked.

You’ll get a handle on who can keep up mentally as well as physically, who is curious, and who is engaged in the learning process.

All while adding value to every player at the tryout, and giving them something new to add to their game.

This is an especially useful tool for players who might be on the bubble ability-wise. Wouldn’t you rather fill those last roster spots with players who can and want to get better?

Account for talent that doesn’t shout (yet)

There will naturally be some temptation to see tryouts as an inconvenience that gets in the way of you getting on with the real business of preparing your team for the upcoming season.

And because you’ll quickly be able to spot the strongest and weakest kids, you’ll likely overestimate your observational skills to select the rest.

Talent selection is not the same as talent identification.

It’s relatively easy to see who is ready to perform now, but figuring out who might be able to perform in the future is far harder - and that’s before you take relative age effect into account, which we’ll deal with in a future post.

And you likely want a “bottom third” of your team that has plenty of potential, even if they’re not ready to be key players just yet.

Tryouts are already only a brief snapshot of a player’s ability at that moment - and many, like David Garcia below, believe they shouldn’t exist at all.

But giving players multiple chances to prove themselves usually helps potential emerge.

How you achieve this is down to your own creativity and circumstances.

If you’re a fall sport, running summer sessions, a drop-in league, or an intensive camp prior to tryouts can help you see players regularly before you have to select them.

You could design a selection process that allows you to select some players to the team at the tryout’s end, while continuing to evaluate others (e.g. you’re struggling to decide between 8 players for last 4 spots) for a defined period of time. Some might self-select themselves out, but others will fight for the opportunity.

I’ve also seen some varsity coaches leave a few spots open after the tryout, then pull up from JV after they’ve seen who looks ready to make the jump - but that brings added complexity of gutting another team midway through their season, so tread carefully.

While you don’t want to waste anyone’s time, you’ll be wasting plenty of your own down the line if you select players you end up not wanting.

Use a second set of eyes (or third, or fourth…)

Just as having another coach watch your session and offer feedback can improve your coaching, having multiple sets of eyes on your tryout can improve your selection process.

Unless you’re in the unusual position of working with the group for the very first time without prior knowledge or context, you and your fellow coaches will be entering the tryout with some biases.

You can’t “unknow” that context and information - but you can find some people who don’t have it.

Bringing in one or more outsiders and “blinding” the selection process for them - where they only have access to the player’s number, and not their name - gives about as unbiased a perspective as you could ask for.

Sometimes I’d even ask coaches from different sports, as they are likely to notice very different things.

You could also try giving them context to narrow their focus for a specific mission.

That could be to just look at a specific subset of players - maybe those you imagine will be 50/50 for selection, or, ones you think won’t be at the level but might prove you wrong.

Bonus points if you ‘randomly’ assign those players consecutive numbered shirts (e.g. 11-19) to make them easier to find among the larger group.

Find the right selection system

The San Antonio Spurs’ scouting report card famously had one checkbox that could seal a player’s fate if it was ticked - “Not a Spur”.

Coaches can and will design evaluation systems ranging from simple to complex, likely depending on their desire to put data on their feelings and how much they like spreadsheets (guilty!).

The possibilities are endless, but here are a couple I’ve used or encountered over the years that I’ve enjoyed tinkering with:

Ability x Character

The most straightforward version of this is to rate a player’s ability out of 10, then do the same for their character, then multiply the numbers for a score out of 100.

This ensures equal weighting for the player’s “intangibles” to give a fuller picture, and potentially identify talent that might be troublesome to manage.

You might not like the scores this spits out, but at least you’ll be clearer on what you’re getting yourself into should you select a high-ability, low-character player (or vice versa).

Real data nerds might consider having subcategories for their specific needs - think ball-handling and 1 v 1 defence for ability, or perhaps your program’s core values for character - that you can average out for the overall score.

Four Corners

This splits evaluation into four broad categories to make up a complete athlete - technical, tactical, physical, and psychosocial.

Assigning each a score out of 10 - then adding or averaging - is the simple math, but you can get creative here too.

My friend Sam Brown at Syracuse Field Hockey has a straightforward use case for the model when recruiting - if he feels the player is deficient in more than one area, they go off his list.

Finally, whatever rating system you choose, make sure everyone using it knows your baseline and what or who they’re meant to be comparing the players to.

Is a “five-star” player the best one in the group? Are you ranking them against the best player to ever play for the school? The region? The country?

Deliver the bad news with empathy

One of Kirby Smart’s three burdens of leadership is that you “will have to make hard decisions that negatively affect people you care about”.

Few coaches enjoy having to disappoint players, especially younger ones, with the bad news of not being selected for a team. But you can at least be a decent human in how you go about it.

Ideally, the conversation should happen in person. As the All Blacks like to say, “in the belly, not the back”.

Be honest about why you’ve come to the decision, with specific, relevant feedback on how they can improve. Challenge them to prove you wrong, and to choose a productive response to the setback. Remind them that their worth as a human has nothing to do with their athletic ability.

If logistics dictate that in-person communication is challenging - for instance, if you’re making a mass selection cut - at least ensure you share your feedback over the phone, text, or email.

At the minimum, you’ll have been a good role model and a caring coach. And perhaps you’ll get back the kind of person and player you’ll want on your team next year.

There you have it - six tips for tryouts:

1 - Manage expectations
2 - Teach them something
3 - Account for talent that doesn’t shout
4 - Use a second set of eyes
5 - Find the right selection system
6 - Deliver the bad news with empathy

Best of luck with running yours!