ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON TRYOUTS
First, thank you all for your choice of Andover Pumas as the club you wish to play for. We work very hard to make your experience one that you would like to return to each year. With 33 teams, we are the largest girls club in Massachusetts, second in New England. We had over 400 girls come to our power and club tryouts, and we've been able to keep 340 girls. Some dropped out on their own. Overall, we had to cut about 13% of the girls trying out.
If you were at any of the tryout weeks, you saw how many coaches we had rating girls, typically 15-20 in the gym at a time. These coaches spent up to 10 hours on their feet each tryout day with constant attention to the girls. We collected approximately 400 rating sheets spanning a wide variety of skills, with up to 250 individual scores on each sheet, plus liberal comments on girls who stood out by how they carried themselves, both positive and negative. There was a mountain of data that had to be processed, followed up by a marathon 6-hour team choosing session and two days of quality checking. In the end I think the data are as good as any tryout of this size could possibly be. A huge "Thank You" goes out to the many parents who volunteered their time to help register girls and deliver equipment.
Choosing Teams
We consider many factors when building teams and assigning timeslots. They are:
- Skill level, from data and observations collected at tryouts, and from Pumas coaches evaluations from last season
- All positions covered on each team, especially setters
- Girls' impossible timeslots
- Coaches' impossible timeslots
- Enough players on the team in-town for the April tournament (spring vacation)
- Teammates - carpooling for far-away girls
- Applicability of a gym to a particular team (eg, Lowell Catholic has a very short service zone on one side)
- Putting teams in the same gym/timeslots who can scrimmage together (similar level).
This process is very complex and time-consuming, and has been done with a great deal of care. Therefore, we can't honor requests for team changes except in the most extreme or dire circumstances, as any change can throw off the entire structure of a division and cause hours of work. One of the best concepts of club volleyball is to meet and play with girls from other schools!
Standbys and Cuts
If you are listed as a standby, this means that you may be called if someone drops for whatever reason: chooses another club, injury, change of plans, etc. The chance of a standby being called is low, but not impossible, we usually need a couple each year. However, the standbys should consider contacting another club and not wait to be chosen, especially since we have already put 11 on some teams as insurance against someone dropping out. Many coaches prefer 10 per team. Since payments are due now, if you haven't heard from us by January 1 you can assume you won't get called.
If you didn't make a team, let me offer some words of encouragement. The competition was very strong at tryouts as more and more girls discover us. There are several girls who played with us last year who didn't make a team this year. They didn't get worse, the competition got stronger. Don't give up! Join another club and come back and try again next year - prove us wrong! In most cases there was not a lot of difference between those who got cut and those who were chosen in the last round or two. People may disagree with who was kept and who was not. But we had to decide based on what we saw at the two tryout days.
The following clubs may still be open to accepting new players at this time:
North Shore Juniors - Doug Beach, Director - beach206@verizon.net
Practices at Masconomet in Topsfield, with a developmental program in Danvers, both on Sundays
Merrimack Valley Juniors - Carla Montano, Director - mskmontano@comcast.net
Practices in the Chelmsford area on Sundays
Gators - Frank Gardner, Director - frg444@gmail.com
Practices in the Bedford area on Sundays.
Mass Juniors - Chris Prendiville, Director - c.prendi@verizon.net
Practices in the Quincy area on Sundays