Making Tryout Cuts

Most unfair-looking cuts are decided before the first whistle, by a number nobody wrote down. Walk into the gym unsure how many players you are keeping and the last few spots get filled by mood. So settle three things first.

• Spots, by position. Count how many players you will carry, then split that count by role. Setters, keepers, pitchers, whatever your sport cannot play without. Take away the returning players you already count on. What is left is the real competition.
• Criteria and their weights. Pick what you score and which criteria count most this year. A team short on defense weights defending, and says so at the meeting.
• Dates. When each session runs, when stage releases happen, and the day final decisions are delivered.

Then hold a meeting before day one and share all of it. In Katherine Neely's interviews with 22 head coaches(opens in new tab) of girls' U15 to U18 provincial teams in one Canadian province (the study likens that level to a state or regional select squad) in soccer, basketball, volleyball, and ice hockey, the coaches held a meeting before tryouts as routine practice. The study found the real audience for that meeting was the parents. One hockey coach said that once the process was explained up front, conflicts with parents after the releases were rare.

Say one more thing in that meeting: every spot is open. A returning player you plan to keep loses nothing by hearing it. A returning player you might cut needs to hear it before the tryout, not after.

Put it on paper too, so families who miss the meeting get the same message. The handout below covers the spots, the criteria, the dates, and how results will be shared.

Already past day one?

Do the short version tonight. Before you look at a single score, write down your spot count, your criteria and their weights, and your tie rules. Share them with the players at the next session, before anyone is cut. It is later than ideal. It still beats a rule that shows up after the scores.

Neely's analysis of those interviews describes deselection as four phases: the pre-tryout meeting, evaluation and decision-making, communicating the decision, and reflecting afterward. The protocol below breaks those four phases into ten steps to run straight off the page. Print it, tape it inside your clipboard, and use the right-hand column as your checklist of what to write down at each step.

That right-hand column is not busywork. Most coaches in the study, the soccer coaches excepted, kept what they called a paper trail. Notes on strengths and weaknesses, rankings, and the reasoning behind each decision. A volleyball coach told the researchers the paper trail “will save you in the end.” It also makes your next tryout better, because you can see which reasons held up.

For the scores themselves, use one sheet for every player and every evaluator. A tryout evaluation form with a written rubric keeps the numbers comparable, which steps four to six depend on.

Here is the pattern Neely found, and it will sound familiar. Picking the strongest players is easy. A basketball coach said “everybody in the gym should be choosing the same top seven.” The weakest are easy too. The doubt piles up at the fringe, on the last few names, where coaches admitted they ended up going with a hunch. That is where your time belongs.

Sort into three piles after session one

Locks are players every evaluator rated high. Clear cuts are players every evaluator rated low, or who showed an attitude you will not coach around. Everyone else is a bubble player. Write the pile next to each name and stop talking about the locks. Your staff meeting is for the bubble.

Give a split score a second look

When one evaluator gives a player a 4 and another gives a 2, the gap is information. Do not average it into a 3 and move on. Ask both coaches what they saw, find the situation behind the gap, and plan a rematch at the next session. If the split came from a scrimmage, rerun a small-sided scrimmage and have a third coach watch only that player. Write down who watched and what they scored.

Evaluating alone? Mark the drill where your own read felt shaky, ask a JV coach or a volunteer to watch that one drill at the next session, and rescore the player once you compare notes.

Write the tie rules before day one

Two bubble players, one spot. If you invent the tiebreaker after you know who is tied, families will assume you picked the rule to fit the kid. Write the order down in advance. One defensible order:

1. Roster need. The player who fills a position you are short on.
2. The criterion you weighted highest this season.
3. The second-look score.
4. Coachability. Who took a single correction and showed it on the next rep.
5. The head coach's call.

That last rung matters. When scores run out, coaches in the study relied on intuition, and the researchers treated that as a valid part of deciding under uncertainty. So name it. A tie rule that ends in “head coach's call” is more honest than a points formula pretending a gut decision is math. Leave seniority and last year's roster off the list unless you announced them at the meeting.

Cut in stages or post one list

A staged cut releases the clear cuts after an early session and keeps working with a smaller group. It gives the bubble players more reps under your eyes and sends the clear cuts home sooner. It also means more conversations and more chances for news to leak. A single final list is simpler and works when your gym is not crowded. Pick one before tryouts and announce it, so nobody reads a missing name as a hidden cut.

How do you cut a player who was on the team last year? Carefully, and earlier than anyone else.

The groundwork is in the pre-tryout meeting, where you told everyone every spot is open. Then evaluate the returning player with the same criteria and the same sheet as everybody else. Last season's roster spot is not a score. If history matters to you as a tiebreaker, it has to be on your written list.

The conversation itself differs in three ways. Meet them first, before newcomers hear anything. Name what changed, whether that is a deeper position group or a criterion you weight higher now, so the cut does not sound like a verdict on last year. And offer a concrete way to stay involved: JV, a development group, the off-season league.

“How do I cut a kid from a sports team?” The answer has a timing part, a format part, and a script.

Timing

Tell the cut players before the roster goes public. The worst way to learn you were cut is from a teammate's group chat. Meet every cut player within a day of your final list, then post or send the roster. If you run staged releases, tell each group the same evening they are released.

Format

Meet in person if you have the choice. When that is impossible, a phone call beats an email, and any email should end with an open offer to talk. Most coaches in Neely's study believed an individual, face-to-face meeting was the most respectful way, partly because it let them explain the decision. Some had no choice. Their sport organization required a letter, an email, or a phone call.

Pick the room with care. Coaches in the study set up the meeting so a player could walk out without passing back through the gym in front of the others. A side door or an office off the hallway does the job. It is a small thing. Players remember it.

Say the decision first

Say the decision in your first two sentences. Then give one or two specific reasons, tied to the criteria you announced, and then the next chance and what to work on before it. That order is a judgment call, not a research finding. Coaches in Neely's study debated whether feedback belongs before or after the news, and doubted players took in much either way. As one volleyball coach described it, “they sit down, they just wanna know.” Putting the decision first ends the wait, and the written note carries the detail they miss.

Lines to leave out

• Any comparison with a teammate by name. Talk about this player's scores and this player's next step.
• “You just weren't good enough.” It names no skill, so there is nothing to train.
• “Maybe next year.” Without a date and a target, it reads as a brush-off.
• Promises you cannot control, such as a spot next season.
• Blaming the other evaluators or the athletic director. The decision is the staff's, and you signed it.

Follow up in writing the same evening. Address the note to the player, keep a parent or guardian on the message, and send it from an official school or club account. Given the emotional state players are in after the news, the researchers recommended that coaches consider written feedback. Athletes in the same research said most coaches never gave them specific reasons for the cut, so they worked out possible explanations with their parents. A short note fixes that.

Some coaches in the study worried more about the parents' reaction than the players'. You will get calls. Plan for them like you planned the tryout.

Give it a day before you talk. One basketball staff in the study used a 24-hour rule, no conversations with parents until a day had passed, so emotions could come down. It is a good default. When you do talk, stay on their child, their scores, the reasons you gave, and the next chance. Point back to the spots and criteria you shared before tryouts. The decision stands. What you can offer is the plan for their child.

For the parents' side, the handout above lists the four ways the research suggests parents can help a cut child.

Send every cut player home with a next step, in writing. Asked about the days after the cuts, most of the coaches Neely interviewed named the same main goal. They wanted the players they cut to stay in the sport. A separate part of the same research interviewed 18 women who had been cut from provincial teams as teenagers and kept competing. For them, growth after the cut was gradual and took several years.

You cannot speed that up. You can make the next step concrete. The note should carry three things:

1. One or two skills to work on, named the same way your criteria name them.
2. One way to practice each, at home or with another team.
3. When they get their next look, such as a winter evaluation, a spring league, or next season's tryout.

If your program has somewhere for a cut player to land, such as a JV team or a development group, say so in the meeting, and keep evaluating them there with the same criteria. If the player stays in your program and you scored and published the tryout, that evaluation is already a point on the athlete's record, and their development carries on from there. If the tryout was their first evaluation, the next one draws their first progress chart, so the path back is something you can show them.

The practice ideas land better when they come from real drills. In Striveon's drill library, you can link drills to the same skill sets you evaluate with, then filter the library to the drills you have linked to the skill set behind the skill you named.

The protocol travels across sports. The spot math does not. Roster rules, the number of players on the floor, and how youth leagues place players all change what a cut means. Here is the layer to add for four common tryout sports, with the rule source for every number. In U.S. high schools, the NFHS(opens in new tab), which counts 51 state associations (Washington, D.C. included) as members, writes playing rules for high school sports, so check your state association's rules before you use any row below.

The numbers come from FIBA's 2026 rules(opens in new tab), USA Basketball's youth guidelines(opens in new tab), the FIVB rules for 2025 to 2028(opens in new tab), U.S. Soccer's game formats(opens in new tab), and Little League's roster guide(opens in new tab).

Under 12, ask whether you should cut at all

Project Play, the Aspen Institute's youth sports initiative, recommends that sports programs invest in every child equally through at least age 12(opens in new tab), playing time included. USA Basketball recommends equal playing time for ages 7 to 8. Little League's youngest divisions place players on teams, with no roster minimum or maximum. If your program has the space, the cleanest cut at eleven is the one you never make. Form balanced teams and save the cuts for the age when players have grown into the sport.

Every step above leaves something written. Roster spots, criteria, scores, the tie rule that settled each bubble, the reasons you gave. Keep it together. It answers the parent call, it makes the returning-player conversation specific, and it turns next year's tryout into a comparison with a known starting point.

Striveon's athlete evaluation handles the scoring side of that record. An evaluation round lets you rate a whole list of athletes skill by skill, and every choice saves as you make it. If you scored a returning player in an earlier round, their row marks the level they already have for each skill they were rated on then, and shows the change, up, down, or unchanged, once you score it today.

Publishing the round puts each evaluation on the athlete's timeline, where it can no longer be edited. It also emails the other coaches who have evaluation emails turned on, plus any athlete with their own login and evaluation emails on. The email names the round, not the scores. Publish after the cut conversations, so the record matches what you told each player.