Put yourself in the following situation for a moment. Imagine walking into the gym or onto the field confident and ready to shine, but after all the hard work you just put in, realizing that someone who put in half the effort you did got chosen for a team instead. How would that make you feel? You would be demotivated or maybe even upset, right? This happens all the time during WJ tryouts.
What’s the point of trying out for a sport if the coach already knows who they want on the team? Every year multiple students try out for sports they want to play, but if they aren’t on the coaches’ radars before trying out, they likely won’t make the team.
Tryouts were created for coaches to find talent among a group of students. They should be an equal opportunity for all students to show their skills and be rewarded, but recently, this hasn’t been the case.
“Tryouts are for sure biased, but if you make the team, [that’s] nice. And if you don’t make the team, at least you tried I guess,” junior Nathaniel Legesse said.
The basketball team is especially biased when it comes to making the team. Since the roster is smaller, basketball coaches are mostly looking for their favorite students who were previously on the team, students who had a chance to make relationships with coaches during off-season workouts, or even students who have connections to staff members.
Tryouts would definitely be better if there weren’t any advantages giving students leverage to make the team and if favoritism was put aside. At this point it’s probably impossible to resolve this problem, but if it weren’t, eliminating favoritism would be the best solution. Favoritism is a large factor in choosing players, but if there were no favoritism or biases all people would have an equal chance of being chosen.
If coaches know one student better than the next, there is no point in tryouts existing. Some students find it disappointing that they need to have connections for their talent to be recognized.
“You kind of have to do networking for a spot, which is pretty annoying,” Legesse said.
If a student doesn’t have connections, they would probably have to be a pro-level athlete to be picked. That student would need to be the next Lebron James to stand out among the students with connections, making it harder and almost unrealistic to be recognized.This can make tryouts stressful because one student would have to work harder than another for the same position, which can cause animosity or friction between teammates. If there were animosity between students, it would most likely be out of envy or jealousy due to one making the team the easy way and one not making the team at all.
