Insiders view of tryouts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:38 hit on the head, your kid being lost in the crowd if you aren't Messi Jr.

What's the best way to already be known to the coaches before the tryout if you are coming in from outside the club?

I had to e-mail the coaches twice and talk to the coaches after each tryout and I asked my kid to go up and shake the coach's hand and say thank you. I think this was helpful, we got an offer just after the 2nd tryout for 2nd team (out of 3 teams). Which was good as that top team looked packed and there were so many kids, they could have made 5 teams if they offered everyone a slot! You can also try to stand out in other ways, Heck, I even saw 1 new kid wear mis-matched shoes and socks.... on each leg... she defiantly stood out. She was quickly talked to by the coaches. Whereas, my kid looked like 10 other kids on the field with an Alex Morgan jersey, black shorts and pink socks. lol So, I think the talking to the coaches and saying thanks after is helpful when you're new.

My kid has thanked coaches and asked if they have feedback. I don’t know how that goes over (though seemingly hasn’t been a negative) but I think it’s a good skill to practice, so I’m glad she’s done it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've been reading this forum for a while now, and thought you might be interested in the actual "inside the club" view of how tryouts work. From what I am reading and after almost 25 years of coaching in the area, there are some crazy opinions being stated as facts on different threads, so this is what my general experience has been. Obviously its broad and meant to be fairly generic across the area.
Say the night's tryouts end at about 8:00, and then the coaches get home and get on calls to go over the players. They may need to get on more than one if they were doing multiple age groups, and these can go for a bit as coaches advocate for one player or another or debate a certain one. They may be delayed a little while the lead coach reviews all the evaluations to do a preliminary ranking before the call. These may be zoom or conference calls or even text chats. In any case, they are the coaches getting together to compare notes after tryouts end.
Finally offers are set, and people stay up late to send them as the coaches tell them the names and team assignments. Clubs know you are anxious, and are anxious for you as well. If they are not there immediately after a tryout before you go to bed we know that you all wake up the next day and hope there is a message. That's why they stay up until midnight or later to get them to you.
Coaches are stressed over this process too. You may see them in huddles out there looking organized and relaxed but they are not, I promise you. They do not like to cut kids, and they don't like to disappoint players who have hoped for a team they won't make. This is the worst part of coaching by far. Watching disappointed kids is hard. We can see it when they are on a field they don't want to be on. We see the body language when you are laving with them. We get texts from players, or phone calls fro kids fighting back tears because they don't think they did well. It sucks to know your players are unhappy. We coach because we LIKE kids. We generally like their parents too.Coaches dread making those calls saying the player is moving down a team, even when it is the best place for them to grow and develop and get a lot of playing time. You'd be surprised how hard it is for coaches who know and like your child to pass along that news. They are happy to see new faces but they realize that a new face and a good player mean that a kid they know may lose out on a slot because of it. Their job is to build the best team they can, but it is not done without empathy for the players. Sometimes a player is in between teams, say the A and B teams. Parents start hearing about offers for both teams coming out, and stress because they don't have one yet. Sometimes not hearing yet is a good thing.
Hopefully wherever your players are trying out you are seeing a lot of coaches on the fields watching them. Some of them are tasked with a certain objective by the coaches in the age groups, something like look at these four players. I can only take two, tell me who performs best. This is ideally a coach who does not know them well and can give an unbiased opinion. Sometimes it is please look at all the new kids and disperse them by ability level to the fields with the players we already basically know and have initially started to get sorted out. If you're lucky, there is a goal keeper coach at one of your tryouts who is watching them. In any tryout, there will be players moving between fields. You may see each existing team start together, but you'll see players moving around.
I have been at multiple clubs and I can tell you that none of them have already determined entire teams before tryouts and closed and locked the door. Often the top players are sent early invitations. This lets those coaches know where the players stand as far as returning and gives them a sense of how many spots they want to fill. Second and third teams and so forth also know exactly who their top kids are, but making those offers early is more difficult because the first team has to get out together before the second team can, and so on. As I said some of the top players on a team below the top one may be more in limbo because the first team is waiting for acceptances and then they know who will get the next offer. This trickles down. Third teams may hear several days after the tryouts end for that group, and if there are fourth that could still be longer. It does not mean the clubs are not excited to work with your kids or don't want them or believe they can play. Don't read anything into it beyond the fact that the teams fill from the top down. There are players who ask for extra time to consider offers too, or families who are waiting to hear about another child before the accept because they are hoping to have them all in one place. That can slow things down too.
Last point. Sometimes at large sessions at larger clubs, a kid does not get a full evaluation done, or only one person has done it. There are lots of reasons, maybe they moved the coach to a different field before he finished, maybe they moved the player, maybe it was time for a water break, maybe the kid only made one tryout, maybe its a new coach and the old one is saying they need to see the player again because they were not "on" at the first session. This is why it helps to go to several tryouts if it is a club you like. Getting asked back, or finding out another tryout has been added both indicate there are kids the club really likes and are trying to place correctly, not that it is disorganized. High school teams go a week with tryouts, the NFL literally months. Soccer clubs have about three hours to look at an age group. There are usually quite a few kids between teams and getting placement right is the whole point here. Sometimes it may mean the age group needs players, but usually it means they are looking at your kids and want to get an extra look before making an offer to be sure it is to the correct team.
We all know it is stressful and most of us remember going through tryouts ourselves, so we get it. I hope this helps.

From one insider to another

This is a decent explanation of how tryouts work in theory. You should know that is not how it actually shakes out.

Misidentification. Miscommunication.

No Coach can evaluate 100 kids in 2-3 1 hour group sessions. You would just be sorting groups and identifying the easy outliers.

Tryouts in US soccer are vastly different than Trials elsewhere.

You have described cattle call tryouts which are an inherently poor talent identification approach.

And the reality is that is doesn’t get implemented in most clubs anywhere close to how you describe it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if your kid was a late pick for a top team at a club you've been with for a while versus a first pick for a top team at a different club? Where your kid is viewed in the lineup seems obvious based on the timing of the offers. Go with the new club? They compete in the same division. We feel rejected by getting such a late offer from the club we've been at for some time.

I would leave because the current club told you how they view your kid. Next year a late invite might turn into an early demotion or cut

[Anonymous]

Just a parent here. I completely agree that kids get missed at big tryouts and that one coach can't possibly evaluate every player. To be fair, I'm not sure what the solution is there. I have kids at two clubs (maybe one next year if the chips fall right) and at both clubs there are a bunch of coaches. It looks like they break the kids up and divide them onto fields based on skills. Watching it looks like the top field has the head coach, second field has the second team coach etc. Sometimes a coach goes between two fields.
Am I reading this wrong?

[Anonymous]

Another parent. I watched the tryouts in Vienna and there were a lots of kids on the fields. However, it appeared that as the drills progressed the best kids were moved from the fields on the right to the fields on the left. The kids, like my son, didn't move from the fields on the right and played with mostly the same kids. The kids differently in front of me were significantly better than the kids my son was playing with.

[Anonymous]

I will say that there are some clubs with excellent coaches who can identify talent in a very very short time. DC had tried out one year for a big club with very limited spaces in an age group with a lot of teams. Although they made the lowest team, there were so few who made it that year. The coaches "saw" something in DC when I talked to head of the age group. DC did not perform the way they usually do and I was shocked on the offer. We ended up taking it and moved up quickly. I don't know what it is that they actually "saw" in DC except that in the time we were there and against like 135 kids with DC playing poorer than typical, they made a decision that in hindsight was right for them (and us of course ). DC was not their "typical profile" either as I understood it.

[Anonymous]

If its a club with existing teams, they really only need to see new players. They have watched the existing team players play all year. They know exactly what they are getting.

[Anonymous]

I don't think any club can be expected to get it right all the time, but I do appreciate someone taking time to explain how it ideally works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If its a club with existing teams, they really only need to see new players. They have watched the existing team players play all year. They know exactly what they are getting.

What's the reasoning for not going this? It seems much simpler.

[Anonymous]

But time and time again told they don't want to move a player down...and I get it--but some of those players should have been moved down 3 years ago.

This. Would love to know a coach’s response to this. The whole moving up a team as a block year after year no matter how poorly they perform thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If its a club with existing teams, they really only need to see new players. They have watched the existing team players play all year. They know exactly what they are getting.

What's the reasoning for not going this? It seems much simpler.

New players want to see what existing teams look like. Coaches can compare new players to existing players and see how they fit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If its a club with existing teams, they really only need to see new players. They have watched the existing team players play all year. They know exactly what they are getting.

What's the reasoning for not going this? It seems much simpler.

It does seem a lot simpler, but I assume clubs want to compare current players with new ones. Also, if my kid was a new player I'd want a sense of the kids he/she would be playing with before I accepted an offer. New coaches might not really know the age group as well either so they want to see everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if your kid was a late pick for a top team at a club you've been with for a while versus a first pick for a top team at a different club? Where your kid is viewed in the lineup seems obvious based on the timing of the offers. Go with the new club? They compete in the same division. We feel rejected by getting such a late offer from the club we've been at for some time.

I would leave because the current club told you how they view your kid. Next year a late invite might turn into an early demotion or cut

Right, youre kid isnt the strongest player so instead of internalizing the issue and working to fix it you can blame it on outside factors. How about taking it as an opportunity to work hard and improve to ensure you remain on the team the following year. The way the kid is “viewed” is reflection of their level and it is within their control to change that.

Of course at the end of the day find the team with the best coaching and training environment. But, the perspective PP has is silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if your kid was a late pick for a top team at a club you've been with for a while versus a first pick for a top team at a different club? Where your kid is viewed in the lineup seems obvious based on the timing of the offers. Go with the new club? They compete in the same division. We feel rejected by getting such a late offer from the club we've been at for some time.

I would leave because the current club told you how they view your kid. Next year a late invite might turn into an early demotion or cut

Right, youre kid isnt the strongest player so instead of internalizing the issue and working to fix it you can blame it on outside factors. How about taking it as an opportunity to work hard and improve to ensure you remain on the team the following year. The way the kid is “viewed” is reflection of their level and it is within their control to change that.

Of course at the end of the day find the team with the best coaching and training environment. But, the perspective PP has is silly.

Not always. young grasshopper. Different coaches value different things. I like when they are honest about it. We had a coach say with the players he had (less technical skill and big size) he would be playing a very direct style and my small, late bloomer very technical and tactical wouldn't fit that model. Went elsewhere and kid fit right in and was a starter, played most games.

Coaches are all different at every level. They don't all look for or like the same players and sometimes your kid could remind them of a teammate or former player they couldn't stand for some reason. IT is what it is. What you can't do is take it personally. We just move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if your kid was a late pick for a top team at a club you've been with for a while versus a first pick for a top team at a different club? Where your kid is viewed in the lineup seems obvious based on the timing of the offers. Go with the new club? They compete in the same division. We feel rejected by getting such a late offer from the club we've been at for some time.

I would leave because the current club told you how they view your kid. Next year a late invite might turn into an early demotion or cut

Right, youre kid isnt the strongest player so instead of internalizing the issue and working to fix it you can blame it on outside factors. How about taking it as an opportunity to work hard and improve to ensure you remain on the team the following year. The way the kid is “viewed” is reflection of their level and it is within their control to change that.

Of course at the end of the day find the team with the best coaching and training environment. But, the perspective PP has is silly.

Not always. young grasshopper. Different coaches value different things. I like when they are honest about it. We had a coach say with the players he had (less technical skill and big size) he would be playing a very direct style and my small, late bloomer very technical and tactical wouldn't fit that model. Went elsewhere and kid fit right in and was a starter, played most games.

Coaches are all different at every level. They don't all look for or like the same players and sometimes your kid could remind them of a teammate or former player they couldn't stand for some reason. IT is what it is. What you can't do is take it personally. We just move on.

When they are older it often is 'we already have 8 midfielders', etc., or 4 goalies. By HS they are looking to just fill spots.