Team Tryouts

For those leagues that require tryouts prior to participating, this blog is directed towards you. So many coaches only have winning on their mind and are focused on doing so by any and all means necessary. I want to remind you all that knowing how to lose is equally as important!

With football season right around the corner, many issues start to come about for the upcoming season. One thing that is on everyone's minds is tryout week. Today in sports you often see teams that are clearly superior to others at that age group. Tryout week is very important in determining how the rest of the season will go. It is very important during this week to find a system on rating players, and being able to split players up evenly.

One way to conduct tryouts and come out with equally talented teams is to use a player ranking system. Every player has a core skill set. Judge each player on a 1 to 5 scale on how well they can perform each skill. You want to look at a wide range of skills such as speed, tackling, throwing, and blocking. At the end of tryouts take the average of all of the players skills. In order to spread even out the talent within a certain age level, create a rating scale for the players.

What this means is take the overall 5 skill players and place them evenly throughout the league, then place the 4's evenly and so on till every player is placed. This almost guarantees a league with each team being equal. With equal teams players can only get better and will make for a more competitive fall.

The only other way is to just take the players blindly or at random and coach them up. Remember to treat all players equal and not just center your attention around your "super athletes".