Team Tryouts?

[African threadfish]

Last year I had 44 kids go out for the teams. This year I would like to make things more manageable for me as I have been unsuccessful in finding an assistant coach or parent helper. I would like to "cap" the program at 21 total kids to play on 3 teams.

Does anyone have any ideas for tryouts? What has worked for you? Thanks for any and all help and suggestions!

[Charles Martel]

Did you actually have 40 kids coming to all of the practices? Was there enough interest to bring 20 of them to a tournament?

[abnormal abdomen]

I suppose this is largely contingent upon which sorts of tournaments your students would be attending and whether or not all of the students would be attending, but splitting 21 students over 3 teams seems like it'd be a bit difficult for various reasons. I'm guessing there are varying opinions on this, but I feel like most people are in favor of having zero or maybe one sub who sits out during matches (assuming you're talking about quizbowl tournaments with four to a team). It also makes things easier for people doing stats, I believe, and theoretically benefits your players as well.

I'm also amazed that you'd potentially be able to get 21 kids to go to a single tournament, all at once. Does this seem likely?

[Bad Boy Bill]

Congratulations on generating such interest.

When I was Wilmington Charter's coach we got to the point where we had to have tryouts. Here's my thoughts:

I grandfathered any member in good standing. I was not going to spend years teaching someone answers and then cut them. At my discretion, I could decide that someone hadn't participated enough the previous year and had to tryout again after having a discussion with me why they would actually participate this coming year.

I tried various combinations of written and buzzer components. What I found I liked the best was both. One year, about 40 took a 100-question written test, and then around 20 came back for questions read on the buzzers.

I also reserved around 5 spots for the youngest students (in my case 9th grade).

[African threadfish]

Did you actually have 40 kids coming to all of the practices? Was there enough interest to bring 20 of them to a tournament?

I had practices Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays after school with about 10 kids for each practice. Each skill level had an "assigned" practice date. On Wednesdays we had 8 weeks of in-house small tournaments with local schools. 4 of my 8 teams played in per Wednesday so each team had four competition dates with 2 rounds of questions each. It was a time intensive and logistical nightmare and required many student (those that were not playing that week) volunteers, faculty volunteers, and parent volunteers. This year, instead of 44 kids on 8 teams, I'd like to try to keep 21 kids on 3 total quiz bowl 4 vs. 4 player teams. I only brought the top 6 or so kids to "real" fall tournaments like Mr. Falk's in Southern Wisconsin. When scholastic bowl season started in late January, I took the top 10 "quiz bowl" kids and made them my scholastic bowl team. They went to 7 Saturday tournaments during the season.

[African threadfish]

I suppose this is largely contingent upon which sorts of tournaments your students would be attending and whether or not all of the students would be attending, but splitting 21 students over 3 teams seems like it'd be a bit difficult for various reasons. I'm guessing there are varying opinions on this, but I feel like most people are in favor of having zero or maybe one sub who sits out during matches (assuming you're talking about quizbowl tournaments with four to a team). It also makes things easier for people doing stats, I believe, and theoretically benefits your players as well.

I'm also amazed that you'd potentially be able to get 21 kids to go to a single tournament, all at once. Does this seem likely?

We held all of our fall "quiz bowl" tournaments in house so I could play four of my teams in a competition per week. Your "feeder school" Washington Gifted, came to 4 of them! GREAT players all and terrific group of kids coming up the pipeline.

[African threadfish]

Congratulations on generating such interest.

When I was Wilmington Charter's coach we got to the point where we had to have tryouts. Here's my thoughts:

I grandfathered any member in good standing. I was not going to spend years teaching someone answers and then cut them. At my discretion, I could decide that someone hadn't participated enough the previous year and had to tryout again after having a discussion with me why they would actually participate this coming year.

I tried various combinations of written and buzzer components. What I found I liked the best was both. One year, about 40 took a 100-question written test, and then around 20 came back for questions read on the buzzers.

I also reserved around 5 spots for the youngest students (in my case 9th grade).

Those are some great ideas! Thanks! I was planning on "saving" at least 4 seats for new 6th graders as they will be the foundation stock of the next years' teams. What types of questions did you use? Did you write them yourself? Use old packets? I plan to "grandfather" in the 3 returning varsity players from last season. If I grandfather in the others, I will still have over 30 kids without taking into account any new 6th graders coming in. I like the idea of buzzer and written question tests! Great idea!