Team reneges after extending offer

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Jul 28, 2021
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As many parents know, tryouts are not easy. You spend hours researching the best teams for your child, figuring out the time and date for each tryout, driving from one tryout to another, then patiently spending your entire evening in that tryout. Repeat and wash for however many tryouts you have to do until your child gets a spot.

DD has been playing on A-teams in our previous town. We moved back to Southeastern PA 2 years ago in Sept. At that point, all the tryouts were over, so she had to settle on a local travel team. With COVID-19 shutdown, there weren't too many tryouts last year, so she played on this local team for another year. Tryouts are finally on the way this July, so we researched for the top teams in this area and scheduled several private tryouts for her. For one of her top choices, she attended a private tryout and one of their open tryout, and was immediately offered a spot right then and there. Since this was her top choice, she accepted immediately, and we stopped going to other tryouts now that she has secured a spot on her top choice.

A week later while we were away on vacation, they emailed (not called) that they were pulling the team DD would be on. Needless to say, our vacation was ruined.

There was another organization that was also her top choice, and they had asked her to come back for another tryout after an initial review, and we turned it down due to this one offer. We are now scrambling to schedule another tryout with that other organization and hoping that they still have a spot.

We also found out from others that this organization is known for this dirty trick. Instead of making sure they have enough coaches to create a team, they first lock up the best prospects, and then if they can't find coaches, they would pull the team, leaving 10-11 girls with nowhere else to go. In the meantime, they lock up the best prospects so other organizations won't have them. How many top players quit the sport after experiencing this with this org? We will never know. I only know that DD lost her faith in this sport and is now seriously thinking about focusing on another sport instead.
 
Last edited:
May 6, 2015
2,397
113
I would go ahead and publicize the name of the org, here, and on social media. gotta shame for crap like this or they will keep doing it.

so sorry to hear about the situation you are in. how SE are you in PA, is JErsey or DE possible? I would also get on out on social media and say DD is looking for new home, and put in details of her previous A level experience.
 
Aug 18, 2018
195
28
Sorry to hear that. I would still contact the team you politely declined. Explain situation. Accepting an offer when there were no others and honoring that commitment is nothing to be ashamed of. Plus as you had committed you did not want to waste that coaches time.
Also, if this is a known issue the other coach would know the deal too.

Honesty and being straight forward; then let the chips fall as they do.

Good luck.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk
 
Jan 27, 2010
1,871
83
NJ
While it sucks to have to go hat in hand to the second team, it happens. I had to do it after DD was offered a spot and we turned it down. Through no fault of coach 1 the team she wanted to join could not continue. It's not fun but it's either that or start from scratch with some other teams.
 
Dec 2, 2013
3,409
113
Texas
Sounds like a blessing in disguise. When DD went for her gauntlet of tryouts in 8th grade, we hit 5 different teams totalling 22 hours of workouts in the middle of August. The one team that was right around the corner, didn't bother calling. She boo hoo'd about it, but we still kept going. I am SOOOO glad we didn't accept an offer from that program. On our way out, one of the older division coaches made a point to track us down to compliment DD and gushed over her. AND during those Sat and Sunday workouts, they didn't do one thing to look at catchers. No pop times, no throw downs, no bunts, nada. I should have known.

Another tryout, the coach didn't even acknowledge that my DD was there.

She got an offer for a team that was an hour away. We went to a work out and said, uh no thanks. That team was better than they team she ended up on. One year later, she ended up that same organization for the next 4 years.

Where she ended up for that year, DD did two workouts and unfortunately, we didn't do our due diligence on the coaches since the tryout was a program wide tyrout with kids flying all over the place on 4 different fields. Wife took DD to the last workout and called in the middle of our team party and said she got an offer. I was like, take it, not knowing exactly which team it was. That year was bleh! But I learned a LOT!
 
Aug 25, 2019
1,066
113
Same thing happened to DD. She was in a well known organization for both 14u year, and teams were bad but she stuck with it. They told her the 16u team is all set, going to be better, better pitching, etc. Don't worry about anything, she's on it. Well we don't go to any tryouts, go on vacation, come back and wouldn't you know if, the team didn't happen, couldn't get the pirching. this is late August, and at the end of tryouts, there were two teams left, one was an organization with a bad record, one was a stand alone team we didn't know anything about. She went to both, and decided on the stand alone team. I'm thinking, how good can this team be when they still got to hold tryouts this late.......She's been on that team.last two years, they won about 6 tournaments, handful of runner ups, always competes, great group of girls, coaches and parents. We got lucky, hope the same for you.
 
Aug 19, 2015
1,118
113
Atlanta, GA
Last year, DD tried out for a Coach who has a good rep in terms of the teams he has put together over the years, but who comes across as a real know-it-all interpersonally. I told her to be cautious because I don't trust the guy. She is a C with 1st as her secondary. He calls afterward and says no, he's set for catchers and she won't get playing time catching on his team. But he thought she looked good at first and he could offer her some playing time there plus she would be in the lineup as DP when not playing in the field.

This was an unexpected development and we asked for a couple of days to consider it while she was doing a couple of other tryouts. Called him back two days later to ask a couple more questions and he was like, "Yeah, about that, I just wound up taking a first baseman, so..." I mean, WTF? He agreed to give us a couple of days, offers to someone else, doesn't even have the courtesy to call/email/text us and there goes that opportunity.

Some people are just jackasses, you know?
 

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