Volleyball Tryouts- Varsity and Junior Varsity Facilitation

1. This packet of materials is intended help you facilitate varsity or junior varsity volleyball tryouts.

2. This packet may be printed out to start off your coaching binder for the season. I have included a cover template as well as other documents that were “must-haves” for me as I started out the season.

3. As I have found in my own volleyball coaching experience, documentation is key. Often my athletic director asked me to keep detailed rubrics and notes on each athlete in order to save myself from a future angry parent. If a child had been cut from the team, I had only to whip out my handy rubric and scoresheet with annotations to justify my decision. The scoring rubric is broken down based on skill and proficiency.

4. Following each page, I’ve included a blank document that you can add your own skills and personalization to.

5. The interest survey has become a key strategy in my tryout facilitation each season. This is yet another way for me to pinpoint some of the strengths and weaknesses of my potential athletes as well as to get a feel for any of their future scheduling concerns.

4. To spare some of the emotional trauma of “cutting” athletes, my athletic director asked me to create both a “cut” letter for athletes who did not make the team as well as a “congratulatory” letter for athletes who earned a their spot on the squad. In this way, on the last day of tryouts, each athlete received a letter and was sent out of the gym to read their news in the car with a parent. No embarrassing moments were to happen where names or numbers are called out. I have included samples of each of these letters in this packet. Each letter begins in the same general way but communicate the two different decisions.

5. At the very end of this document, I have included a code of conduct agreement. I have found that, in this generation of social media and school shaming, it is important to establish conduct rules right at the beginning of the season. This allowed me to hold my athletes accountable for their actions, and came as a handy reminder of appropriate behavior, both on and off the court.