Volleyball Tryouts: The Right Way to Cut Players (Without Destroying Them)

How you handle cuts says as much about your training as it does about her talent. Learn more here, coach → https://coachfreetraining.com

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⏰ Key Timestamps:
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00:00 Introduction
00:29 Reduce Anxiety Early
03:49 Avoid Surprises
05:55 Setting Evaluation Criteria
07:32 Evaluating Intangibles
10:13 Communicating Teams and Cuts
13:53 Final Thoughts

👋🏼 I'm Coach Bre — a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion.

In this video, I break down how I make tryout cuts after 14 years of coaching and four state championships, including decisions I still think about years later.

This episode covers the evaluation system I built so those decisions come from data and clarity, not just a gut call under pressure.

What You'll Learn:
✅ Why real evaluation starts in the summer, not on day one of tryouts
✅ The FAQ document that gets every athlete and parent on the same page about how cuts work before tryouts begin
✅ How a two-day structure gives you the data to back up a hard decision
✅  Why I stopped fitness testing and what I watch instead to decide who makes the team
✅ How to evaluate leadership and mental toughness without cutting a player for a skill you're going to teach her anyway

💬 Coaches — comment below: what's the hardest cut you've ever had to make, and how did you handle telling her?

P.S. A few stats worth knowing:

⚡️Larger high schools tend to cut more athletes than smaller ones, which is linked to earlier single-sport specialization in female high school volleyball players. (UW-Madison School of Education, 2026)

⚡️A study of 22 head coaches found deselection happens in four distinct phases, and coaches often lean on intuition when evaluation criteria run into uncertainty. (Dunn, McHugh & Holt, The Sport Psychologist, 2016)

⚡️A growing body of research now supports mental toughness as a trainable skill, not a fixed trait athletes are simply born with. (American College of Sports Medicine, 2025)

The Coach Her Game YouTube channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge.

#mentalperformance #coachinggirls #youthathletics #tryoutcuts #volleyballcoach

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

Tryout season is upon us, and tryouts are super emotional for athletes, for parents, and for us as coaches. So if you have ever dreaded tryouts like I have, and honestly still do, this episode is for you. I'm gonna be breaking down tryout best practices and the things that have worked for me over the past 14 years of being a head coach, kind of nail it down to a couple of things that really help the tryout process go a lot smoother and less stressful for everyone involved. So let's get into it. Part one- Let's reduce the anxiety ahead of time for athletes and parents. And how do we do this? One of the biggest mistakes as coaches is that we assume athletes know and parents know what we are looking for in tryouts. And so to reduce some of that anxiety, because ultimately you want your players to play their best, and if they are having too much anxiety and there's a lot of nerves happening, they're probably not going to play their best. So start communicating your expectations early, including what you are evaluating. So right now, currently, I'm in my summer season, so we've got tryouts in, four weeks. And I'm talking to all the players who are showing up to the summer training about what I'm gonna be looking for and what coaches are looking for when it comes to tryouts, so that they know and it's crystal clear what that's all gonna be. And I'm gonna go into detail in step two on what things I look for as a coach and what I'm communicating. But what we know is that the more that they can understand what the whole process is going to be like, the better it's gonna be for them coming in. And that can even mean the structure, "It's two days of tryouts. It's four hours each day. We're going to be evaluating all of the skills. It's normal to be nervous about this. Nerves mean that you care." Um, and so all of those things are really important to communicate ahead of time. Now, the other thing that I'm doing with my athletes right now in the summer is slowly incorporating some mental training skills so that they're prepared for tryouts because, like I said, they're super stressed, and most athletes don't have very good ways to handle stress and play well. They don't really know how to come back fast from mistakes, even though you probably say as a coach, "I'm not looking at the mistake. I'm looking at how you respond." And they're like, "Yeah, I don't really know how to respond without, spiraling and getting in my own head." So I slowly start to incorporate some of these mental training skills, even over the summer. We do our full-blown mental training program in season. It literally takes, 20 minutes a week. But I start to drop some of these skills, including the snapback routine, so that they have some things that they can rely on when they head into tryouts. Now, obviously, you won't see all of your players in the summer before they tryout. You'll get there on day one of tryouts, and you'll have girls show up that you've never even heard of before, and that's fine, too. But giving my kids mental training skills, like even simple things, so like the snapback routine, on how to get over a mistake fast with a breath, a reset word, a reset signal, is really valuable for them to be able to kind of, like, calm, settle in, so I can see how they're playing. You know, you've got two days of tryouts, or maybe even less than that, and you're not seeing the best performance out of athletes, and now you make decisions based on that. And now, a few weeks into the season, you're like, "Dang, I didn't see that at tryouts. If I would've seen that, I would've put her on a higher team," or whatever, okay? And so that's why giving your players these skills helps them in tryouts, but obviously helps them in the season as well. So if you wanna learn simple ways that you can do that, including the snapback routine, head to our free training for coaches. It's called coachfreetraining.com. I break down the simple mental training tools that I... incorporate in the summer and also into my season. And then, talk about the plug and play Elite Mental Game for teams, which is our plug and play program for high school coaches to easily implement mental training without having to spend a ton of time Without having to be a sports psychologist, like we make it super easy for you. So coachretraining.com is where you can handle that. All right, so that's part one. Try and communicate early to reduce some of the anxiety for athletes and parents right out the gate. Okay, another one kind of similar to that is to avoid surprises. We don't like to be surprised when it comes to this. So most of the drama that comes with tryouts come from unmet expectations. Yes, there's gonna be, if you're in a program where you have to make cuts, there's gonna be disappointments and all that. And athletes and parents can handle disappointments. It's the surprises that kind of catch them off guard. Unmet expectations usually come from poor communication. So some things that you really need to know as a coach before tryouts, like heading into it, especially if you're a new coach or maybe you have a new AD like I do this season, knowing things like how many players can you take on a team. So for volleyball, I am choosing three teams with my coaches, and each team has 12 players, but can I carry 13? Can I carry 14? Is there a strict rule? What does that impact? Know ahead of time going into it. And you can share that with athletes too, so that they know, "Okay, hey, there's 60 girls that are here, but she can only take 12 per team. That's 36." And you've gotta know. You don't wanna be heading in being like, "Can I take 12, or do I... Can I take 16? Or am I capped at..." Whatever, okay. Are returning varsity players guaranteed a spot? If they made varsity last year, do they make varsity this year? What's that about? Okay, do seniors have to be on varsity? Can they make another team? Are there cuts? How are cuts being handled? Who is making the decisions? All of those questions seem very simple, but as a coach, you've gotta know going into tryouts. The what is my situation? And can I communicate this early so that there's not surprises, and, everybody knows like this is what's, this is what it is. I often communicate in the summer as well, I have 12 spots for varsity. I have seven returning players. That means that there's five vacant spots. What I'm looking for in those five spots are an outside hitter, a middle, and two DS's or something like that. I think I'm missing one, and maybe a setter. Like letting them know ahead of time, "Here's what I'm looking for." That just helps a lot so that they can get their arms around that idea of "Oh, well, if I am a middle, she's not looking for a middle." They can see the writing on the wall. Or they know "Oh, wow, they're... She's looking for two DS's," and there's 12 who are gonna be trying out. Like you can help them, and not to be a huge like surprise when it comes to tryout. So communicating that early is also really important. All right, this next part, probably the most important. What's your evaluation criteria, and what are you looking for in your positions and in the people that are going to be on your team? Don't go by feel, although that's part of it. Like your judgment, and what you see and what you trust as like the, the, the best makeup of the team obviously weighs a lot, but you also gotta go by standards. If you're on a team or in a school like I am, where we do have to justify the reasons for the people who make the team and don't make the team, you need to have some sort of criteria. So- I like to think of it like job descriptions. And so for varsity players on my team, I have it all listed out. For a setter, I'm looking for you to be able to locate the ball, deliver a hittable set, communicate with your hitters. Okay, those are, like, the three big things that I'm looking for. For outsides, I need you to be able to score, so you have to be able to hit and earn points, pass well in serve receive, and hit out of system. Okay? I have the same thing for middle blockers, for liberos, DSes. You don't need a 10-pa- 10-page rubric, but you do need to have standards on, "This is what I'm looking for." I stat some things. I know it can get overwhelming. That's where it's helpful to have extra hands at tryouts so that, I sometimes have returning players or, volunteers come in to run, facilitate the drills so that I'm not having to facilitate and evaluate at the same time. So that really helps so that you can, stat if you need to. But having criteria and then ranking based on that criteria is really important so that you have some reasons for your choices. And it's okay to share with parents. Yes, we use role-based criteria, but we also use coaching judgment to make final decisions. And no, it's not a perfect science, but it's fair and it's very transparent, right? So what is your evaluation system? What are the What are you looking for? Two or three things in each of, the positions that you're choosing on. What are those things, and communicate those. All right, the intangibles. Yes, there is skill, but then obviously as coaches we're looking at intangibles as well, and you know that's what separates two players. Especially if you're making decisions between players of equal skill, you're going to be looking at things like their ability to bounce back fast after mistakes, their ability to be a good teammate, how they're communicating, their leadership. Like, all of those things are really important. So I'm looking as coach, like, how do they respond to mistakes? How do they respond to coaching from me? How do they communicate? How do they handle pressure? Do they compete or do they crumble? And so now- I start to train some of these skills because, the good and the bad of it is that, yeah, I'm looking for those things, but I also realize as a coach that these are things that can be trained, and some of these athletes haven't learned these skills yet. So it's my job as a coach to also train some of these skills, like how to get over mistakes, how to be resilient, how to deal with pressure. So while I am ev- evaluating some of these things, I'm also realizing that, hey, I have a system to train these things in my season. And so if it's not going to be... if I have a really great player and, a hitter who is, just crushing it, and she's gonna help our team physically, but she struggles under pressure a little bit, I know that as a coach, I'm gonna take her because I have a way to train that in season. We intentionally train the mental side of the game. And about 20 minutes a week, we dedicate to, part of practice time on Mondays to train those skills, and I know that it works. So I'm gonna take a player who is, really physically good, knowing that, I'm gonna be able to train her mental game as well. So I talked about it before, but if you head to coachfreetraining.com, that is our free training for coaches where I break down exactly how I do it. And I do it in a way where it's not spending a lot of your practice time. It's not requiring a whole lot of prep from you as a coach. You literally plug and play, play the videos, lead a short discussion. It's taken average players from, average, ability to, just one, that one next level up, where they're able to compete. They're able to perform, not fall apart under pressure. We've leaned on these skills. We've won four state championships consecutively, and especially this past one, it was like, oh, wow, that really made a difference that what we were training, weekly in our gym showed up in the state championship match when they were down and had to fight back. And we were super resilient in the face of seemingly, really tough odds to come back. So anyways, if you wanna learn how to do that in your program, coachfreetraining.com is where you go. But yes, you are also evaluating some of those intangibles so that you can, build a team that is coachable, that, are full of good teammates, who are communicators, who are leaders. But also knowing that, hey, I've got a way to train the mental side of the game, so I know that I can take a player who's physically really good, and I'm gonna make them even better b- because of the mental training that I'm doing in my gym. Okay. Now how to communicate teams in cuts. This is a... This is gonna be a doozy, right? So first of all, I mean, this is the hardest part. Okay? First of all, set a timeline Let athletes know, let's par- let parents know when cuts are gonna be communicated. We do our tryouts over the course of two days, so sometimes we do cut, depending on how many we have, on the first day so that we, can thin the herd for the second day and really take a closer look at people. And that's only if we have, a lot of players, and it's just very obvious, just because we have, limited spots, okay? But set a timeline. Here's how I've done it. This may or may not work for you, because I don't like posting lists. I don't like emailing things out, because I like to be able to give... If they, if athletes have the courage to come out and try out, They deserve to, be talked to face-to-face, and given some feedback. Not all athletes would actually choose that, though. They're like, "Just send an email so I don't have to deal with it." But I think that's also part of us developing a skill in athletes to be able to handle feedback and have tough conversations or hear tough feedback. So I think it's okay. Although athletes might not always want it, it's like, ultimately, we owe it to them to give them a little bit of feedback as well. So what I do on the last day, I have athletes that are, they're playing in the gym, and we've got our teams finally made. My coaches and I have deliberated, and we've got our teams. I call, players in, out into the hallway one at a time. I have them bring their bags with them so that it's not this awkwardness of, going back into the gym, grabbing their bags, and leaving if they got cut. And I give them the information, then I give them the choice. If they got cut, I say, you can go back in and play," like some do, 'cause they're like, "I just wanna play." "Or you can go, and call your parents and be picked up." But in that conversation, if you are cutting somebody, I, first of all, thank them and give them props for showing up. I talk about why. I say, "Unfortunately, we don't have a spot for you on the roster." I give them, one reason why and what they can work on. And then I also give them a little piece of paper, that they hopefully will share with their parents. It has some of those notes on it, but it also has, the list of other sports that they can still either try out for or that are no-cut sports that they can participate in. They're leaving with something that they can also m- may or may not share with their parents, but they can if they want. And so that, they have the information moving forward on what they can do. So it's never easy. I do find that this works all right with, calling people in. It does, players are gonna talk and they're like, "Oh, did you see who went out?" Or, "Did they come back?" And, they're starting to piece things together. But then at the end, I call the teams, and then they meet with their coach for a second. So that's what I found works for me. I don't like announcing teams and then having this big group of people who are just like, "Oh, my name didn't get called. I guess I'm cut. It's up to you, how it works best with your program. I will say, give them the, just, give them the opportunity to hear from you and hear from you face to face, if they didn't make a team. So obviously, you're going to have, people who are happy, people who are sad, people who are disappointed, and all of the other things. Make yourself av- s- self available as a coach to chat through some of those things. Understand that you might get parent emails, and try and see it through the lens of they just really want the best for their kid, and they're also heartbroken for their kid as well. That's also why you have evaluations and you have data, to back up some of the decisions that you make. But, yeah, we don't wanna just ghost people or, just post a list and have it that way, okay? I say, all that to say, if you do it differently in your gym and it works, I would love to hear about it. Comment below if you're watching this on YouTube. What do you do that's working for you? What are your best practices for tryouts? What has worked? Over the past, 14 years, I have found that tryouts become easier when you clearly communicate everything we talked about. Clearly communicate, you have an evaluation system, and, you have a way to make cuts and make decisions in a way that, preserves player dignity as well. Okay. As I mentioned, if you want to know more about how I train mental skills throughout the summer, also in the season, so that after you make those teams, you are also supporting them on those intangibles, like coming back from mistakes. And I say they're intangibles, but they are pretty tangible, because you can see it when your team doesn't have those skills. And I've been in that situation as a coach more times than I can count, where we lost games that we were, like, up, and we blew the lead, and it wasn't because it was a lack of talent or skill. It was because of what was happening between our ears. So if you want skills on how to train this with your team in a really simple way, go to coachbretraining.com. All right, I'm Coach Bre. This is the Coach Your Game Podcast, and I'll see you in the next episode