Scobel Wiggins Photography

We start the fall with a huge focus on recruiting players to the ultimate program at large. We don't make a distinction between the A and B teams until about half-way through the fall quarter. Before then, it's much more important to focus on numbers and getting a lot of people to turn out to practice (getting a large pool to draw from, and ideally enough to support a large B team).

When we introduce the tryout process, we are very explicit about the type of players we are likely to select for the A team: athletes who are looking to put a substantial amount of work into building a successful season. We explain the A team's practice and tournament schedule, and expectations for fitness and attendance. We then ask all new players (and returning B-team players) whether or not they would like to tryout.

We then spend about a month during the formal tryout period. We host smaller practices that consist of only the A team and tryouts. This is an opportunity for vets to focus on intriguing players and see how well they do in a practice with an elevated quality of play and intensity.

We pick the team by consensus. The entire team decides upon team size and specifics of the roster in a meeting near the end of fall quarter, however many of the decisions about specific tryouts have started prior to the meeting. There is often much deference to the coaches' opinions, but we never take or cut any player without making sure that the entire team can get behind the decision.

The size of the roster varies, but we tend to have between 19-21. If you get much smaller, injuries or class conflicts often lead to less than optimal practice size. If you get much bigger, it's harder to get everyone enough time in games. A big factor in team size is often how many returning players we will have the following year. If many players will be graduating we may take more players in order to develop a bigger returning squad.

We try to take rookies who we know will have an impact in the current season. If we can't see a player getting time against a strong team (we often think about defense when asking this question), she is probably not ready for the A team and will have a difficult season. We sometimes violate this rule for super-athletic players with raw skills (and gamble that they'll develop quickly).

Our rotation is very open in pre-series tournaments and we try to get all rookies a comparable amount of time. Our typical expectation for rookies is that they build a role for themselves initially on defense. Players cannot be a liability on D if they expect to get time later in the season.

We have individual player meetings several times a year to let each player (rookies and vets) know what we see their role to be and on what they should be focusing. I believe that this type of check-in helps build a successful rookie season: those players that understand their strengths and limitations are the most likely to be excited about what they contribute and what they can continue to improve.