Another tryout is in the books. Ask any coach who does this junior national stuff, and they'll tell you it's the worst part of the process. Kids aren't bound to any particular club, and they can tryout for as many as they want, then make a decision. In the mean time, you as a coach don't know if you have the team of your dreams or not.
I'm not really sure what to expect here, because I don't know enough about the level of competition, club reputations or any of that nonsense. When I first got into it, kids and parents had a certain loyalty to clubs, and you'd get these kids playing together for four or five years. I can tell you from experience that those are the teams that consistently achieve and go to nationals. For some reason, that loyalty started to die off at some point, as kids and parents settled into a greener grass expectation. Having been on both sides of that situation, with kids playing for me that left another club, or kids that blew me off to play with someone else, I can tell you that it rarely works out. A lot of kids end up miserable because of it, and that's unfortunate. It's not like you get to play at that level indefinitely, so those mistakes are costly.
Tomorrow we have a makeup tryout for kids who had conflicts or didn't land somewhere they would have liked, and if we have gaps to fill, hopefully we'll be able to do that there. By the time we're eating turkey, hopefully I can stick to the business of building a great team.
It's true that you don't always get what you want, but most seasons I've been able to make it work anyway. 2006 was a really rough season, but the three prior to that were awesome. I've got a pretty good feeling about this one, but it just depends on which kids commit. The group as it stands is absolutely bid-worthy.
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