Tryout Notification Etiquette

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Etiquette has to go both ways...DD has tried out for different organizations every year. Some of the organizations contact her within days (1-3), others weeks, some not at all!

I have always taught my DD this..."Be careful of the toes you step on today for the may be attached to the butt you have to kiss later in life." & "Never burn a bridge you may need to cross waters in the future." Some organizations could also take this advise into consideration.

That being said, DD did send thank you letters to coaches that showed her the respect to contact her in a timely matter this year. Like I said, etiquette has to go both ways.

 

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My daughter was satisfied with "If you hear from us by Tuesday, You made the Team." We, as Parents and coaches AND running the local rec ball Assoc. FULLY understand trying to deal with very large numbers of children and parents.
I personally have taken calls that were so vicious I had to say WAIT, stop right there. Call back and speak to my husband only after you have calmed down. Some parents can really and I mean REALLY be horrible! A few times they are screaming at me and I just hang up the phone! ? Then I say WOW! That person needs to cut out the caffine. ?[smiley=lolk.gif]
So we respect the fact that we were told, If you dont hear from us by tuesday, please feel free to continue trying out for other local teams.
Sure it is frustrating to new players trying out. But in the same respect we have to understand the volume of people, phone calls, email. It is very time consueming. (Seeing as I am usually the one making a ton of calls for the President of our local Assoc. Been there, done that.)
Our daughter has always been taught to give 110%. If you dont make the team, or make mistakes, suck it up and move on. Everyone makes mistakes, even adults. Allot of parents can not handle their child being rejected. I dont see it as rejection, I see it as competition! After all, softball is a competitive sport, right? That is what we tell our Children!

 

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Excellent idea Dreamer-then as parents wanting to help our child we could show her this and say ok you only got a .... in this area.....so lets focus a little more work on this. Or your throw to second was....seconds lets get this down to....since that is what they are looking for. That would be awesome. I actually do think that one of the tryouts used a scale like this because my daughter mentioned that she got 2x's for throws or something like that.....so if we could have those results we could work from there for next year. A big help for her to know what her weaknesses were.

 

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In the end, coaches should contact the kids, one way or another. Parents have the right to be disappointed and ask why. However, they do not have the right to be difficult.

 

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I've gotta ask.... If you are the coach making these hard to hear calls, how many nasty parents do you get as opposed to the ones who take the news well?

 

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I only had two this year that really qualify as not taking the new very well, but at 16U you get to mostly talk to the girls and for the most part they just want to know what they need to work on to make it the next time.

 

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Well, Bear, in your case it was only 2. So, If for the most part your dealing with level headed parents, and only a couple loose cannons, I think that letting them know shouldn't be so much of a problem by email or phone.

 

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This will kill a program faster than anything. Word of mouth, that a program tells you they will call you in 3 days , then you don't here from them for 3 weeks. We have a program in Central Ohio, that does this all the time. Then they wonder why they don't have kids trying out the next year.

 

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We went to a late tryout this year and the coach said they would let people know whether they made the team in two weeks. We were about ready to leave the tryout as soon as we heard that because most of the other teams we tried out for needed an answer before then. We couldn't turn down the other offers on the off chance that we would be offered a position on this team.

We decided to stay at the tryout and at the end of the tryout, my daughter was made an offer. I just felt like this team should have been more honest up-front, because some people may have left the tryout for the reasons I indicated, especially if they had other tryouts to attend that day. We're still new to travel softball, so we didn't know that coaches offered spots at tryouts; we just assumed they call you later on. They should have said that you should know within 2 weeks, but most of you will find out sooner than that.

Some coaches also want to pressure girls into making a decision immediately, even though there are still a lot of tryouts going on and are surprised that they have girls breaking commitments to their team. We had some coaches that needed a decision in a week, then we found they were still looking for 4 or 5 players three weeks later. Just as coaches should be allowed some time to inform players of their decisions, girls should be given some time to make informed decisions. It's what's best for everybody in the long run.

BTW, what's the average amount of time organizations give to potential players for making the decision about accepting a spot on a team?

 

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Georges2?

The one problem you miss here about the length of time both for a response ?from the coach? and ?back to the coach? is that there are a number of factors affecting the filling of a position. For example if a team is looking to fill four positions, at tryout they will rank each girl at each position. They will then contact their first choice at each position respectfully. If the girl accepts, that position is filled. If she says no, then it is on to the next person. If the next accepts then the position is filled. If not, the coach goes on to the next person. And so on and so on?

If the coach offers each player a week to make a decision about a team, then the coach would have to realistically tell each girl at tryout that he or she would get back to them within a month (or even more) because he is giving each girl a week to decide on the position. By forcing each girl in the list (starting at #1) to make a decision quickly, the coach can get back to the team as a whole sooner.

I can almost guarantee that there are some coaches out there that have had to go 4 or 5 players deep into their list (if not more) before getting a ?yes? for a position. If the coaches gave each girl a week, players would have to wait around 4 or 5 weeks to get a response back from the team? good or bad.

Unfortunately it can?t go both ways. Quick response to the girls requires quick response back from the girls.

 

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Wow! This is much more complicated than it appears to be!!