Here’s a question that came in via email that I think hits home for a lot of folks. It’s from someone at a juniors club, but the core idea is equally applicable to school coaches and anyone else who does selection via tryout.
In our constant desire to grow the game and get kids to love our sport, we come to the realization that there are often not enough coaches and not enough venues to facilitate more teams or more competition for juniors. In our club situation we have the need to conduct tryouts and unfortunately cut players due to these limitations. This leads to kids, interested in participating, without a place to train or compete who then look back at any given club and blame them for not taking their son or daughter or not offering an opportunity for their child.
Our answer is always, “not enough coaches” and “not enough space” but the reality is that their kid simply wasn’t good enough to make the cut.
In the college recruiting world, I think it’s easier to turn a kid down by saying that you’re “done recruiting for that class” or “we don’t need another OH or libero.” Plus… there are hundreds of colleges out there still looking to fill roster spots. In junior volleyball there may only be one or two clubs available to some kids.
Knowing that club directors can get hundreds of emails requesting tryout process answers… What’s your opinion on how to best respond to players and/or parents who think their kid should have “made the team?” I’d love the parents to read between the lines and understand all the wink, wink, nudge, nudge articles about how to console your child after getting cut… but should we be flat out telling them that their son or daughter IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH to make it?
I posted a couple of times previously on this communication process (here and here). Both more ponder the question, though. Neither really provides a true answer. Let me see if I can do more here.
Coaches and facilities availability
Let me first address the major two constraints mentioned in the email – limited facilities and lack of coaches. The first one is particularly hard to do a lot about. Even clubs with their own facilities have limits. In theory they can schedule things like practice any time they want. In reality, though, they can only do so when the players are available. That means after school and on weekends. And, of course, adding court capacity is no easy thing. Heck, even keeping hold of the access to what you have can be a challenge, as we saw during and since the pandemic. A lot of clubs had to halt operations because they had nowhere they could practice.
Coaching availability is a different situation. Clubs can and should consistently work on identifying, recruiting, and training coaches. This is really the only way to keep a sufficient cadre for their needs. That’s more of an ongoing thing, however. The immediate reality come tryouts for any given season is they only have a fixed number of coaches. It’s a clear and obvious limiting factor.
Can you do more with what you have?
The above being said, before getting on to handing the inevitable cuts, lets give some thought to whether there are ways you can accommodate more players. That basically means looking at whether you can be more efficient with the court time you have and whether coaches can do more.
From the facilities side of things, can you overlap? A lot of club teams carry fewer than 12 players, so no real 6v6 in practice without coaches or others playing in. What if on certain days or at certain times two teams of similar level share a court so they can do 6v6 work? That would free up a court for another group. Or what if you have positional training days for the whole club? That might free up some court space and/or it could provide players not selected to a team the opportunity to still get training during those sessions.
On the coaching side of things, could you double up? Some clubs have coaches work with multiple teams (e.g. a 17-1 and a 14-3). Obviously, there are scheduling considerations with that. The teams would have to practice at different times and have non-conflicting competition schedules. This tends to be easier to manage when you have assistant coaches who can fill in the occasional gap.
What about alternative programs?
Sticking a little longer with the theme of whether there are ways we can keep more players in the program, what else can we do? I mentioned the positional sessions above, which are kind of like clinics. Other kinds of clinics and camps are obvious options. What about an in-house program?
Clearly, something like that would require court space to run. If you have that, though, this is an option to expand the use of your coaches and/or to use coaches who can’t commit to the travel required for club tournaments.
Some things worth thinking about to increase the number of players you can keep.
Laying the groundwork for cuts
No matter how much we do to expand the number of players we can include in our programs, though, at some point decisions have to get made as to players making teams or not. This includes decisions like whether someone is on the 1st team or the 2nd. To prepare the players and their parents for that, we need to lay some groundwork. There’s nothing we can do to stop people being disappointed about the decisions we make. We can, though, cut down some of the blow-back we get.
That starts with being very clear with everyone upfront. Let them know the constraints you’re operating under. Explain the details of what you will be selecting for and the process involved. You may not be able to be specific in all areas, but give them what you can. Make the process as objective as you can possibly make it. Ultimately, it behooves you to set things up so it is as clear as can be why one player was selected while another was not.
I’m not going to tell you how to do that here. I can’t. Every organization is different. The one thing I will say is that you want to make sure your selection process follows your outlined club philosophy. Conflicts and contradictions between the two will cause problems.
Communicating decisions
Now for the hard part. Being honest, forthright, and upfront about the process, limitations, etc. at the outset will mitigate some of the push-back we get from players and/or parents, but it won’t eliminate it entirely. Team selection is an emotional thing and we all know that some folks are a bit delusional about the reality of their child’s level of play.
A big challenge is numbers. Ideally, we are able to have conversations with all the players who don’t make it. Unfortunately, in a lot of situations that’s just not a realistic option. No matter what, though,, we need to share some key information with them in one way or another.
