Summer tryouts are a pivotal time for junior volleyball clubs—setting the tone for the upcoming season, shaping rosters, and influencing player development. As club directors, it’s crucial to ensure tryouts not only comply with USA Volleyball (USAV) region rules but also foster a spirit of fairness, integrity, and collaboration among neighboring clubs. As an association that provides club directors with resources, education and events to promote the growth of junior volleyball, the JVA defers to USA Volleyball as the national governing body to create and enforce policies.
Here are key best practices to guide your tryout planning and execution.
1. Know and Follow Your USAV Region Tryout Dates
Every USAV region has specific rules governing the timing, structure, and communication of tryouts. Familiarize yourself with these policies early and adhere to them strictly. This includes respecting tryout start dates, observing required blackout periods, and ensuring all athletes have proper membership or waivers in place before participating. Transparent adherence to regional rules protects your club’s reputation and demonstrates respect for the broader volleyball community.
2. Communicate Early and Clearly with Athletes and Parents
Clear communication with athletes, parents, and fellow club directors helps reduce confusion and minimizes scheduling conflicts. Publish your tryout dates, times, and registration process well in advance. Use multiple platforms—website, email, social media—to ensure visibility. Avoid direct messages to athletes on social media, and instead, share reels, stories and posts that promote your club’s culture and information about training, coaches and tryouts.
Consider coordinating with nearby clubs to stagger tryout times or dates, giving athletes a fair chance to explore their options. In many areas, clubs will communicate in advance (as early as February) about their age group tryout dates and times, and work together to allow athletes to tryout at more than one club. Working together before tryouts can prevent conflicts later, such as an athlete committing to one club, and then trying out at another club afterwards.
Prior to tryouts, send out several to families with what to expect during and after tryouts. Suggest that families have a plan going into tryouts to make the acceptance process easier for everyone. For example, families should discuss who their #1 pick is, #2, and so on. This could allow for a quicker yes or no when an offer comes.
3. Inform and Prepare Your Coaching Staff
Ensure that all of your club staff and coaches who are working tryouts are on the same page about their tryout structure, what is expected of them, practice plans, what needs to be communicated and when, and how to achieve high quality and high rep training. When your coaches and staff are all preaching the same mission statement, and showcasing mutual respect and great communication, it represents how the club experience can be for our customers. Hold pre-tryout Zoom meetings to go over the tryout structure from check-in protocols, to practice plan layout, to evaluators/lead coach/time managers, etc. You have limited time to a) evaluate a large number of athletes, b) showcase your club to parents/players, c) extend offers and entice people to join your programs.
4. Prioritize Player Experience and Development
Remember that tryouts are often a player’s first impression of your club. Create a welcoming, organized environment. Provide clear instructions, adequate court space, and experienced evaluators. Encourage your coaches to offer brief feedback when possible, even during tryouts, so players leave with a sense of learning. Whether or not a player makes the team, the experience should be positive and growth-oriented.
Athletes want to feel special, important and valued, and their parents want to feel needed and wanted. Ultimately, many parents are letting their kid make the decision on where they want to play. Emphasize the athlete’s role and their overall experience when you have conversations with the family. Make it personal by hand writing letters to new players, sending personal emails or texts, and invite them to come to your facility, meet and train with one of the coaches to see if it’s a good fit. Consider inviting the family to lunch or a coffee to sit down for a more personal conversation.
5. Foster Healthy Competition and Collaboration
Avoid negative recruiting tactics or disparaging remarks about other clubs. Instead, focus on what makes your program strong—your coaching philosophy, training style, culture, and development track record. The pre-tryout Zoom meetings can also be used to remind coaches and staff of the language you use before, during, and after tryouts. It’s important for coaches and staff to be intentional about educating the parents and athletes on how they can help the players grow this season; they should not speak about other clubs; only about the way they can coach them and help them achieve their goals. For example, “the other club doesn’t have the same training equipment we do” can be communicated “we have some of the best training equipment in the area!”.
Encourage athletes to find the best fit for their goals, even if that means choosing another club. When clubs model mutual respect, it elevates the sport and builds a stronger volleyball community. At the end of the day you want to coach kids who want to play for your club. While you are strongly advocating for and promoting your club, there comes a point when you have to sit back and let the family decide what is best for them. If it’s not your club, then so be it. No hard feelings.
6. Be Transparent in Selection and Offers
Make your evaluation criteria clear. Use objective metrics where possible—such as skill drills, athletic testing, and scrimmage performance—and ensure evaluators are consistent. When extending offers, provide realistic timelines for commitment that align with regional policies. Avoid pressuring athletes into rushed decisions. Transparency builds trust and reduces the likelihood of conflicts or confusion later in the season.
Consider offering or requiring new players to attend a parent/player meeting the day after tryouts so they understand your club program and know what they are committing to. This eliminates the pressure to commit to something that they do not know all the details about. Rather than requiring an on the spot commitment, consider giving the player a 24 hour window of time to commit before you start going to the waitlist. Pressuring players to commit at tryouts can lead to more problems down the road.
7. Athlete reputation and respectful relationships with other clubs
Be mindful of an athlete’s reputation following them from club to club. If a family has broken another club’s code of conduct, they most likely will do it at your club as well. There are instances that athletes come to your club or leave your programs with an outstanding debt. If you stay in communication with other local clubs about outstanding payments being due and other information relating to any issues, it may help your club collect outstanding debts as well as help another club collect their debts.
That being said, give the athlete the benefit of the doubt since they are just kids; the parents are usually the driving force when it comes to conflicts. If the reputation following the athlete is serious enough, speak with the coaches of the appropriate age group and let them know your decision to not allow this athlete at your club. If you have athletes on your current tryout registration waitlist who caused issues during offer acceptance or quit their team mid-season at your club or another club these are red flags. Decide in advance whether you are willing to offer a clean slate if they are new to your club and do end up getting picked by during your tryouts. If so, a conversation with the family may be helpful prior to an offer.
At the end the day, you can only control what is in your gym and how you act on the court. You cannot control what other clubs say or do. Focus on improving the experience for your athletes, maintaining your club’s culture, and remain competitive along the way.
Running successful summer tryouts is about more than assembling a team—it’s about fostering a positive experience for young athletes and strengthening the integrity of your volleyball community. By leading with respect, clarity, and a player-first mindset, club directors can create a tryout environment that benefits everyone involved.
This article is written by Briana Schunzel, JVA Director of Education and Partner Development, in collaboration with numerous JVA member clubs from different areas of the country.
