Tryout Evaluations: Player Assessment Tools For Coaches (Youth-Beyond)
Published on: 8/20/26
Last Updated: 8/19/26
Author: Thalia Urena
Player Evaluations: Use during tryouts, mid-season assessments, and end-of-season assessments.
As a coach the most important tools to use are our evaluation/assessment tools. Without them, it can be hard to gauge your “why” behind each of your decisions. Furthermore, evaluations can aid coaches in tracking progress (or lack thereof) for athletes when making decisions (line-up, team, captain, etc. decisions).
In this blog post I will go over my step-by-step process of conducting player evaluations. This can be used at any point of the season (pre, mid, post season analysis, etc.) but my ETSY guide will focus on Tryout evaluations as well.
1) Paperwork & Numbers
2) Tryout Evaluations [A step by step guide]
3) Conducting Tryout Evaluations (Live!)
4) Pre/Mid/Post Season Evaluations [A step by step guide]
5) Conducting Pre/Mid/Post Season Evaluations
1) Paperwork & Numbers
When conducting player evaluations in general you need to know a few things prior to conducting them. For instance, if you are looking to do tryout evaluations you will need to know how many athletes are trying out, how many can fit on each team, and how many athletes will be cut (if applicable).
If you’re doing pre/mid/post season player evaluations, then you will need to know how many athletes you’re evaluating (all teams, just varsity, etc.) and also find statistics if conducting mid or post season evaluations to help show (hopeful) progress in that athlete, and areas for improvement.
Once you have this information you can find the proper paperwork to help guide your assessments/evaluations.
Below is a link to my ETSY guide which includes a full tryout evaluation template (blank and partially filled out options), and detailed pre/mid/post season player evaluation templates:
Link:
2) Tryout Evaluations: 5 Step Guide
Tryout evaluations take a lot of prep work as this assessment involves the largest number you will evaluate all season. Thankfully I have done the hard work of creating templates (partially filled out, and also blank ones) to save you a few hours of prep work!
Link to Etsy Tryout & player evaluation:
In the first step of this blog post we learned about finding out the number of athletes in tryouts you’ll be evaluating. For school tryouts you typically get this information from your athletic director who assists in clearing students to attend tryouts (updated physical, payment if applicable, etc). Once you have this number you can ensure plenty of space in your evaluation guides.
Find out information on whos trying out: Name, grade/age, returning or non-returning player
Add names & info to evaluation sheet: Name & grade
Ensure enough evaluation sheets:[For example, for a 3 day tryout you’d need 3 full & separate evaluation sheets with all athletes names/info on it that are trying out]
Assign numbers to each athlete: For example, if you have 52 athletes written down, also meaning 52 columns, then you’d number each athlete 1-52.
During tryouts you will give nametags to each athlete with ONLY their corresponding number on it… so ensure the numbers on all coach’s evaluation sheets are aligned with their names/name tags.
3) Conducting Tryout Evaluations (Live!)
Now that we’ve done the tedious prep work for tryout evaluations we can move into how it physically looks to successfully utilize our evaluation sheets during and after tryouts.
Ensure you printed enough evaluation sheets for all coaching staff:Yes… that means if you created columned evaluation sheets for 52 kids, you need to print enough packets for each coach to evaluate all 1-52 kids.
Hit each key point of volleyball:If you utilize my Etsy tryout schedule (drills, timing, etc.) then you will hit all key points of volleyball (serving, hitting, passing, setting, & sometimes blocking).
If you also utilize this tryout/player evaluation Etsy guide I made you’ll have Columbs to assess every athlete… however if you don’t use my guide, you just need to ensure every athlete has a corresponding Columb to assess the separate major areas (passing, hitting, etc.).
Ensure you get information on each athlete for each Columb:Did you get athlete #14’s serving ability? Athlete #52’s passing ability? As each tryout day goes on you need to ensure before each drill ends that you got valuable information written down for all athletes applicable. A quick note defining their current ability in that skill area is vital for each athlete involved in the drill.
Another idea is to rank each area as you see it on a scale of 0-3.
0 = needs 101 basics/fundamental training
1 = Needs improvement
2 = Skilled but minor issues noticed
3 = Mastered the skill (age appropriate “mastered”)
Something to help with this is when numerous courts are running one drill with different coaches… this helps evaluations stay efficient.
Detailed one-on-one player evaluations:Unsure about a certain athlete? You can utilize my tryout evaluation guide which has singular player evaluation sheets which help you dive deeper on a particular athletes strengths and weaknesses. This also helps you compare athletes to other athletes you utilized the one-on-one evaluation sheet for.
4) Pre/Mid/Post Season Evaluations: 4 step guide
Player evaluations conducted for pre/mid/post season can look similar to tryout evaluations but are much less tedious, and they can feel more personable. Let’s go over our simple 5 step guide on conducting pre, mid, and post season player evaluations.
Which teams/athletes are you evaluating?Are you evaluating only your Varsity team for mid-season? Are you a Jv coach evaluating your Jv team for post season? Are you a assistant coach evaluating all teams for the pre-season? Whatever the numbers may be, find out which athletes you will be evaluating and write them down.
Create & print out evaluation sheets.You must ask the same questions to each athlete to make things fair. So, ensure you write/type up at least 5-10 questions that will be helpful to ask each athlete you’re evaluating.
Then print out enough packets for each interview (Ex: interviewing half the team day 1, 8 kids, so print out 8 full evaluations packets, or 10 for good measure).
Find & write out current statistics (if applicable).If conducting mid, or post season evaluations you should find each player’s individual updated season statistics to go over with them. If conducting pre-season evaluations and you coached this same team last season, you can grab last season’s statistics to go over with them.
Choose an appropriate day to conduct evaluations.If you have a big conference game on Tuesday, you’ll likely not want to conduct player evaluations on Monday’s practice. Try to choose a day where there aren’t any big games coming up, like a weekend practice. Once you’ve chosen a day you can let your team know that is when evaluations will be happening.
5) Conducting Pre/Mid/Post Season Evaluations
Conducting pre, mid, or post season evaluations will be easier than tryout assessments as it involves less steps. So, lets move right into how to conduct these seasonal evaluations.
Create a sign up list for player evaluations.This can simply be you writing each athlete’s name down and crossing their name off once their evaluation is completed. This ensures nobody is forgotten.
Ensure each athlete gets the same allotment of time. It would be unfair if “Sarah” got 20 minutes with you while “May” got 10 minutes, so create a timeframe that athletes cannot exceed. For example, 15-minute player evaluations usually are enough time.
If an athlete naturally finishes early (10 minutes & not full 15 minutes) that would be okay. However, allotting more time to an athlete when cutting off others at the max time would be considered unfair.
Ensure questions include goals, and an open-ended forum.Ask your athletes their goals for the season/next season. Asking open ended questions helps us as coaches see their personalities but also any concerns can be brought up and addressed on either end (player or coach).
Go over their current or past season statistics (if applicable).
In Conclusion…
Theres a lot that goes into evaluations including prep work, the actual evaluating, grabbing statistics, finding goals, etc. Even with this tedious work it is vital to always conduct thoughtful tryout, and or mid/pre/post season evaluations as it can help in numerous areas. If you coach for a big school, there will likely be parents who will question your decisions… but having detailed assessments/feedback creates no room for questions as every decision you’ve made as a coach has data to back it up.
If you don’t want to do the hours of work to create your tryout, or pre/mid/post season evaluations then be sure to check out my Etsy shop which has my NEW and detailed tryout & seasonal player evaluation guide:
LINK:
Thank you to one of my tiktok followers who messaged me asking to create a tryout evaluation guide… I hope this helps you and anyone else it comes across!
See you in the next post!
Warmly,
-Coach T