Tryouts ... How to Select Your Players
Tryouts by Coach Darrell Garrison

One of the most exciting and stressful parts of a young player’s life can be trying out for an athletic team where they have to show a coach they deserve to be on that team. You have those players who are extremely confident in their abilities along with those who have a lot of self doubt or are just not confident in themselves. Sometimes as a coach you have to look past what might be obvious on the court, and see if a players personality or lack of confidence is keeping the player’s real talent or potential from being obvious.

When holding basketball tryouts I am mainly looking at two areas in particular: attitude/character and athleticism. The area on attitude/character is a very wide area with many components; each of them are important in their own way. I feel that attitude/character can be broken down into a few subcategorizes with the total character of a player being a compilation of the parts.

Attitude/character:

Enthusiasm is so important in anything you do. Henry Ford has said that, “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm”. I love enthusiastic people, however enthusiastic people can be a bit of a trial to those who are not. Coaching and teaching enthusiastic players is fun! They help keep the team fired up; they help keep spirits high; they keep teammates working and they certainly make the coaches job much easier.

The only way a coach can get his points across is if the players are attentive. When coaching youth basketball it is imperative that the coach has the player’s attention. Some young people have a hard time focusing and paying attention to what is said or shown. There might be outside reasons for a poor attention span. The player may be distracted by other things going on in the gym, maybe he has had a rough day at school or at home, or maybe just by an anxiety to get started. Whatever the reason if a player can not refocus and isn’t attentive it will adversely effect the team’s performance.

How hard are young people expected to work in today’s society? It seems like today’s youth doesn’t have the same work ethic and attitude toward work that players have had in the past. Busy home lives and busy parents are just a couple of reasons that players don’t work as hard as they did years ago when there were simpler times and less distractions and conveniences. The coach needs to set his expectations of the work ethic from day one. Players will give a great effort for a coach who is fair and tells the players what to expect. I player that takes shortcuts in his work ethic isn’t worth keeping on the team.

Most importantly the coach must set the tone of the practice, especially with young athletes. Many youngsters don’t fully grasp what a great work ethic is, how to channel their enthusiasm positively, how to focus their attention and how to show and feed a positive attitude. All of these go a long way to help establish a young person’s character, and a long way to helping decide who should make the team.

Athleticism:

The second thing I would look at would be the athleticism of the players trying out. I feel that you can teach a willing athlete the fundamental skills necessary to be a dominating player, but you can’t necessarily teach a player with fundamental skills to be an athlete.

Please don’t get the idea that I feel fundamentals aren’t important. The ideal player would be an athlete with great fundamental skills. Hopefully within the group of players that you have trying out for your team, there will be a mix of athletes along with those who have decent skills yet aren’t as athletic.

Most drills I would use during the tryout sessions would be timing and goal setting drills. Players will rise to the forefront when faced with a drill that forces them to meet a goal in a certain amount of time (i.e. how many power lay ups in 30 seconds).

In tryouts I will run drills that measure defensive quickness, change of direction and aggressiveness. I want to know how quickly a player can get from point A to point B, if a player can cut off a dribbler and force them to turn or pick up the dribble, and if a player will go on the floor for a loose ball. I will use drills that show a player’s foot speed; rebounding, outlet and sprint the floor; ball handling at full speed, and changing direction with the ball at full speed.

I will get all players in the tryouts involved in some type of full court scrimmage, but I will not use a scrimmage as the sole evaluation tool. I want to see how they handle themselves in game situations, if they have court sense, and how they work at the offensive and defensive ends.

My youngest son tried out for the school basketball team for the first time in eighth grade. He had such physical skills (he was a sprint, hurdles, high jump, and long jump champion later in high school), yet he had never expressed interest or love for basketball. I could have taught him all he needed to know to be great player, but a person has to love the game and want to learn it. Even though he had never played the game before, the coaches kept him on the team because of his athleticism and work ethic, and cut numerous players who had much better skills. The feeling was that you can always find players who had some skills (at that age), but it is tough to find such a good athlete with great size. Although it didn’t work out in this situation (he only played basketball that one year), I would have made the same call in the same situation. You can always teach an athlete some skills, but a player with skills isn’t always an athlete, and athletes win championships.

Drills:

I want to give you a set of drills that I would use to help evaluate the players who were trying out. These drills would show the skills of the players while being able to showcase their athleticism.

Rebound Outlet: The player would toss the ball off the backboard, jump, rebound, pivot and outlet to a coach in the outlet area (near the sideline as high as the foul line). He would then follow the outlet, cut behind the coach and sprint to the opposite basket. The coach would then throw a long baseball pass for the player to chase down at full speed, gather in and make a lay-up. You could continue the drill with each player, then move to the other end and have them all come back, or you could have the first player grab his own rebound of the lay-up , outlet to another coach at that end and come back. This drill could be continuous.

Power Lay-ups: This is a timed drill (30 seconds is a good time to maximize top effort) that you can use with a player at each basket in the gym. The player stands on either side of the basket with a ball. On the whistle the player executes a power lay-up (jumping off both feet). As the ball comes through the basket he catches the ball. As his baseline-side foot steps, he pivots on that foot and powers the ball up on the other side of the basket. He again catches the ball as the baseline-side foot steps down, pivots and powers the ball back up on the original side. This back and forth action continues for the entire 30 seconds as other players count the made baskets. Baskets should be recorded. I would do this drill 2-3 times at different times during the workout and total the results.

Defensive Slide Drill: The player would start at the corner of the court, facing down court. Set cones about every 15 feet up the court alternating from the corner to the middle of the court 15 feet up court, back to the sideline to the middle every 15 feet. On the whistle they would defensive slide (taking short chop steps and never crossing their legs) from the corner back and forth up court until they reach the end of the court. Time how long it takes the player to make it to the opposite end.

Shooting Drill: Set 5-7 cones or spots in a semi-circle from 10 feet to 18 feet from the basket depending on the age of the players. The player has anywhere from one to two minutes to make as many baskets as he can. After each shot, he must get his own rebound and dribble in back out to one of the spots on the floor. Keep track of the number of baskets the player can make in the allotted time.

Full Court Lay-ups: This drill will give you an idea of the player’s conditioning and stamina. Have the player start at the far baseline. On the whistle he must speed dribble the length of the court and make a lay-up. He gets his own rebound and speed dribbles back to the first end for another lay-up. This drill continues for anywhere from one to two minutes, counting the number of baskets made.

Full Court Combination Drill: I like to use my imagination on this drill. It can change every time I run it. An example might be like this: Start on the baseline and weave dribble through a set of 5-7 cones spaced about 6 feet apart. After the player gets through the cones he would go hard for a lay-up. After the lay-up he would grab his rebound and dribble to a side basket for a 15’ jump shot, rebound, dribble to the next side basket for another 15’ jump shot, grab his rebound and go the the closest main basket for a lay-up. At each basket he must stay at that basket until he makes a shot or has three misses before he can move on to the next basket. I then take the amount of time from the beginning until the last lay-up is made. This is a great drill which, as I said can be changed by using a little imagination.

The importance of the timing and scoring of these drills will help to give you the best ball players possible. I feel that by using these drills or some like them you can find those athletes who will help your team win. In my opinion, when a team of athletes who have developed skills meets the team of ball players with skills but limited athleticism, the athletes will win almost every time.