Tryouts vs recruitment

[YOCOACH]

My DD is a '99er. She's 5'9" tall and 150lbs of solid muscle. She has a great glove and arm and an even better stick. She's played in a slowpitch league for the last six years. Last year, she had 11 HRs, the shortest dropping at approximately 225ft. A slowpitch swing is nothing more than a combination of bat speed and raw power to get good ball flight and distance. I started her with a fatpitch hitting instructor and he was so impressed, he has her working out with his high school team which is one of the tops in our area. I'm not trying to seem like I'm bragging, I'm telling you this for a reason. Because no one in our area knows her outside of slowpitch, getting a TB team to even look at her has been like pulling teeth. I have been completely unsuccessful so far. Both her pitching coach (who's daughter is the star pitcher on the USA Jr. Olympic team) and her batting coach have said that she has the potential with a little bit of work to be the best player to ever come out of our area. So my answer to your question is this. You hold tryouts to find unheard of potentially great players that otherwise might end up playing against you as opposed to with you.

 

[oldcop]

You can watch a kid throw and catch for five minutes and tell if they can play but do they have the heart, that something you cant tell at one try-out. I like to know a little about each player and their parents before I make a decision . We usually have 3 try-outs before the team is picked.

 

[kjmpa]

We spent the younger years in Little League. DD didn't play for a year at 12 - returned to the game at school where it became her passion (not mine), found an ASA rec league, went to college camps/clinics, tried out for 5 16u TB teams and didn't make one - most looking for 1-2 players. That tryout month was the one of the best things that she went through developing into a young woman of character. You guys are mostly talking about it from the coach perspective. Tryouts are a gift we can give our DDs - if they don't perform there, maybe they aren't as committed as you think, lessons learned on perseverance, how to communicate with adults, interacting with others, team chemistry - a long list of character building and life lessons for a parent to "coach" their daughter through. Same opportunities for the daughters of the coaches-how to welcome in new people, learn to think about the team and not themselves and their BFFs.

Our faith was stretched but DD found a place that next spring and has moved up to 18U, after another tryout... She has worked hard, and is learning that playing for a team starts with an interview process. You don't just get offers in life - you have to do the work to make that happen. Taking these lessons to the college process - grades, SATs, etc - and if she's meant to play while there - she's doing her best to become recruitable - but she knows it's a lot harder to get in somewhere without an offer, and that the world won't end if she doesn't. Because, she learned how to perform under the pressure of a tryout.