One of the hardest things for our program to do is obviously the selection of 60 players out of the 400 that tried out last year. We let you try out for specific positions (Catcher, Pitcher, Outfield, Infield) or you can choose to tryout out at multiple positions. We also offer four seperate tryouts in four different locations where if you have a bad day you can come out and get another look.
Each time you come to a tryout you get a full evaluation form filled out by the coaches, if you come to more than one they get stapled together. At the end of the tryouts each form is gone over by all 15 or so coaches and put into a yes, no, or maybe pile. It only takes one coach of the 15 to say maybe to get into the maybe pile. Then we go over and over the maybe pile discussing with everyone until we get to our sixty. And man is it hard. Sometimes it comes down to positions.
We have former pro's on staff, current minor leaguers, former D1 through D3 players, current head coaches from legion, varsity baseball, through AAU and middle school.
I personally handle all the calls from the 340+ families of players that didn't make the roster. Keeping the player sheets with all the times, velocities, scores, etc really helps explain it fairly to anyone who calls. But the feedback I get the most is from someone who tried out for shortstop, didn't make it, and then says "well if I would have known that I would have tried out in the outfield."
We could change the format so that each player gets evaluated in the outfield and infield but then it would take time away from the overall tryout.
I personally feel at the age's we deal with (juniors and seniors mostly) that they should be trusted to pick their own position to tryout for. Does anyone disagree? I'm open to feedback.
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