Try out facilities

In Illinois, our situation is similar to yours; we hold indoor tryouts in February. Usually, we schedule these on the last two Saturdays in the month. To operate the tryouts, we rent (we book the space in September) the gymnasium and field house at one of our local high schools. By this date, basketball season is winding down, and we normally have the opportunity to work around any playoff/post-season tournament games.

For the tryouts, we use the same facilities as the varsity baseball team. We set up four skill stations (outfield, infield, hitting, pitching/base running), schedule all 200+ players, and run them through a 90-minute tryout in groups of 30-40 players (subdivided into 4 groups). The tryout is set up like a practice session; it is fast-paced, fun, and the kids get a lot of reps at each station. Each player is graded by a panel of evaluators; the scores of all evaluators are submitted to the tryout coordinator and final player rankings are calculated. The rankings are used to conduct our player drafts.

So our managers/coaches can observe the tryouts, we hire the high school coach and his players to conduct the tryout. They operate the stations and interact with the kids. Often, they will provide instruction and tips to the players as they try out. The varsity kids wear their uniforms, and the younger kids are very excited about the involvement of these teenage super heroes. When our varsity team is unable to participate, we hire a local travel team organization to run the tryout. The results have been very good. The tryouts run smoothly, and it’s good PR for the varsity and/or travel team.

If things can’t be worked out with your high school, the local community and/or junior college is another good location. The basic rule we follow is to seek out a location where teams actually practice and play baseball indoors. The cost for all this is about $500. In our league we consider this money well spent.

Respectfully,
Joe Zander