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⏰ Key Timestamps:
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00:00 Introduction
00:29 Reduce Anxiety Early
03:49 Avoid Surprises
05:55 Setting Evaluation Criteria
07:32 Evaluating Intangibles
10:13 Communicating Teams and Cuts
13:53 Final Thoughts

👋🏼 I'm Coach Bre — a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion.

In this video, I break down how I make tryout cuts after 14 years of coaching and four state championships, including decisions I still think about years later.

This episode covers the evaluation system I built so those decisions come from data and clarity, not just a gut call under pressure.

What You'll Learn:
✅ Why real evaluation starts in the summer, not on day one of tryouts
✅ The FAQ document that gets every athlete and parent on the same page about how cuts work before tryouts begin
✅ How a two-day structure gives you the data to back up a hard decision
✅ Why I stopped fitness testing and what I watch instead to decide who makes the team
✅ How to evaluate leadership and mental toughness without cutting a player for a skill you're going to teach her anyway

💬 Coaches — comment below: what's the hardest cut you've ever had to make, and how did you handle telling her?

P.S. A few stats worth knowing:

⚡️Larger high schools tend to cut more athletes than smaller ones, which is linked to earlier single-sport specialization in female high school volleyball players. (UW-Madison School of Education, 2026)

⚡️A study of 22 head coaches found deselection happens in four distinct phases, and coaches often lean on intuition when evaluation criteria run into uncertainty. (Dunn, McHugh & Holt, The Sport Psychologist, 2016)

⚡️A growing body of research now supports mental toughness as a trainable skill, not a fixed trait athletes are simply born with. (American College of Sports Medicine, 2025)

The Coach Her Game YouTube channel is hosted by The Elite Competitor and is dedicated to helping coaches of girl athletes strengthen their mental game and team culture in order to develop a competitive edge.

#mentalperformance #coachinggirls #youthathletics #tryoutcuts #volleyballcoach

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!