“We love tryouts!” -nobody.

As much as we strive to make them fun at Cincy SC, we know that tryouts can be a challenging and stressful time. We wanted to share some of our thoughts on the process.

We concluded our 1st week of tryouts on Friday, 5/27 at 9pm. Afterwards, our coaches stuck around the field for a while doing a little cleaning up, but mostly we were celebrating an extremely successful week. We had 50% more players attend than last year and we received so many compliments about our club and the “vibe” at our tryouts.

Afterwards, our directors headed back to the office. We compared notes from all our coaches about every player that had attended our four nights of tryouts. By about 3:30 AM on Saturday we knew everyone that we wanted to offer. We sent out offer emails and asked for a decision within about 48 hours.

We also sent out emails to players that were on our alternates list. We wanted to thank them for coming and we didn’t want to keep anyone feeling like they were limbo. We tried to help parents to be able to explain things to their kids: the process is not perfect, evaluations are subjective, two coaches will often disagree about a player, and ultimately beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps our most important core value during the offer/acceptance process is Integrity. Once we’ve offered a player, we don’t offer another player that spot until the first player either declines or the offer expires — even if Lionel Messi shows up the next day. Similarly, we consider acceptances from players/parents to be a commitment and we expect them to be honored, even if another compelling offer arrives minutes later. For that reason, deposits are not refundable, and we also believe that offers and acceptances are “non-refundable” too.

Nobody gets involved with youth soccer as a player, parent, or coach because they love tryouts. But they’re a necessary part of the process and there’s a bright light at the end of the tunnel in the form of our Meet Your Clubmates event, summer pickup games, training exhaustion, games won with last-minute awesome goals, out-of-town tournaments, face paint, group outings, and end-of-season parties. Our tryouts have been an amazing success and we’re looking forward to an EPIC 2016/17 year.