Category: Tryouts

Hello Cougar Soccer Families,

I just wanted to send you all an email highlighting our tryout and preseason period as I know even though I have shared this information with your son(s), it may not have made it back to you yet. Below is our schedule for the week of August 21st and how things work. Additionally, a quick note regarding medical clearances – I know some of you have been CC’ing me on emails to our athletic trainer regarding player clearance, the clearance list has remained largely unchanged for the past month due to Vanessa not being a 12 month employee, however, with football now underway, she is back and working on the medical paperwork – please keep an eye on your emails in case she reaches out regarding a missing form/signature. I will post updated clearance lists on our Google classroom and Group Me as they begin to accumulate.

Monday 8/21

AM Fitness (2 Mile Run)

• 9:00am Seniors
• 9:15am Juniors
• 9:30am Sophomores
• 9:45am Freshman

The run takes place on the track up at Underhill, please make sure you are in sneakers, headphones, music, pacing devices are all fine to use during the run.

The posted time above is when your son should be there to check in, the run will start 10 mins after check in time.

Our target time is 12 minutes, the run will be terminated after 15 minutes

After each grade level completes their run, they are free to go until we come back for the evening session.

Evening Session

• 5:00pm-6:30pm Freshman Evaluation (Underhill Turf)
• 6:30pm-8:30pm UpperClassmen Evaluation (Underhill Turf)

Tuesday 8/22

UpperClassmen Have a Double Session

• 3:30pm-5:00pm Upperclassmen Evaluation – Session 1 (Underhill Turf)
• 5:00pm-6:30pm Freshman Evaluation (Underhill Turf)
• 6:30pm-8:30pm Upperclassmen Evaluation – Session 2 (Underhill Turf)

Wednesday 8/23

AM Fitness

• 8:30am Freshman
• 9:00am Sophomores
• 9:30am Juniors
• 10:00am Seniors

This morning fitness will take place on RITZER FIELD (behind CHS)

The posted time above is the START time for the fitness evaluation

This evaluation measures push ups, broad jump, shuttle run time, sprint time and timed dribbles through cones.

After each grade level completes their assessment, they are free to go until the evening evaluation period.

Evening Session

• 5:00pm-6:30pm Freshman Evaluation (Underhill Turf)
• 6:30pm-8:30pm UpperClassmen Evaluation (Underhill Turf)

What comes next…

By 10:30pm on Wednesday night every player will receive an email to their student email address, the email will either say congratulations, we are offering you a spot in the program this season, practice is at this time and this place tomorrow – or the other email that will go out is that unfortunately we are not able to offer you a spot this year, if you are interested in being a manager for the team (helps coaches with practices, participates in practice when the opportunity arises and helps coaches with stats during games) please let us know, additionally we encourage players to reach out and to set up a meeting with the coaching staff the following week so that we can provide a more in depth overview of their evaluation and how they can improve.

Why the email method – this was adopted as a recommendation from the athletic department leading into the covid period (in lieu of posting names on a board or calling the kids in one at a time), this coupled with the growth in the soccer program (we have 98 players who gave me their name for tryouts this fall) plus a condensed preseason schedule courtesy of the njsiaa (more on that shortly) has made it almost impossible to sit down with 30-40 players one at a time immediately following the final tryout. Additionally, making reductions is the worst part of this job and having been cut before myself (high school basketball) I know it’s never easy to digest from the player’s side either, which is why we recommend the meeting the following week for players who want to follow up on their evaluation.

The Preseason…

Practices for all levels begin the next day so there will be practice Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The NJSIAA requires 6 practices and a day of rest before a player is eligible to participate in a scrimmage. Our first scrimmage is the following Monday 8/28 so a player must be at all 3 days of tryouts, plus the following three days of practices to be eligible to play on Monday. For those of you trying to plan one last get away before school starts, our schedule for the end of August looks like this:

• 8/28 – Scrimmage
• 8/29 – Practice
• 8/30 – Scrimmage
• 8/31 – Practice
• 9/1 – Scrimmage
• 9/2 – Off Day
• 9/3 – Off Day
• 9/4 – Morning Practice
• 9/5 – Scrimmage
• 9/6 – Practice
• 9/7 – First Game of the Regular Season

…. Pretty crazy, but with the four scrimmages and days off, we only get 7 days of practices between the last day of tryouts and the first game of the regular season. Everything moves very very quickly once we are underway.

There will be a player and parent meeting on the evening of Friday August 25th, location TBD (pending access to the high school) where we will discuss more and answer any questions, but hopefully this email should take care of most of the pressing issues.

-Coach Muirhead

Columbia High School
Business Teacher
Varsity Baseball Coach
Varsity Soccer Coach