The middle school tryouts were a joke. My son was on team 1 which spent the whole time on the second field. And for the last two hours, no evaluator had a clipboard in his hands. Not one. The evaluators were yelling instructions to 91 and express kids they know. As one expected, my sense is a majority of spots were/ are predetermined. I get it (to an extent...if a Xtreme stud sucked at tryout, he probably should get a spot in the Pride of LI by reputation). But evaluators....at least try to present that it's a fair tryout. Hold clipboards as you yell out the kids whose names you know. At least parents may think our kids have somewhat of a fair chance and may pony up money again next year.
The joke to me were people that bought down their 70 lbs 6th graders to tryout for this team. My son is in 8th grade is 5'6" and 145lbs and I would not bring him down last year as a 7th grader because I thought it was a waist of time and money and I also felt that he can go as an 8th grader and experience the event once (if he makes it) and if he can't make it as an 8th grader he certainly wasn't going to make it as a 7th grader. Parents need to stop setting your kids up for failure, they need a reality check - people are complaining about the evaluators when half the kids couldn't play. There is no 6th grader on LI that could make Xtreme or Terps and probably not too many 7th graders that could. Do you really think that Per-Puberty Paulie is going to make a Long Island all-star team made up of 8th graders? My guess is that you had 25 kids that will be playing JV this year and probably a couple that will be on their varsities by the end of the year so keep complaining about the evaluators and ignore that your kid is not good enough or is not ready yet.
How many 7th and 6th graders showed up? I know of a limited amount of towns that are fortunate to have both a 6th and a 7th grader who can physically match up to 8th graders and could've try out. (size 5'4"+ 150lbs+) Many of those boys play on some pretty good travel teams. Would they beat out an Extreme Player or Terp; not sure, doubt it. I just hope next year we don't have a replay of the same issues as in the past 2 years.
