ARAA Basketball Skills Assessment and Tryout general information.
IN HOUSE
*We may have an opportunity for 2nd grade boys to play in an in-house league rather than the k-2 program.
Please go ahead and sign up for k-2 initially, and then we will email you in early September to solicit interest. If
we get enough players we will form teams if we get an odd number of players we will use skills assessment
scores to make up the teams.
TRAVELING
ARAA traveling tryouts will be on Saturday September 14th at Anoka High School. All players interested in
traveling basketball must attend assessments.
*If you cannot make it to assessments, please contact the commissioner. Once assessments are completed, your
player will be placed on a team based on the boards discretion.
If you are interested in traveling you should sign up for traveling. If your player does not earn a roster spot on a
traveling team, the difference in cost between traveling and in-house will be refunded to you. We may try to
pull up some higher scoring house players depending on numbers but there is no guarantees of that. Also, we
will try not to cut players from our traveling program, however, overall skill along with numbers can impact our
decision. So cuts are possible. We prefer to have 8 or 9 players on a team, in some cases it may make sense to
have 10 players. We want players to get as much playing time as possible, thus the reason we attempt to keep 8
or 9 on a team.
The process will be as follows for traveling:
4th through 8th grade traveling players will evaluated in a scrimmage format.
*4th & 5th grade players will do both a skills assessment and a scrimmage tryout. Please come to tryouts at
your scheduled time.
Players will be evaluated in the following areas:
Ball handling
Rebounding
Defense
Shooting/Scoring
Passing/Movement without the ball/Court Awareness
Each player will receive a grade in each of the areas, based on the skills they demonstrate:
A level demonstrated: 10 points
B level demonstrated: 8 points
C level demonstrated: 6 points
In house level:
4 points
The forms will be posted under the player development tab on the www.arsports.org/basketball website.
These scores will be tabulated and that will make up the traveling scrimmage tryout score.
We will have 5 evaluators. Each one will be watching 2 players, who will be guarding each other. This allows
evaluators to see a lot more detail on each player than trying to watch 10 players at a time. In addition to the
scores, the evaluators will make written comments. Coaching applicants will also be invited to watch the tryout
process.
Once the evaluators scores have been tabulated, the scores will then be reviewed by the commissioner, player
development directors, and coaches before final team placement will be made. Final decisions will be made
based on tryout results, but experience, commitment to the program, past performance, and needs at key
positions can be considered.
Our goal is that players learn and develop and have a great experience. In basketball, size plays an important
component, and we have to figure that into the process. We can’t use straight scores without any judgment
whatsoever and end up with a team with all guards on the “A” team, and posts on the “B” team because that
will not be a very good experience. Once the season starts the ARAA board has the right to move players down
if they are not meeting their obligation to their team.
The scrimmages will be the entire tryout process for 6th through 8th graders. For 4th and 5th graders, the
scrimmage and skills assessment will be weighted to determine placement. For the older players it is more
important to grade their skills on the court with defenders etc. As an example, last year we had them do the
skills assessment and we found at the older ages the scores were pretty much bunched up so it didn’t really give
us a lot of information. In some cases it actually gave us bad information, some players could shoot an
uncontested lay up, or shot in skills assessment, but in a real game situation they couldn’t demonstrate those
skills with a defender.