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LBA Evaluation Tryout and Draft

Recreation Evaluation Tryouts

Everyone will make a team who has registered. The tryouts are used to do our best to make the league more competitively balanced, as each team will be represented by a coach who will do their own independent evaluation of skills as players go through hitting, fielding and throwing stations. Those dates and times for the evaluation days will be announced via email and on the web site to all families registered, with the event happening in March. In the event of adverse weather, tryouts will be rescheduled. Tryouts will go until completed (expect 1.5-3 hours) for 10U, 12U and 14U (8U are assigned a team randomly).

At the evaluation tryout, all kids are given a number that corresponds to the order they registered in the system. The numbers (no names) are the only thing given to coaches during the tryout though they may be familiar with kids who played for them before or they have seen in the league, which is very normal. The only people at the evaluation with access to the numbers are the draft director and registration people. The logs of who checked in are collected to make sure the draft director knows who was evaluated and who was not, so the draft director is the only LBA person in possession of the final list of who is drafted and who is a random pick.

All registered coaches are allowed to watch and evaluate in any method they so chose and to prepare to draft the kids that they feel are best for their team. As each kid is evaluated, a number is called out from their hat/jersey to correspond to the list.

Team Formation

Teams will be drafted the following week by the coaches in an event scheduled by LBA. The draft list is prepared for the coaches that eliminates coaches' kids (each team is allowed 2 free coaches kids and 1 sponsor designated child, if requested for the sponsored team) and provided at the draft. A chart of the numbers of the kids that were not at the tryouts is also provided, as they are drafted by number only (no names revealed until they are picked at the draft).

Rules for the Loveland Baseball Draft

  • There will be a blind draw for the draft order. The team that draws the #1 will have the first pick, in the first round, #2 the second, and so on.
  • The draft will be a “snake” format, with the order reversing after the first round (No. 7 draft will have the #7 and #8 pick, then No. 6 will have the #9 pick, and so on)
  • Any team having more than two assigned players loses their first pick of the draft and will rejoin the draft at the appropriate place in round two or three. (Blacked out numbers are coaches’ kids or sponsor-designated kids).
  • For those teams without two assigned players, they will receive the appropriate amount of compensatory picks after the fourth (4th) round (and it will be handled in draft order). If you have one assigned player, you will receive two draft picks. If you have two assigned players, you will have one draft pick.
  • If you draft a sibling, you will get both players on your team and lose your next draft pick
  • After all players that tried out have been drafted, the next in order will receive the first “bucket pick” (choose a number on screen - corresponding numbers in blue background). The bucket picks will continue until the “bucket” is empty.
  • If there are late additions to the league, those players will be assigned to the team next in the draft order as they come in to keep teams balanced in terms of size.

Unfortunately, we are unable to honor requests for friends to play together. The only ability for players to be put together is 1.) if you have two children in the same age group and want them on the same team or 2.) the Head coach and one assistant coach can lock their own children into a team to a maximum of three players pre-set on the team, including a potential sponsors pick. Otherwise, doing so tends to significantly alter the competitive balance of the league.