A twelve-year-old who has trained with your program for eleven months checks in at tryouts, takes his place in the warm-up line, and spends the next two hours wondering whether the coaches who saw him every week since last fall are about to replace him. His parents spent the drive over asking the same question. Your staff, meanwhile, decided months ago that they want him back.
The Tryout Most Programs Are Actually Running
Ask a director what tryouts are for and the answer is evaluation: find the best players, place them well, keep the roster honest. The field itself tells a different story. Ricky Reyes, who directs CLA Lacrosse across the Carolinas, puts his number at roughly "80% of the same kids" every year. He's also candid about the bias every director carries into that field: the kids a staff has coached for a year are known quantities, and the staff is hoping they show up and play well.
The result is an event designed for the 20% and experienced by the 80%. Returning families go through what Ricky calls "unnecessary stress," and some directors admit, as he does when talking with peers, that "sometimes we do it just out of protocol." Whether your tryouts happened this summer, are coming up this winter, or are being planned now for next season, fall is a good time to look at what the event is doing for the families who already belong to you.
The Two-Track Tryout
The two-track tryout separates the decision about returning athletes from the evaluation of new ones, and then runs one event that serves both. It has four parts.
1: Invite Returners Before the Event
Ricky sees a stronger message in telling a returning athlete directly that the program wants him back, while still holding open evaluations for kids outside the club. His version of that message is warm and specific: "we want you to continue to be a part of the program. You've been a pleasure to work with." A returner who receives it shows up to the event already knowing where he stands, which turns a high-stakes audition into a chance to compete for a spot on a particular team.
The invitation commits you to a program spot rather than a specific team. Placement between your top and second teams can still be decided on the field, and the family hears that up front.
2: Run It Like a Practice, Over Two Days
CLA's tryouts are free, open to the public, and built to look like a normal training session with more competition added: warm-up, stick work, concept training, then even and uneven full-field scrimmages. Ricky calls it "a little glimpse into what our training is like." The early, routine parts tell his staff a lot about kids they don't know, from whether an athlete actually warms up to whether he's calling for the ball during stick work.
He also refuses to run a single day: "I think it's hard from an evaluation standpoint to just have one tryout day." Day one sorts athletes into rough groups, and day two starts the same way before moving bubble kids into the group where staff think they'll land to see how they perform there. A kid who had a strong first day and a kid who had a rough one both get a second look.
3: Let Parents Watch
Many programs keep parents away from evaluations, and the reasons are reasonable: distraction, sideline coaching, families comparing kids. CLA has run it both ways, and Ricky reports that both can work, with closed tryouts carrying a certain seriousness. His preference is to open them, with one rule: stay off the field, let your kid play, let the coaches coach. A parent about to spend thousands of dollars and most weekends of the year on a program, in his words, deserves to see "what am I about to invest" in.
The payoff shows up when the offer goes out. Families who watched the staff work and felt the energy of the session accept more easily, while the ones who decide the program isn't for them decide quickly, which Ricky treats as a benefit: "it's kind of like self-selection." The parent who watched an honest two days rarely needs a long phone call to understand the result.
4: Decide Within Three Days, With a Place for Every Kid
CLA aims to notify every family within three days. The message names the team, or, for a kid who isn't ready for travel, names the next step: the program's town or rec offering, a training program, or another club down the road that fits better. The rule underneath is that nobody leaves tryouts with only a no.
What the Event Is Really Selling
A tryout is the first time a new family sees your staff work, and the moment a returning family decides whether a year of loyalty counted. The two-track design serves both: returners get certainty and a reason to compete, new families get an honest look at the product, and your staff spend their evaluation energy on the decisions that are actually open.
The twelve-year-old in the warm-up line should spend tryouts competing for a team, with the question of whether he still belongs already answered. Send the invitation before the event, and let the field be about the 20% it was built to find.
