While every sport drastically differs from one another, the process of making the team and seeing which level you are at remains the same; this is a process called tryouts. 

  The 2020 girls soccer team held their tryouts from March 2-6 and ended it with the big reveal of teams. Olivia Divine, junior, said, “Coaches had us go through drills that helped show off a certain skill.” While for a lot of returning varsity players, tryouts may seem like a broken record stuck on repeat, for many underclassmen, it’s a chance to show the coaches you belong at a high level of the game. “Tryouts are a great way for the coaches to study each athlete’s play,” said Divine.

  In most cases, tryouts are just one way for a coach to make an assessment of an athlete. However, most of the time decisions are made before they even start based on the months of preseason leading to tryouts, as well as performances in prior years. Sidney Cullinan, junior, said, “The coaches ran us a lot in the preseason to get us into shape so we can focus more on play during tryouts.” 

  Tryouts are a good way to show off some skills, but sometimes, mother nature has other ideas as it did in 2020, forcing the program to practice on half of a field at West Ridge for the first two days of tryouts. This shows the importance of having a good preseason to lessen the stress of a tryout. “The coaches did a lot of 1v1 and smaller space drills where they could see our skills,” said Cullinan. 

  The varsity team opens up its season on March 14 facing Chatfield as they strive to build off their 6-8-1 record in 2019, placing 28th in the Colorado Class 5A Rankings and barely missing out on playoffs. 

  UPDATE:  This game and the season has been suspended due to the coronavirus. The state of the season will be re-evaluated April 6.

Nathan Kuhta, Publicity Chair