It’s baaaaacccck! The dreaded tryouts for sports teams. The flip of the calendar to September opens the annual season of parents praying and kids playing to the best of their collective potential. The problem with it all is that everyone involved hates every minute of it.

Let me start by commending the hundreds of coaches, parents and volunteers who give countless hours towards making sure that kids can play youth sports. Without their commitment, these organizations don’t succeed in the goal to give the gift of sports to kids. The yearly dance parents make between volunteering and not is a difficult one. If you get involved, the time commitment is greater and so is your ability to positively impact your kids. By staying away, time is your friend but there is always a level of doubt about whether the sports clubs are fake and equitable to all players and coaches. There is no greater dilemma than during evaluation season.

Thousands of kids are evaluating across the city this month to be placed onto community, club and school teams and are completely at the mercy of the system that allows for fair evaluation. Parents secretly wonder whether their child was properly assessed or given a fair chance for evaluators to see what they can do. There is no more uncomfortable scene then sitting in the parents area of an evaluation, reading the eyes and minds of parents secretly willing their child to excel over the others. While this is occurring they are screaming with their eyes towards the coordinators to look at their child or give him another chance! All the while, they play nice with the other parents.

Why does it get to this point? Firstly, if parents would get involved in their clubs, they would get a better sense of the inner workings of that club and the evaluation process. Secondly, the clubs must do a better job in educating the parents and kids of the nuances of the process. Both would allow better communication and remove the uncomfortable disconnect between the two. The process isn’t broken but it could be streamlined for the benefit of all.

Marco