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
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.