I don’t know about GA, not a knock, I just don’t know. But for ECNL, they should be trying to play up on a lower level ECNL team pre-ECNL. Let’s all the coaches get to know them before ECNL or at least practice with the team before IDs. That is the best way to stand out before IDs. At IDs, depends on whether the club is possession oriented, if they are, passing is key, dribbling when you have space. If not, tell your kid to dribble dribble dribble. But above all, for either system, shoot early, shoot often, goal scorers are what stand out. Unless your kid can’t shoot, then practice shooting before IDs, because no matter what coaches say, they are looking for difference makers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A few general things. Be assertive during scrimmages. When you are warming up make sure you are passing, juggling etc. They're watching you at all times. When you are subbed out during scrimmages make sure you are doing something like juggling etc.

My DD thought the scrimmages were like a practice where she should play her position and ended up getting few touches. She did not make her first two tryouts (with two different teams). After watching her I helped her understand that they are watching you to see if you are a part of the play or not, so be assertive. She made her third tryout (with the original team) and ended up on a higher-level team than her previous teammates who passed the initial tryout.

Someone necroed this tread, but your advice is spot on - I noticed this with my kid too... she played like it was a regular game, getting open, making passes, but not being overly assertive or trying to be part of most plays. She def did not do well.

At this age tryouts are all about being aggressive and getting on the ball. Go all out on defense even if it’s not your position. When you have the ball try push through and attack attack attack. If you lose the ball attack harder to get it back. Don’t worry about your position, go get the ball. Even if it’s on the other side of the field from where you are supposed to be. If you are on defense push forward and make runs. If you are forward run all the way back to chase someone down on defense. Basically, be a bad teammate and a ball hog. These are the players who stand out and get selected in tryouts. Tryout soccer is different than normal soccer.

Anonymous wrote:A few general things. Be assertive during scrimmages. When you are warming up make sure you are passing, juggling etc. They're watching you at all times. When you are subbed out during scrimmages make sure you are doing something like juggling etc.

My DD thought the scrimmages were like a practice where she should play her position and ended up getting few touches. She did not make her first two tryouts (with two different teams). After watching her I helped her understand that they are watching you to see if you are a part of the play or not, so be assertive. She made her third tryout (with the original team) and ended up on a higher-level team than her previous teammates who passed the initial tryout.

Someone necroed this tread, but your advice is spot on - I noticed this with my kid too... she played like it was a regular game, getting open, making passes, but not being overly assertive or trying to be part of most plays. She def did not do well.

Anonymous wrote:I know DS's very late to the game but there are a few tryouts left in the season and he wants to give it a go. What should he expect? He would be in U11.

Try to practice with the team, just email the club director. I think this time of the season is a very good time for teams to accommodate the request. Normal procedure around here.

A few general things. Be assertive during scrimmages. When you are warming up make sure you are passing, juggling etc. They're watching you at all times. When you are subbed out during scrimmages make sure you are doing something like juggling etc.

My DD thought the scrimmages were like a practice where she should play her position and ended up getting few touches. She did not make her first two tryouts (with two different teams). After watching her I helped her understand that they are watching you to see if you are a part of the play or not, so be assertive. She made her third tryout (with the original team) and ended up on a higher-level team than her previous teammates who passed the initial tryout.

Depends on the league. I prefer leagues that do ID sessions as this gets coaches a chance to see the kids. Many clubs reward the kids who don’t pass and play greedy. Try outs are kind of a joke as there are lots of politics as well as if you are new, issues with kids not passing to your kid and only their teammates. It’s not like a normal game, most kids are there to show off and not show that they are team players.

Anonymous wrote:I know DS's very late to the game but there are a few tryouts left in the season and he wants to give it a go. What should he expect? He would be in U11.

Get there 20 minutes early, get a number at the check-in tent. Bring a ball and some water. Tell him to start warming up wit the other kids. A coach will bring all the kids together. Then, they may all warm up together with some basic drills and dribbling and maybe some stretching. Then usually, kids are separated into smaller groups to scrimmage with 1 to 2 coaches watching each scrimmage. They let them self-organize and play for 10-15 minutes. Water break. Coaches then separate out the kids they already know they want and are known/ current players. They will go scrimmage separately. Then, usually there are 2 groups left. The Kids that need to be looked at upper quality and lower quality kids. They may move the better kids to 1 group and the lesser quality kids to the 2nd group. They may move a few kids back and fourth. At the end, the gather the kids up and take some final notes and tell everyone thanks for coming out. They may or may not take pictures of all kids.

You usually won't find out anything right after the 1st tryout. Go to as many tryouts as your can if you are new. They may or may not tell you you made a team or not anywhere from 24 hours to 2 weeks after the last tryout.

Coaches like to see players who are confident, arrive early, do their own warm up routine. The like to see kids who are vocal and work well with other good players. Tryouts can be overwhelming for players their 1st time. I have seen a few kids come off to the side crying because they feel alot of pressure and might not know how to do some of the warm up moves that all the current travel kids know how to do. Coaches are looking to not see if they will make a mistake, but rather how they react to that mistake. So, encourage your son and tell him to work hard and try his best!

Motor and Technique. A coach will always have a bias towards bigger players from my experience sometimes even if they literally play like they have two left feet (coaches love lefties) but after that smart coaches look for these two things.

Motor - effort, tenacity, fire, agression, mentality, competivness etc.... Motor is tough to teach so if you have a decent floor of skills and have motor you will make a lot of teams.

Technique - playing with both feet, passing + receiving with both feet, opening up on the correct side, passing combinations, passing to the correct foot, body positioning to receive ball correctly etc... Coaches can spot this in the drills before the scrimmages in a matter of seconds. Rondos before you think you're even being evaluated is another. The scrimmages are there to see what the kid's motor is and how far along their technical abilities are in action. Technique is easy to teach but has to happen before u-13. There always exceptions but before 11v11 you have to have a certain number of touches (think Gladwell's 10,000 hours) if you don;t get those touches its going to be hard to catch up when the fields becomes larger, and the game is more team centric.

So stop chasing W's u little parents and chase a coach who is uncompromising in their commitment to teaching your child technique. Cross your fingers for everything else cause its out of your control.

Anonymous wrote:I bunch of shitty, chaotic scrimmages where the spastic and overly-aggressive kids are selected. Parents usually tell their kids to never pass the ball.

No, the coaches tell the parents and kids never to pass the ball.

Anonymous wrote:I bunch of shitty, chaotic scrimmages where the spastic and overly-aggressive kids are selected. Parents usually tell their kids to never pass the ball.

And coaches with clipboards pretending to take notes. Easy to spot the low level field right away because they assign to someone that doesn’t matter.

Most spots are determined prior to tryouts.

I bunch of shitty, chaotic scrimmages where the spastic and overly-aggressive kids are selected. Parents usually tell their kids to never pass the ball.

It depends on where you go, at Arlington the kids seemed to mostly do small-sided scrimmages and moved around to various fields.

At PAC the kids just join the regular training session, typically they do footskills, drills, and end with a scrimmage. Those two clubs are my only experience with tryouts, my soon to be U11 is at PAC (if you have any questions about that club, I can try go answer them).

Warm-up, kids put in groups, sometimes according to last year's teams. Play 3 versus 3 or 4 versus 4, some players moved around to see how they fit in with other players.

Do your best, use all the skills you have, use foot skills and technique and see what happens. They mostly are just watching your DS play soccer for the session. No rocket science involved.

I know DS's very late to the game but there are a few tryouts left in the season and he wants to give it a go. What should he expect? He would be in U11.