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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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The problem is a lot of the best athletes on a team (well at least the right handed ones!) will play shortstop. Well if they all tried out for SS then you'd be passing up a lot of good athletes as you would only carry 4 to 8 Shortstops. Many of these kids might be better then most of the 2B or 3B that try out at those positions. I guess as long as you guys take that into consideration when selecting your teams then it isn't an issue. If not then ya, maybe you need to lump the infielders (excluding first baseman)all together for tryout purposes. If your #9 rated SS can rake and play a decent SS then maybe you'd be prudent to seeing if he'd move to 3rd or 2nd over a lesser hitter who just happened to tryout at second. Just my 2 cents.
Not the day of because it starts out as 15 seperate pages of notes and scores from all the coaches then I compile them. After tryouts many of the guys who didn't make it did call or email for details which I provided. That made it a lot easier when you have all the information right there in black and white. Still the hardest part of any sport though.
Different sport, but relevant - Herb Brooks got ripped by so called experts when he selected the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. He had a vision of what he wanted and many argued with his methods but few with his results. The bottom line is any program has a certain amount of discretion when selecting players. Just admit it. It's great having some form of objective evaluation and some kids will make the teams based on those numbers, just don't pretend that you sort the numbers highest to lowest and pick the top 4 at each position.
I don't see how that is relevant. You're talking about a coach picking grown men with scouting reports, video, college and high school stats and history, plus some tryouts to compete in one tournament.

I am talking about selecting boys from a series of tryouts being evaluated for selection in preperation for a season that could possibly lead to a tournament.

Not only that but hockey is a completely different animal, as is basketball and football.

There is certainly no exact science in any tryout, there's likely going to be some boarder line guys that could go either way and it will be a judgement or discretion call. But the top guys will stand out.
The point/relevance is that there is subjectivity in selecting a roster regardless of the sport or level. Brook's admitted himself that he cut more talented players in favor of overall team chemistry. I'm not comparing your process to Brook's and I'm not ragging on your process, I'm just asking that you acknowledge the existence of subjectivity and not pretend that it's above being second guessed. Remember, this post was started as a result of second guessing.
Having dealt with tryouts at a much lower level I know that there is an amount of "well I know that player can do better than he did today" that can factor into anyone's evaluation. You may really like a player and because you know him and/or his character you rate him higher; whereas, I may not know or like that same player as much and rate what I saw. Like was pointed out in the other topic w/ Memorial - you know the players that were cut based on seeing them over 2 years and 80+ games. If the (new?) Memorial coach doesn't know the players and they have a bad tryout, then his point of reference is the 3-5 days of evaluation where the primary focus is picking a Varsity roster. Those JV and Freshman players may not get the same look - I don't know. It's kind of tough to compare. One of my kids learned a valuable lesson one year in a basketball tryout about making yourself stick out and not take anything for granted. You may think you're better than someone else, but if that player did something to stand out to the coach who was trying to fill out his roster, then he'll make the team and you're cut. On any given roster there's 'outstanding', 'above average', and 'specialty' talent and 100% of those cut think they're better than anyone but the outstanding players.

All that said being able to take "statistical" data to help make comparisons as well as "emotional" data in order to evaluate any given player against his peers does seem to be a very reasonable methodology for how the GSBA fall teams were selected. Communicating all that to the parent/player is extraordinary. If people don't like the process, they are free to start their own league and face the same issues... Over time I would guess you can develop a system where player ratings based on some percentage of each set of data can rate the players 1...n. Does it exclude players - sure, but there's only so many spots available. Could a player be included that perhaps doesn't deserve it - not likely - mainly because there's too many factors. Of course there's always the axioms "it's not what you know, but who you know" and "be careful of what bridges you burn because some day you many need to cross one of those bridges"....

This is going to be very entertaining discussion (I hope)!
We also make sure the same coaches are evaluating the same areas at all four tryouts. So for example we might have Nick Jaskolka and Scott Hopps scoring hitters, they will do hitters for all four tryouts so if they give someone a 5 its the same 5 each week. Then Dylan Mullin and Kike Calero on infielders doing scoring, for all four tryouts. So when you compare ratings from one day to the next you can try to keep the same criteria. My 1-5 scale might be different from someone else's but if I'm doing all the ratings a 3 should be a 3. Its a bit easier for pitchers since we have exact numbers like velocity, pitch charts, percentage of strikes, etc.
I have seen the GSBA Showcase league provide an unbelievable amount of exposure, coaching, encouragment and basic guidance to numerous players from all over the state.

In fact, they go way above and beyond anything you would expect in regards to getting their players exposed to the right colleges.

I do know some parents that were upset that their son was not selected, but I think in the end these guys get it right most of the time.

So... I highly encourage any parent to get their ballplayer "ready" for the tryouts next year because the word is getting out - this is a very valuable opportunity for the 60 kids selected.
There were right around 400 tryout charts filled out for the 2009 season. So if Joe Smith came to tryout 1 and 4 he would have two charts. This number should go up again for 2010 as it was nearly double that of 2008 and we have added Franklin Pierce University as a tryout location that should bring in more players from Western NH such as Keene etc. UConn has also committed to host this season which might bring more interest also.

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