Can We Please Humanize Youth Sports Tryouts?

Another unnecessarily professionalized slice of youth sports. Sigh.

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Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

One of the first-ever Good Game posts was a little therapy session dedicated to the lessons learned from an intense week of soccer tryouts. After quite the roller coaster for my family and so many other families we knew, I thought a little perspective would be useful. The post is packaged with reminders like how different coaches value different strengths and not accepting a spot you’re uncomfortable with. These mantras continue to ring true. So too does the absolutely brutal nature of youth sports tryouts. Now that I’ve been mired in this world a bit, as a parent and journalist, it’s clear that the tryout formula used by pay-to-play youth sports organizations across the landscape is not only inhumane but just plain dumb.

I’ll get to some ideating on better ways to handle in a bit, but first, a dose of the insanity.

In speaking with a number of friends and readers about tryouts, there is one overriding complaint. Transparency is majorly lacking.

In club volleyball and soccer, you may have a spot going into tryouts. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe a select few on a top team are given some kind of nod and wink to confirm their standing. But for everyone else, nothing is guaranteed. You have no clue who is coming to tryouts. In soccer, you see the club marketing the shit out of their tryouts. Unless your kid is supremely confident and gifted, the incessant advertising and general emphasis on tryouts is an anxiety attack waiting to happen.

Tryouts for both sports are typically held in the same period as other clubs, often just a week or two. Some clubs like to schedule their tryouts in parallel to force you to choose. Meanwhile, they disclose little. Whether you have your spot on your current team. Who your coach is. If you’re on the lowest team, whether your team will continue and will you be on it.

Panic mode sets in. Kids and families scramble to figure out backup clubs where the tryouts don’t conflict. And just like practices and games, most of these kids aren’t driving themselves. Add in the fact that many clubs give you 48 hours to accept an offer, and it’s sheer lunacy.

Reminder, these are children playing sports.

At least most soccer clubs don’t charge a tryout fee. Not so in club volleyball where you pay for every tryout. Meanwhile, some kids are told before tryouts that they have a spot since the club doesn’t want them walking. But it’s not like these clubs announce, oh hey, we only have 2 or 3 spots on said team.

Lacrosse organizations also charge a tryout. One Massachusetts family, entrenched in the lacrosse community, noted this fee as $110 for boys and $85 for girls. Again, this isn’t to try out for some national team or ID camp, these are pay-to-play organizations. West Coast teams may be a little more LAX as they try and build the sport. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

Anyhow, travel baseball is also a sham. Most organizations with a preexisting team are happy to trot out their players in a tryout charade. A few might be on the bubble but it’s not like these baseball organizations are up front about this to the current or prospective players. You really have no clue what you’re getting into.

Some are absolute jokes. My kid attended a baseball tryout last summer that was heavily marketed to a number of age groups. We convinced ourselves that the $75 tryout fee was worth it as he was at the very beginning of rediscovering his love for baseball. He and his buddy arrived open to a new experience. They were asked their ages, not their names, and then quickly cast aside in a sliver of the field with all the other non-high schoolers. Two hours later, all in 100+ degree heat, the kids reported that no one even looked at them or said a word.

There has to be a better way to do tryouts. How can you properly evaluate a kid in one or two sessions? In my opinion, this is an organizational failure to not be more thorough.

Have an extended open tryout window like a job fair. Maybe during the last month of the season. No questions asked. Let kids train with other teams. Welcome kids to train with your team. See if it’s a fit, athletically, personality-wise, etc. It’s mind-boggling what families pay to join club teams they can’t even vet. If it doesn’t work out, the kid has to go through the same process a year later. They become a club-hopper, which, unless you’re hopping up, can be quite perilous.

Clubs and families could save a lot of time if game clips were shared in advance. Any savvy coach will be able to start the evaluation process by seeing how a player moves and in-game instincts. Along the same lines, how about scheduling exploratory calls with current coaches. Time is money on all ends, and wouldn’t it behoove everyone to save some?

But the biggest fix to tryouts is the magical T word: TRANSPARENCY. Let players know where they stand! Give them a realistic lens into their current pathway as the reason is winding down. You most likely have a spot. You have a spot unless a significantly better libero comes to try out. How hard is it to let players know whether or not they should be looking at other options?

Players would have a much clearer picture if clubs had thorough and regular review sessions throughout the year. Not some blanket organizational sheet where coaches just write good, medium, and needs work. Like a real evaluation with a prescriptive element. Susie is great with touches but should start developing her left foot. Here’s a video she can watch at home. Some coaches do this stuff but way too many do not.

The entire tryout process is broken, infuriating, and incredibly stressful. It would be nice if the ending was a pot of gold in the form of a likely ideal fit. But the only ending is the pot of gold for clubs in the form of our money.

IThe closest comp is applying for a job with the pretty significant differentiator of you getting paid.