Promote. The first step in choosing great team members is to get a lot of people to tryout so that you have a variety of people to choose from. Find ways to promote the team and show people that tryout season is coming up at least a few weeks beforehand so that people can make plans to attend practices. Here are some ways that you can promote the team.

1) Make nice posters around your school to show people that tryouts are coming up soon.

2) Put in announcements. Many schools have announcements or a daily bulletin. Somehow convey the information across the school so that people know.

3) Participate in school events to gain recognition. It helps to announce immediately after a pep assembly performance that tryouts are coming up; leave a signup sheet in various places of your school so that you have people’s names and phone numbers. You can then contact them with more information.

4) Tell all current team members to find five new people to try out for the team.

5) Pretty much anything else you can think of will work! Leave comments if you have suggestions.

Examine willingness to learn. There is a lot to learn once someone makes the team. Examine how willing someone is to learn all this material.

Examine work ethic. In addition to being willing to learn, people must be willing to practice. You must examine how hard a person works and how much they will practice. You can make notes of how people are improving from day to day of the tryout process. Those who practiced the most will be noticeably better than those who did not practice at all.

Examine potential. It’s not necessarily about how good the person is during tryouts; in fact, it’s about how good a person can be once competition/performance season arrives. Thus, it is important to examine how “good” a person will be by this time.

Examine flexibility. Many teams will examine how flexible people are at the time of tryouts (for example, if they are able to do the splits or not). I don’t think that this is absolutely necessary because flexibility can be developed if a person has a good work ethic, stretches a lot, and practices frequently.

Things to consider beforehand

Team size. How big do you want your team to be? There are advantages to having a small, medium, or large team.

Team type. Many teams will change what type of dance they are performing. For instance, a drill team may switch to becoming a pom team or visa versa. You must consider this before the tryout process.

Team cost. Potential team members must know how much it will cost to be on the team, in terms of time and money. They will need to know the commitment that needs to be made. At least have an estimate on how much team uniforms will cost as they are not cheap.

Suggestions.

Have a parent meeting. Let parents know what their children are doing. Most parents will be paying for uniforms, so be ready to tell them what the financial cost is.

Make it easy to get to the tryout process. This doesn’t mean that making the team should be easy. It means that if a person wants to try out, all she needs to do is fill out a few forms. If you add too much paperwork, less people will be willing to try out. Who wants to fill out lots of paperwork without knowing for certain that they will make the team?

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