Setting up HS tryouts

Looking for some ideas on the best way to design our HS softball tryouts at the end of the month.

We're only going to have a Varsity team. Right now, 21 girls signed up for tryouts, but my experience with last year tells me a few of them will never show up or will come once and never again. Those may be canceled out by some late signups. I expect to have to cut a few since we aren't going to keep more than 15. Around half the girls have never played any kind of organized ball before. This is a first-year Varsity program, so keep that in mind. I don't think we even have any travel ball players (maybe 1 or 2, but they might just do a rec league).

At the tryouts, the junior high coaches are going to join us to help evaluate, so there will be 5 coaches there to run stations/evaluate. I consider myself lucky to have this much help.

Also, we're in Chicago, so we will almost certainly be inside a small gym.

I've seen a lot about splitting them up and rotating stations. I'll probably have to do a decent amount of demonstration for the inexperienced girls.

So should I have a single coach at each station to evaluate? Should coaches rotate to evaluate different skills? We're doing two days of tryouts, so should we do everything both days (Day 2 being something of a second chance) or some skills on Day 1 and others on Day 2?

I know tryouts tend to have a little more standing around than a good practice, but I want to be as efficient as possible. Any help is appreciated, as always.

As much as possible, those helping you pick should have no connection to any of the players or their parents. If you have biases in favor of or against any of the players or their parent, let the others helping you pick decide on those.

Sounds impossible. But do your best to keep politics out of it.

Why are you preset on only carrying 15? If you have 16 or more that look like they can play without getting killed, just keep them. You may just find a diamond or two in the rough.

I was thinking keep 18 and scrimmage a lot!

You're building a program. Take as many as possible. If its 15,16,17 Experience for the next year with as many as possible.

Keep them all and schedule a few jV games as well. A few of the players who are of intermediate talent can crossover. If there are already MS teams in place, then having a jV squad this year will help with future growth, hopefully with bigger and better waves coming in each year.

Doug Romrell said:

As much as possible, those helping you pick should have no connection to any of the players or their parents. If you have biases in favor of or against any of the players or their parent, let the others helping you pick decide on those.

Sounds impossible. But do your best to keep politics out of it.

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The main connection some of the coaches will have is having the kids in class since they're teachers. I'm non-faculty, but I do know about half of them from last year (and some of the others have come to open field, so I've met them but don't really know them). I agree with keeping the politics out of it though, and I suspect that will be more of an issue in future years. Nobody (players, parents, administration, etc.) really knows what's even going on at this point.

For the others: We can keep more than 15, but that's all we're gonna fit in the school van and even that will be a tight squeeze. The school isn't going to pay for a bus for all the games. Also, if we get 19 or 20 trying out, I'm not going to only cut 1 or 2, and there's no way I'm going to be able to keep that many. Still, 15 is not an absolute. I'll try to figure something out if it looks like more really should be out there.

We're just not prepared to have a JV team this year. Last year we were a JV team (only 9th/10th last year; we have 11th this year and 12th next year), and we struggled to get 9 to play so I never thought we'd have as much interest as we seem to have. We didn't plan/budget for coaches, equipment, etc. to do another team, but it looks like we're headed in that direction for next year. I've developed a connection with a local rec league, and I do intend to suggest those who don't make it sign up for that league and try out again next year.

I would be open to having something of a "practice squad" of girls who are the least developed, but I'm not sure that's something I can sell to them. But I'd never turn a girl away if she said she just wanted to work out with the team.

If some/most are very inexperienced, I would argue that it will be hard to tell who ends up the best as the season progresses. I agree with those who are suggesting keeping more than 15. You'd have to make it clear that you'll only have a subset of the group as your varsity squad. Some will be building their skills for next year's varsity (possibly also a JV).

vdubya said:

Keep them all and schedule a few jV games as well. A few of the players who are of intermediate talent can crossover. If there are already MS teams in place, then having a jV squad this year will help with future growth, hopefully with bigger and better waves coming in each year.

Click to expand...

A little Illinois softball history:

Years ago in Illinois, softball had two divisions based on school size. The State Tournament had 8 teams in the finals of each division. The City of Chicago would have their own postseason playoff. The winner received an automatic berth into the large school tournament. For the team playing the city champ in the first round of the tournament, it was essentially a bye for them. The best HS team in Chicago would struggle to just compete with the average HS teams from the suburbs and the state, let alone, compete with the best teams in the state. The IHSA restructured softball into 4 divisions and eliminated the automatic berth for the city schools. They must now compete with all the other schools in the post season playoffs. Since that started no Chicago team has made it down state. Often, several will forfeit their post season games by not showing up. The majority of them who do play never make it out of the first round of playoffs unless it's against all city teams.

There are very few opportunities for the city kids to learn the game of fastpitch softball correctly at the rec league level. There are no real feeder programs in the city for softball. City girls who excel at softball are usually playing for travel teams in the suburbs. Those same girls end up attending and playing for private high schools in the city. One of them has become a powerhouse at the 4A level in the state. Also, there are spring teams for HS players who choose not to play for their HS teams. They play against themselves and in neighboring states who have different HS seasons. The deck is stacked against the city schools for softball, and I don't see it changing any time soon.

Coach JD faces an eternal uphill battle with a high school softball team in the city of Chicago. The Chicago Public School system is a financial mess. The State of Illinois is even worse when it comes to funding education. Also, Coach JD stated the school did not budget for a second team and the school would not pay for a regular school bus. I wish coach JD the best of luck in his efforts and hope he helps keep some girls headed in the right direction in life.

Don't mean to sound like such a pessimist. But it is, what it is.

I didn't know all the history there, but I can concur with the current landscape. I'm a little bit shocked at how little softball there is in the city. It seems baseball isn't as represented as it should be, either, but softball may as well be cricket or curling. I have a problem with thinking too big at times, but I'd like to change that.

The bright side of this situation is that I fully expect to be able to compete with other public schools before too long because of the situation Sparky Guy described, and our neighborhood has a rec league program that I'm learning about (our junior high team is actually playing in that rec league since there are *zero* elementary schools in Chicago with softball teams, and in case I wasn't clear, our school starts at K and goes through HS).

I'm lucky in that the school wants sports to thrive, but unlucky because nobody knows what they're doing. The bright side to that is they leave me to my own devices at this point since I'm the only one who has even read the IHSA handbook. Still, I have limitations others don't have, so quite often I get great advice here, but I know I have to settle for "good enough." Better than nothing at all though, I guess.

Coach JD - Kudos to you for choosing to work with inner-city kids. This is certainly an undersupported demographic in our sport in many ways, although I know several MLB RBI programs that do an excellent job.

One thought - could you keep them all but only dress 15 for away games? Kind of like a college football team will dress 100 or more for home games but only travel with 45. Maybe have a rotation built for the 14th and 15th roster spot so each girl gets to travel at least once a season?