Tryout Season (aka Silly Season)

Awesome Sauce Malone said:

Apologies. I was making some assumptions in your post based on stuff Im reading from families locally. Thats my bad.

It is a good deal the coach was upfront and thats all we can ask. And it sounds like the coach helped land a good spot for her and that is very commendable




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Sorry if I misrepresented it. coach spent about an hour the other night on phone with DD and DW, there were some tears on both end of phone, obviously was a very hard decision for coach, but they were very upfront and honest, all you can really ask for. my wife and I discussed, and even indicated to coach, we did not agree with her assessment necessarily of where DD fit in in team/depth chart, but we were not going to try and convince her, or argue about PT. HC understood completely.

I think it will all work out. she will miss her coach and teammates, but she will still do some training with old coach in the winter probably. new HC seems very committed to girls playing 2 or 3 positions in field, and says they are limiting roster to 10. hopefully it does play out this way.

Tryout season is over here now school has been back a week and all the good teams are done... According to our local 'looking for player site and Facebook group' the remaining teams just need 53 pitchers and 25 catchers between them to complete their teams.

Good luck with that.



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marriard said:

Tryout season is over here now school has been back a week and all the good teams are done... According to our local 'looking for player site and Facebook group' the remaining teams just need 53 pitchers and 25 catchers between them to complete their teams.

Good luck with that.



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Same Except my daughters team has 2.5 catchers and 1.5 pitchers.

u
pdate, our new team is finalized, and the roster is set at 10, so we are off to good start as far as that is concerned. at parents meeting while girls were warming up, he said they only they way they would look to add players is if someone gets hurt. Of course I bet a decent pitcher looking for a team would change that joking aside, looking like a good fit. We know a lot more now, and so does DD.

the one coach I cancelled private workout with was very understanding, said most important thing is that she is playing. I did not hear back from the other coach (who did not want a private workout in lieu of their second tryout, he offered her a spot based on first tryout) when I emailed him. he might not like me very much, last year DD was also going to do his tryout, but we had to make a decision prior to that for the team she just finished with.

side note, DD did something i really liked at practice. during their jog, one of the girls fell back and started to walk, DD fell back to be stay with her so she would not be by herself, and they had just met arriving at practice (we pretty much know nobody on the team, I did coach the HC's older daughter in teeball about 7 years ago, we stumbled upon this team by chance though).

btw, still almost another three weeks her to first day of school, of course my procrastinators still have most of the summer projects to do.

marriard said:

Tryout season is over here now school has been back a week and all the good teams are done... According to our local 'looking for player site and Facebook group' the remaining teams just need 53 pitchers and 25 catchers between them to complete their teams.

Good luck with that.



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Half of those teams also need a SS too haha

OP here. We FINALLY received the offer we wanted today. Today is August 21 and she has been doing tryouts since the beginning of July. I am frankly exhausted and need a long nap. I am sincerely hoping that this is a team we can stay with, as circumstances beyond our control have forced us back onto the tryout circuit now for the third year in a row.

Observations from a tired and cynical mother whose 2004 SUV is probably going to fall apart any minute now to be found below. Forgive the cynicism; that's where I'm at right now.

1. Don't believe a dang word you hear from any coach until you have an offer in hand. NOT ONE WORD! Don't believe veiled statements ("I think we'll be talking again soon, wink-wink, nudge-nudge") or flattery ("your DD is such an awesome hitter/pitcher/SS/whatever and would be a real asset to our team") or any other car salesman BS. DO NOT DOUBT ME ON THIS.

2. See #1.

3. Unless your kid is a super stud who has just moved into town and no one knows her, don't bother with the big organizational tryouts. Half the time, the coaches are too busy shooting the breeze with each other and chatting up the girls who are already on their team (why are they there anyway?) to take any notice of what your DD is doing.

4. When you go to a smaller tryout and the coach says he likes what he saw, but would like to see her at the org tryout as well, cross them off your list. Do not waste your time. He's looking for a unicorn and will string you along and then let you down weeks later and, by then, spots on other teams will be full.

5. When the coach says, "I'll be in touch," don't believe him. He won't. It is rare indeed for a coach to contact people on the promised time table (if a time table is even promised). The majority of them fall into a Coach's Black Hole somewhere and then you are forced to wonder whether no call means you're out of the running, whether maybe he's made an offer to another player in your DD's primary position and is waiting to hear back from her, or maybe he's been eaten by a shark. No telling.

OK, I'm being facetious here, but I will reiterate my assertion that tryouts suck. I recognize they suck for coaches too. Just be persistent and consider options as they come to you, even if they weren't on your initial list.

Here's to a great year for all our DD's!

ETA: I thought of two more:

6. Before you accept an offer, make sure you know who the pitchers are! Not just how many, but who they are. Are they notorious team-hoppers? Are they girls drafted into pitching with little to no pitching experience? We've had one team fall apart because pitchers left mid-season and one where the pitchers were still not ready for prime time, which made for a pretty miserable season.

7. Everyone's favorite: Don't accept an offer where your DD plays the same position as the HC's DD. Just don't.

Tryout season has pretty much wrapped up around here as well. DD decided that she wanted to stay on the same team again this year. However we had 2 girls from last years team that were not offered spots to come back, and 2 more girls that decided to move on to other teams. This put us at 6 players before tryouts started. 4 new girls were offered spots from tryouts and accepted. In the last week or so 2 of them backed out for whatever reason leaving us with 8. Grrrr. This time of year most rosters are already set and players committed, so who knows how this is going to end up.

A few tips now that tryouts are over.

You paid but really you're only committed for fall.... Well that may seem harsh but if the fall season doesn't go well and you are seeing red flags that is the time to bail or at least discuss your concerns with the coaches. Being on both sides of the equation I can tell you that most good coaches would rather you bail after fall as opposed to being unhappy all winter and in the spring.

I hear a lot of "teams already have kids signed before tryouts"...
During the spring and summer if you are not planning to stay with your current team you should reach out (confidently) to a coach who you are interested in playing for. This will give her a chance to put your DD in the mix and keep and eye on her. Come seasons end there will be no need to tryout.. problem solved.

Of course coaches keep kids in holding patterns if they think they can get better talent.. if your kid is a stud you demand that the coach bringson top talent. As a parent there is nothing wrong with giving a coach a time frame that you need a decision by. When DD was younger I would tell a coach before the tryout "DD will be coming to just this one tryout, I hope you can make a decision based on what you see here today, if not we understand".

I heard a coach last week say to someone "we kept Sally waiting because we wanted to see if she really wanted us". That's BS in my opinion. With the number of travel teams today there is many places for our kids to play.. being a bit pushy about an answer is more than fair.

BT3100 said:

I hear a lot of "teams already have kids signed before tryouts"...
During the spring and summer if you are not planning to stay with your current team you should reach out (confidently) to a coach who you are interested in playing for. This will give her a chance to put your DD in the mix and keep and eye on her. Come seasons end there will be no need to tryout.

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I totally agree with this. DD’s team which she played for during the summer had mostly 2018 players, so we kind of knew when we joined the team that we’d have to keep our options open come fall season. So, during HS season she reached out to a coach who’s program we highly respected and he came to see her play at a HS game. That was her “tryout,” so luckily we didn’t have to go through the scramble come August.

That and guest-playing are how we found her new team.

mudrunner said:

Tryout season has pretty much wrapped up around here as well. DD decided that she wanted to stay on the same team again this year. However we had 2 girls from last years team that were not offered spots to come back, and 2 more girls that decided to move on to other teams. This put us at 6 players before tryouts started. 4 new girls were offered spots from tryouts and accepted. In the last week or so 2 of them backed out for whatever reason leaving us with 8. Grrrr. This time of year most rosters are already set and players committed, so who knows how this is going to end up.

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Not here. We actually got our team set with one regular tryout then adding one more from org tryouts, and I felt VERY VERY lucky. From our local message board anyway, there are a lot of teams still looking.