What I Wish I Knew Before My First Tryout Season

I still remember sitting in my car after my first tryout season ended, completely exhausted, with a stack of handwritten scoresheets on the passenger seat and approximately 47 unread texts from parents in my phone.

I had done everything I thought a coach was supposed to do. I made a sign-up sheet. I borrowed a scoring rubric from a coach friend. I brought snacks. But somehow, tryouts still felt like organized chaos — and the weeks that followed felt even worse.

If you're heading into your first tryout season — or your fifth and you're still feeling like something's off — here's what I genuinely wish someone had told me.

1. Parents will ask questions you're not ready for

No matter how carefully you plan your scoring system, parents will ask things like "Why did my daughter score lower on jumps than her friend when she clearly has better technique?" — and you will need to have a real answer.

Before tryouts, get crystal clear on two things: what you're scoring and why. Write it down. Not just for the parents — for yourself. When you can articulate exactly what a 7 vs. a 9 looks like in the "jumps" category, scoring becomes faster, more consistent, and way easier to defend.

2. Your scoring system will feel fine until it doesn't

Most first-time coaches grab a generic scoring sheet and add a few categories. That works okay until you're on athlete 18 out of 40 and you realize you've been mentally redefining what a "6" means since athlete 9.

Consistency is everything. A few things that help:

• Score in real time, not from memory at the end of the day
• Brief each judge before tryouts start so everyone's working from the same mental picture
• If you're using multiple judges, average the scores — one person's outlier shouldn't make or break a kid's spot

3. The hardest conversations happen after tryouts, not during

The tryout itself is the easy part. It's the two weeks that follow where things get messy.

Parents who don't hear back quickly will fill the silence with assumptions. Athletes who didn't make it will spiral. Coaches who don't have clear records will second-guess themselves.

• Communicate your timeline upfront. "Results will be posted by Friday at 5pm" gives everyone something to hold onto
• Keep your notes. If a parent calls to ask why their child didn't make the team, you need specifics — not "I just felt like the other athletes were stronger"
• Be kind. These are kids. How you handle the no is something they'll remember long after the season ends

4. Eligibility and tryouts are separate conversations

This is the one that surprised me most. I assumed that if a kid showed up to tryouts, they were eligible. Nope.

Grades, behavior contracts, physical forms, parent permission — all of that needs to be sorted out before you start evaluating athletic ability. Nothing is more awkward than telling a family their child scored well but can't join the team because of a GPA issue you didn't catch until after the fact.

5. A spreadsheet will not save you

I'm just going to say it. Spreadsheets are fine for a lot of things, but tryout season is not one of them.

When you're juggling eligibility status, parent contact info, scoring sheets for multiple judges, and roster decisions all at once — a spreadsheet turns into a liability. Things get out of sync. Formulas break. You end up with three versions of the same file and no idea which one is current.

This is actually one of the biggest reasons I built CheerNexus. I wanted one place where eligibility tracking, tryout scoresheets, judge access, and athlete info all lived together — so that when a parent called, I had a real answer in seconds, not "let me check my spreadsheet and call you back."

6. It gets easier. Promise.

Your first tryout season will have rough edges. You'll forget something, a parent will say something that stings, and you'll lie awake at 1am second-guessing a roster decision.

That's normal. Every coach who has ever done this has been there.

What gets better with experience is the systems. The more intentional you are about how you run tryouts — your rubric, your communication plan, your eligibility process — the more headspace you have left for the actual coaching. And that's where the magic happens.