The end of the hockey season also means the beginning of the next one, as club team tryouts are held the week after the final games. This spring, two of my children (child No. 2 and child No. 4) went through the hockey tryout process, commemorating the 10th anniversary of my oldest son’s first "real" sports tryout (a tryout with cuts). Robert (now 18) was 8 years old back then, and he was trying out for our town’s summer travel baseball program. For my wife and me, that tryout was an initiation of sorts, and I remember it as though it took place last week.
"Tonight, you need to take Robert to his summer league baseball tryouts, OK?" my wife said to me on a Sunday morning in May 2008. No problem, I replied. I assumed that every child would be placed on a team appropriate for his level of skill, and that my baseball-loving son would simply be auditioning to show coaches which team he belonged on.
Fifty-six kids showed up for that first day of tryouts at a field with four diamonds. Each checked in at a table and received two stickers with a number — one for the front of the shirt, one for the back of the shirt. Then they all found a partner and started warming up. What a sight: 28 pairs of 8-year-olds playing catch, each with visions of playing on a summer travel team, hitting .400, and eventually playing for the Boston Red Sox.
Parents toting Thermoses set up their lawn chairs at one end of the field to watch. I struck up a conversation with a friendly looking dad, and it was then that I learned that only 26 of these children would make a team — that there would be an "American" team and a "National" team (each consisting of 13 players), and that 30 kids would be cut. Those 30 kids would have no team to play on. ("The spring league is for participation," the other dad told me. "The summer league is for development and competition.")
I was stunned. In my own baseball experience, I hadn’t faced do-or-die tryouts until freshman year in high school. These kids were 8 years old. I was disturbed by the harshness of the situation, and I was bewildered by the idea of 30 moms and dads consoling their third-graders about not having a team to play on. What would I say to my son if he were cut? I couldn’t even begin to imagine that conversation. I decided to cross that bridge if I came to it, and hope for the best.
The children were split into four groups of 14, and they cycled through four stations (hitting, ground balls, fly balls and live infield situations). At each station, two adult evaluators stood and watched, scribbling away on their clipboards after every play. Suddenly, it dawned on me that the skills Robert had developed playing endless hours of Wiffle ball, fielding thousands of ground balls and fly balls in our backyard, and playing two seasons of coach-pitch little league were being evaluated at that moment. It occurred to me that if I’d known the cutthroat nature of our town’s summer league tryouts, I’d have practiced a lot more with my son over the previous year. Then it occurred to me that it was probably good that I didn’t know this, since it might have brought out the "crazy overcoaching dad" that’s probably inside of me somewhere. His Wiffle ball experience will have to carry him, I reasoned.
My heart sank when Robert swung and missed at the first pitch. I wanted to bellow some encouraging words, but with all the other parents silently rooting against him, it didn’t feel right. Then he connected. A line drive, and another one. A couple of foul balls, a whiff, then a weak grounder to third. "NEXT!" yelled the evaluator, and Robert hustled back out to the field. Was that good enough? I wondered. A coach hit him some grounders, and he looked solid — got in front of every ball, kept his butt down, used two hands, made crisp throws to first base. I was proud of him.
At the end of that first tryout, the coaches called the kids in and had them get down on one knee at home plate. Then one of the coaches brought out a gigantic trophy and explained to the youngsters that last year’s 8-year-old team from our town had gone undefeated and had won that trophy, and that the tryout group couldn’t touch it until they had won the right to have their own team’s name engraved on it. (I am not making this up.)
Part 2 of the tryout continued one week later. The kids were obviously grouped by ability this time, and I was relieved to see that my son had been placed in a group of somewhat capable players. I just wanted him to make a team — any team. I hadn’t begun to compose my "Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school JV team" speech, and I really didn’t want to. Thirty of us parents were going to have to come up with something to ease our children’s pain, though. I dreaded that, for all of us.
In the final 20 minutes, the coaches had the players line up at home plate, and they timed the kids running to first base. As the speedsters crossed the base, the timer yelled out the results for all to hear, and another coach with a clipboard wrote down the times. I felt like I was at the NFL pre-draft combine. Then, the five fastest kids raced; then they narrowed it to two, and those two raced … and we have a WINNER! Everyone cheered for the fastest boy. (I swear, I am not making this up.)
On the way home from the tryout, Robert spoke with total self-confidence. He was sure he had made one of the teams. Perhaps all 56 of the young men felt the same way, but I was nervous for my son. So, this is what it’s like being the parent of an aspiring athlete, I thought.
Then came the wait. Three days, four days, five days … still no word from the league. "Did you get an email?" was the first thing my wife and I said to each other when we arrived home in the evening. "Nope, nothing." Finally, an email came late one night. Based on the recommendation of our evaluators, we are pleased to offer your child a position on our Summer 8-Year-Old National Team. I woke up my wife to tell her, and relief swept over us. Then, we thought about the 30 kids who’d been cut, and about their parents. What would they say to their children?
In the 10 years since this first "real" tryout experience for our oldest son, my wife and I have watched our five children go through a similar audition process perhaps 50 times — for ice hockey, baseball, field hockey, lacrosse, as well as theater. Some of our family’s most exciting memories revolve around those moments when Robert, Benjamin, Elizabeth, Charlotte or Katherine received good news about making a team, getting a role in a show or being accepted into a selective program. And thank goodness for those moments, because no matter what my wife or I say to encourage our children after they receive disappointing news, nothing helps them move on better than, one, recollections of times when they did receive good news following a tryout; and, two, certainty that there will be more tryouts and auditions in the future … and some will go their way.
