I can remember back in 2002 or so when we gave everyone like 2 weeks or more to decide. That was appreciated by parents, but it did cost us players. It cost us our second choices in many instances, girls who would have come with us, but didn't want to wait so long for an offer from us while we were waiting to hear back from our first choices.
I would think by now, with OFC and the Internet in general, that by 14-U, parents and girls should have a strong tentative list of preferenes by tryout time. That could change some at those tryouts as families get to know coaches and organizations, but it shouldn't take more than 24 or 48 hours for a girl to decide after a tryout. The tough part comes when a girl wants to go to another tryout the following weekend. There is no right answer. It seems to me it's ethical for a team to hold a spot for 48 hours and then the spot will be open until it's not.
If families have done the research prior to tryouts, the only thing left should be to discuss information that came into play at the tryouts. Did we like the coach and the current players, is the fee reasonable for what the team is doing, etc. And the family discussion should be done immediately, not four or five days later. Same for organizations, decisions need to be made right at the end of tryouts, not sat on for several days. Any remotely decent coach knows exactly who he wants after tryouts are over. No amount of mulling it over is going to change anything. I usually knew 30 minutes into tryouts which girls I wanted and sometimes just 10 minutes. Power, athletic ability, arm strength, speed; those things don't keep themselves hidden.
As a little bit of a parallel, before I interviewed at the job I currently hold, I had done so much research on the school that I might have known more than the President of the university about the things that can be found publicly. The only things that remained were to determine the operating budget, what the AD was like, what the other support personnel (SID, asst. ADs, Admissions, Financial Aid, other coaches) were like, the field conditions and who was responsible for upkeep of the field and a few other more minor factors. By the end of the interview, I knew all I needed to know and told the AD on the way to the airport that i would take the job if it were offered, but that I was scheduled for another interview the following week at a different school, which was true. About three days later and before that next interview the job was offered and I took it. The lesson is, is to be as fully prepared as possible going into tryouts and know what information you need to glean at the tryouts to be able to make a final decision. Once you have all that, take a day or two if you need to, but if you need to take any longer than that, then in my opinion something is wrong.
), but I could imagine a situation where the offerees are only marginally better than the players behind them and if we waited a week plus for a response from our first preferences we would lose our second preferences.
