This is a story from back when I coached the teams at the University of Exeter (U.K.).
I have to run two try-out sessions this afternoon for the university teams I coach. The first is for the women. The second is for the men. Each will be an hour in length. We were supposed to have 3 hours, but somehow had the last hour we requested lopped off. We only found out yesterday! I will be the only coach there, though I should have a bit of support from returning players. At least I will for the women’s session, anyway.
How many prospective players will turn up is a big question mark. Last year we had about 24 women and 18 men on the first day of the 3-day trials. On the men’s side we took things a bit slow. We did not feel rushed to make any immediate cuts, but we wanted to try to trim the numbers for the women right away in the case of the obvious No’s. We cut about half a dozen after that first session, but ended up with something like 26 players for the second one!
No surprise if something similar happens this year. Yesterday was the last of the club’s “taster” sessions. They use them to introduce themselves prospective new members. There were about 80 of them, mostly female.That’s been the clear pattern in my time at Exeter.
I was on-hand for the taster (the third and final held during Freshers’ Week) to scout out prospective BUCS players and to advise the club leadership on ways to run the session more smoothly (different drills and games they could employ). We don’t normally see a lot in the way of likely BUCS contenders at the tasters, as mainly the experienced ones go straight to try-outs, but sometimes one or two will turn up worth having a look at. Ended up being a few more than that this year – particularly for the women.
Today’s the real test, though. This is when we find out if the rumors about this player or that player which always seem to be flying around are actually true.
The situation is this. The women return only three from last year’s BUCS semifinalists, while the men have back four of the guys who featured in their victory over Durham in the 7th place playoff at Final 8s, plus a few of the second team members. I saw a few women during the tasters who could probably be in the team, potentially even as starters. Wasn’t quite so dazzled by the men, but maybe a couple of squad players.
Adding complexity to all this is the fact that we have to consider things from the perspective of two teams for each gender. The club runs teams in the new BUCS Premier League (teams promoted up from Division 1) and in Division 2. Last year we just trained them all together as one unit and had the second string group play the Div2 matches. Don’t know yet if we’ll do the same this year. The gap between Premier League and Div2 will be markedly bigger than the one between Div1 and Div2.
Fortunately, we don’t have to make final decisions today. We have sessions the first half of next week as well to be able to take a longer look.
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