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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote][quote]Coaches could watch you for a few minutes and tell you whether you have a chance in their club. But don't expect that courtesy - all coaches will invite you to the tryouts even if they know you have no chance of making any of their teams. They are trying to boost their tryout numbers, which brings bragging rights.[/quote]
Completely disagree with this. For a long time we thought this was true until we actually asked our club coach why they didn't tell us if we had a chance or not. The answer was surprising and changed our point of view.
- CHRVA recruiting guidelines don't allow clubs to make offers prior to tryouts.  This includes telling players "unofficially" they have a spot on the team. Good clubs take those rules seriously and won't breach them, even for returning players they know they are going to take.
- If a club or coach violates those rules prior to tryouts, don't play for them. Those rules are in place to protect players. There are many horror stories of players being told they had a spot on a team only to find out that the coach was lying to them.
- While they could tell you that you won't make a team, clubs that focus on player development and run multiple levels of teams will often not do so -- not for bragging rights or money but because they genuinely believe participating in tryouts is part of the development of players. Clubs understand that many parents hate to see our kids try something and fail, but for club coaches the alternative of not trying at all is generally viewed as worse than trying and failing.
- Many times a player tries out one year, doesn't make the team and then comes back next year does make a team. If you've told the player to not bother trying out you may make them think they shouldn't ever come back.
- Telling a player who is working hard to improve that they shouldn't show up to a tryout is a tough conversation to have. They often have just a minute or two with players at clinics and all of those discussions are in the gym in a public space. No coach wants to have a "don't bother coming back" conversation in that setting -- its not fair to the player. Most parents don't want that discussion to happen in public either.

Most large/good clubs are limited by gym space in how many players they can have tryout. Many of the better clubs have waitlists going for tryouts well before the tryout days. If not telling players to avoid tryouts was about maximizing bragging rights and/or revenue they would just add gym space or allow more players into their tryouts.[/quote]

Let's try again with the correct format. You did not change my mind on this. Coaches can speak in code to let the players know what their chances are, but they choose not to. They could say "last year a player with your skill level would have made our second team" with the caveat "we can't promise you would make our second team this year until we see who shows up at the tryouts." Or they could say "last year most players on our third team had more volleyball experience than you" with the caveat "while we don't know for sure, we expect the same this year." They don't do it because they want to be seen as supportive. They give some hope even to beginners who have no business trying out for those clubs. We would have appreciated this kind of language from the first club coach that we interacted with. I wish somebody called me totally clueless at the time and advised me to focus on Platform and MEVC instead of wasting time and money on Metro and MVSA tryouts. There was nothing glorious about trying out for MVSA - it was painful and embarrassing.[/quote]
Not trying to change your mind, just giving the info that changed ours. Its unfortunate that you had to go through that in what sounds like it was your first club year.  One of the hardest parts of tryouts is figuring out where to focus your time and energy. That problem gets better as you get more experience, but it never goes away completely.

Having gone through this for almost a decade now we've heard all types of variations on the communication ideas you suggested. The problem with those type of statements is that all of them start with the thought of "you could make a team", followed by a caveat of "but we aren't committing to that." That type of doublespeak is pretty hard for a young player to understand.  If they hear "could make a team" do they really process "we don't know for sure"? And good coaches do want to be supportive - even if they aren't interested in taking your DD on your team they still want to encourage their development in volleyball.

The cleanest language we've ever gotten from a coach prior to tryouts amounted to "You really improved over the last few sessions, but tryouts will still be challenging. Are you trying out other places as well?"  or "You're playing great, we've been watching you and we can't wait to see you at tryouts."  We still had to ask our DD to repeat what they said a couple of times to help her translate the message.[/quote]
You are correct: that was our first year of club. We learned in the meantime, but you are also correct that we are still having trouble calibrating. But now we are using a safe club instead of all dream clubs to reduce the stress. The language that you called the "cleanest" may still be misheard by both players and parents. The language that I suggested (comparing the player's skills with former players of either top, middle, or bottom team) could better manage expectations. Saying "last year you would have been borderline for our first team" could signal that the player would likely make the second team, but has some chance of making the first team. There must be a better way to tell a beginner that their chances of playing for top clubs are extremely limited and this is what I am trying to do here: manage expectation, even if I have to call people clueless. It is better to learn this on an anonymous forum than at tryouts. [/quote]

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