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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You should be able to get feedback after the first practice.

Maybe the coach will see some different things at the second practice, but by the third one, the coach should have figured the player out already and start to see the same things repeatedly. The level of the player will come out by then.

As a disclaimer, I am an experienced coach. I can tell after one practice with about 70% certainty where the player will fit into the team. After two practices about 90% certainty.

Questions you may want to ask:
How does the player fit at this level? Do you see this player being a fit? Is this player in range of the players on the other team, on the higher end, lower end, or in the middle? The most important thing is, is the player within comparable range of other players on the team. If they are then it's not a no.

It also might depend on tryouts and if they're losing players or if they're getting other strong players to join the team so the coach may not have a final answer yet.

If there is an option to continue training with the team on your off days from practice, that's always good to take the coach up on it.

You should not miss your team practices with your current team to attend practices with the new team if you have not officially joined them yet. It's okay to miss one but not on a regular basis every week.

No one is going to come knocking on your door  but your players coach May sense that you have one foot out the door already and will make your spring season miserable by reducing playing time, because why invest in a player who won't be with your team next year and is probably mentally checked out already[/quote]

[quote=Anonymous]
Thank you Coach.  This is the best post I read in a long time.

One thing I always wondered, why don't more tryouts use videos to record the players, especially when so many players tryout? [/quote]

Another coach here and I'll mostly agree with what the first coach said. [i]When [/i]they actually make the official offer, even after they know if they are a fit, can vary on a lot of things as has been previously mentioned. A good coach will be honest and upfront with you, I would encourage you to do the same with them, but in short they should know pretty darn well after two sessions.

With regards to using video to record players during try outs. It's not that it is a bad idea, but more a resources and time thing. Believe it or not there is A LOT that already goes into tryouts, especially for coaches with multiple teams and in age groups that have multiple teams within them. Remember this is all happening near the middle of the season at this point (man tryouts just keeps getting earlier and earlier...) so it's not like we're doing this in the off-season with nothing but time on our hands.

I can't imagine trying to create a video setup that captures the entire tryout process well enough to assist with determining which player makes it or not as well as having the time to analyze the video properly AND get offers out fast enough that doesn't cost me players. A well run tryout should provide an environment for the coaches to make pretty accurate assessments of all the players in attendance unknown to him/her. Keep in mind that some (sometimes most!) of those players are already existing team or club players and known to the coach in some shape or fashion, so in reality there are less players to actually evaluate then are actually out there on the field.

Also the number of slots that a team is looking to potentially fill can often dwindle down the number of "Yes' " that a coach is looking for that some of the tryout session is an exercise in futility after a certain point. This can be frustrating for players and parents fighting for spots who've been around the block enough to know when the tryout session has gone into what I'll call "let em play" mode as all the yes', no's and maybe's have already been sorted out. However as the previous coach mentioned it generally doesn't take more than two sessions to be pretty darn sure how you feel about a player. Do players get missed? Yes - all the time, especially in extremely large pools where there isn't enough staff/field space/etc. to properly evaluate them all. And not all coaches value the same things... so it becomes even harder to "get it right" when dealing with multiple coaches across the same age group even.

Some clubs are also "better" at creating additional teams based on an over abundance of new players at tryouts, and shifting players around based on actual skill level, instead of part skill, part politics. There are certainly pros and cons to all these methods, but I'll leave it there for now.[/quote]

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