Make sure if you are the person in charge of organizing and running your Pee wee, Pop Warner, Midget or Youth Football Tryouts that you follow a few of our hints to make the process run smooth and efficient. There is nothing worse for a parent to watch than an unorganized tryout and evaluation during the youth football tryouts.
Your first step should be to have multiple meetings before the tryouts day with all the assistant coaches, past palyers and parents that have volunteered to help during the youth football tryout week. It is important to set the groundwork and rules at these meetings. Explain the entire plan and each persons responsibility throughout the tryouts.
Each tryout should have many different skills and drills that need to be evaluated during the tryouts. Your goal should be to make the tryouts as fair and even as possible. You want to make sure all players get a fair shot and proper evaluation of their talent and skill level. You should have multiple stations with different skills evaluated all going on at the same time. The evaluations need to be as mechanical as possible since we do not want any prejudices to enter into the evaluation or ratings of particular players.
There is a book, by Jim Oddo, that covers every aspect of organizing and evaluating the youth football tryouts. In Youth Football Tryouts and Evaluations he explains a very unique “power rating” system that gives each player an overall rating based on his experience, age and the way he performed during the tryouts. All of the power rating are entered into a spreadsheet and used to help split the teams when the draft takes place.
