To Cut or not to Cut

To cut or not to cut, that is the question.

One of the most difficult decisions that needs to be made by travel team coordinators is "What do I do if there are more kids than I need for my teams."  The choices are difficult.  On the one hand you don't want to cut kids, especially at a young age.  On the other hand, you can't carry more than 10 players on one team so do you have enough coaches to allow you to form 2 teams?  What happens if your numbers are at 12-14.  You can't have 2 teams of 6.  It increases the risk that you will forfeit some games because some kids won't make it to all games.  What do you do?

I like to follow the below template when making my decisions:
  1. If I have enough players to form 2 teams then I will.  I want to make sure I have at least 16 players but more preferably 18-20 to do this.  This way I can get 2 teams of 9 or 10.  To do this, we need capable coaches for both teams.  Do not just find anyone off the street to coach.  Parents are paying good money for this experience and they deserve some quality.
  2. If you only have 12-15 players then you should go with 1 team and have all kids show up to practice.  With this large amount of kids on the squad, you will schedule a couple more shootouts or games and have a dress list for each game.  Your goal is to make sure that all players play the same amount of games.  So if you promise 6 shootouts for the season you may schedule 8 shootouts in order to get everyone 6 shootouts.  The dress list will vary week by week and everyone from your best players to your least talented must be prepared to sit out a couple of tournaments.  I like to announce the dress list at the beginning of the week as this gives me  chance to prepare the 10 players I'm dressing.  All players must come to practice even on weeks they are not playing as fundamentals will be worked on in all practices.
As you can see by the 2 options above.  I don't like to cut kids.  It makes no sense to cut kids who are 10 years old.  How do you know how this kid will progress with instruction.  At the end of the day that should be why we coach kids in grade school.  It's not about the wins but rather about the development.

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