With a 27% Chance of making this team would you still tryout?

What I heard today is absolutely crazy! I called one of the young athletes that I work with to find out how he felt he did at his football tryouts today. This young man is thirteen years old and in the eight grade.

This is the first year the school will have a full team comprised of both seventh and eight graders as the school is now only going into it's second year.

One hundred and forty five young men came out for the three day tryout! Holy cow! And of that total, the coach will only keep forty players on the team. That works out to about a 27% chance that each player has of making the team.

Now I can take a number of view points from this point on in this post including:

1. What does a young player have to do in order to get an edge going into the tryouts?


2. How does a middle school coach rule out that many players trying out for the team?


3. What happens to all of those who do not make the team? Are there other sports for them to participate and stay active in for the fall? Probably not.


4. Even for those players that do make the team, there will be at least a handful who will most likely never even see the field.

As I don't want to write a book here, below are a few brief thoughts on each:

1. FOCUS on becoming a good athlete. In other words, in the few weeks leading up to tryouts that we had together, the goal was to not try and make him the strongest or the fastest player on the field. Why?
   
   At this point in his development there is no way for that to happen anyway. Therefore, our goals were to establish a foundational base of bodyweight strength combined with building habits that promote fundamental movement skills. What is the result?
   
   Well now a player who is a bit faster but definitely stronger, more stable, more flexible, and can play low without compromising optimal body position in order to produce power! Most of all, taking this approach has helped to instill some self-confidence which at this level can be the deciding factor often times of personal success.
   


2. Not sure I have an answer here. Over the first two days the tryouts consisted of running long distance, performing a few sets of pushups, suicide sprints, and completing an agility drill for time. Maybe not the best format but it is solid and can serve more to disqualify players than the other way around. ( can be a good thing!)
   


3. Again not sure here either. Yes many of these kids could play multiple sports. However, for those that do not make the team they will most likely not have the sport specific skills in other sports during the same season. (Don't confuse this with playing football, basketball, and then track. These are all different seasons of play).
   


4. Yes it will hopefully be a positive experience for those players who make the team but never see the field. Although I would doubt it as the fun part is all about playing the game!

The main take home point here is yet again the concern for youth sports here in the United States. We definitely have the worlds largest potential talent pool but we have no system in place to help develop these kids! What's worse, our present system dictates for us coaches that we turn away late blooming talent that could one day turn out to be our countries best.

Good luck to all of those players trying out this week. Just making the team means that you beat some incredible odds! Especially in situations like the one I mentioned here.