It's tryout time for travel basketball.
We run tryouts by doing some drills, lots of 3v3 and some 5v5. We move players around a lot, trying to get the players competing for spots to play against each other as much as possible. We have two nights, 90 minutes each, in a gym with one big court that can be split into two smaller full courts and a back court that is smaller too - giving us 3 smaller courts, decent length, but narrow, just wide enough to fit the HS three point line with a half step to the sidelines. Our 8th grade boys group is the largest 35-40 boys. We pick two teams of 10.
One of the things we haven't done is to let players know after the first night that they don't need to come back because they're not going to be selected for a team (cut). While this would be brutal, it would also let us spend more time focusing on player competing for spot on teams. Now, we keep those kids that we know are going to be cut for the second night and mostly have them play on the back court. We do sometimes get complaints about this from parents, but with 35 kids, it's pretty easy to pick the weakest 7-8 players in very little time.
We use volunteers for evaluators - coaches from previous years, HS Freshman coach, guys who live in town and coach at other schools and guys with basketball experience. We let coaches from the previous year come to the second night, they don't get to pick teams, but they have some input, if a player isn't showing something or plays better in a structured setting etc. If evaluators have questions about a kid, that sort of thing.
The most difficult things to try to get evaluators to do:
We run tryouts by doing some drills, lots of 3v3 and some 5v5. We move players around a lot, trying to get the players competing for spots to play against each other as much as possible. We have two nights, 90 minutes each, in a gym with one big court that can be split into two smaller full courts and a back court that is smaller too - giving us 3 smaller courts, decent length, but narrow, just wide enough to fit the HS three point line with a half step to the sidelines. Our 8th grade boys group is the largest 35-40 boys. We pick two teams of 10.
One of the things we haven't done is to let players know after the first night that they don't need to come back because they're not going to be selected for a team (cut). While this would be brutal, it would also let us spend more time focusing on player competing for spot on teams. Now, we keep those kids that we know are going to be cut for the second night and mostly have them play on the back court. We do sometimes get complaints about this from parents, but with 35 kids, it's pretty easy to pick the weakest 7-8 players in very little time.
We use volunteers for evaluators - coaches from previous years, HS Freshman coach, guys who live in town and coach at other schools and guys with basketball experience. We let coaches from the previous year come to the second night, they don't get to pick teams, but they have some input, if a player isn't showing something or plays better in a structured setting etc. If evaluators have questions about a kid, that sort of thing.
The most difficult things to try to get evaluators to do:
- putting the best team together rather than the 10 "best players"
- not picking the 10 most assertive/aggressive kids, because they shoot the most and have the ball the most
- realizing that it is rare for the really small players to help a team much and pretty much impossible if there are 2-3 of them on a team
- picking the best mid-sized players - not ball handlers, not big guys, unless these are really good shooters, they usually don't get noticed
- especially at the younger ages, realizing the importance of size and athleticism (and what athleticism is) over skills. Every kid should improve their skills a ton through our practices, athleticism improves too but not as much and you can't coach height