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Reply to "HS tryouts - thoughts?"

@cabbagedad posted:

As a former HS coach, one of the most difficult things to deal with was how to handle tryouts when there were kids playing other sports and unable to join until sometimes 3, 4, 5 weeks after the start of practices and sometimes right around or even a bit after season games start.

Adding to the challenge for our school anyway, was having finite limitations with roster numbers based on things like how many would fit in "x" number of travel vans and how many uni's were available.

For a few years, I held a formal tryout/assessment date where I would assemble a panel of coaches and other baseball people I trusted and we scored players on hitting, running, throwing, fielding, athleticism, etc.  But with multi-sport players coming on at various later points, we eventually scrapped that.  We staged cuts in a few phases, trying to balance giving a fair shot with not keeping a kid hanging on for weeks and then cut.  We usually had a decent idea of which kids would be coming out from other sports which helped.

In the end, it's not really that difficult to quickly assess a player's skill set and attitude.  What is difficult is to provide the perception of fairness when every parent rightfully sees the very best in their own kids.

THank you for sharing that perspective.   I have always said that being a high school baseball coach would be the second most difficult jobs out there with respect to dealing with players, administration issues, families etc...   With the most difficult being a high school umpire.   I always try to remind parents of my son's teammates that if the coach and umpire weren't willing to show up today, then we wouldn't have an opportunity to see our son's play baseball. 

You bring up an interesting point, and that is how to navigate duel sports athletes.   With baseball overlapping other sports like Basketball and Soccer I can see the challenge that a high school coach has to deal with as far as determining a roster, and playing time when some players may not join the team until a month into the start of the season. 

There is a Book by Jeff Passon called "The Arm" in which he takes a deep dive into the modern opinions on pitching arm injuries.  While he admits that there are many factors involved, overuse seems to be one of the biggest factors.  In the book, he has information from James Andrews who is one of the more popular sports surgeons in the US.   Andrews uses a phrase, "the specialization of youth sports" as one of the biggest contributors to the rise in sports related injuries.  Most kids pick one sport now, and concentrate solely on that sport.  He presents his data suggesting that there are far more arm injuries in baseball then just two years ago.  Far more ACL injuries and stress fractures in basketball than two decades ago, and significantly more shoulder and back injuries in young football players than just two decades ago.   He suggest that this "Specialization of youth sports" is contributing to this. 

So, back in the 80's and 90's the kid that was the star pitcher on the high school baseball team was also a forward on the basketball team, and a TE on the Football team.   This is getting less and less prevalent in high school sports.  Baseball players now tend to just play baseball, and are often discouraged from playing other sports.  The same is true for basketball players that are discouraged from playing football etc...

Of course the parents are in the difficult position of realizing that, "if your son isn't working on his game year round, then you can rest assured that his competition is..."     

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