The Basketball Tryout Evaluation Form, Criterion by Criterion

For 3rd-6th grade tryouts, cut the form to ball handling, finishing, athleticism, and effort, and score layups as made or missed rather than by technique. Most players at this level are still winning or losing the fight with the ball itself, so range scores and scheme awareness mean little. By middle school and JV, the full nine criteria apply as written. At the varsity level, add discrimination inside criteria you already have: shooting off movement instead of standstill catch-and-shoot, defending ball screens instead of straight-line containment, and scrimmage reads against pressure. Varsity evaluations also earn measurable rows, lane agility time and vertical touch, because numbers travel across tryout days in a way opinion scores never do.

AAU programs map the same cuts onto age groups: the 3rd-6th grade form fits 9u-12u, the middle school form fits 13u-15u, and the varsity additions fit 16u-17u. If you are new to coaching the younger bands, the youth basketball coaching guide covers what skill development actually looks like at each grade level, which is the context these cut-downs come from.

Run the form in one of two formats, or both. The per-player sheet is the format above: one page per player, nine criteria as rows, an evidence note beside every score. Use it at stations and for the players your cut decisions hinge on. The compact team sheet flips the layout: one row per player, criteria abbreviated across the top, a whole court's group on a page or two. Use it when one coach watches scrimmage across a full court and wants every wing candidate comparable at a glance.

The team sheet gives up the notes column, and "forced two contested shots with a shooter open" is exactly the note that settles a hard conversation with a parent, so keep per-player sheets for the bubble players. The downloadable pack below includes both formats plus a draft board that ranks the group from the scores.

The pack is free and ungated: a printable PDF and an editable Excel workbook, both built on the nine criteria above.

The form is half the system; collecting and tallying it is the other half. On paper, plan one runner per court collecting sheets each rotation, and budget a late evening adding totals in a spreadsheet before cut decisions. A 40-player tryout with nine criteria and four evaluators is over 1,400 individual marks to transcribe.

Scored digitally in Rizzler, each coach enters scores at their station and the ranked list builds itself as the tryout runs, so the coaches' meeting starts from a sorted board instead of a stack of paper. The Team Tryouts workflow handles registration, check-in, station scoring, and offer tracking for up to 300 players on the Club plan, and the basketball evaluation template ships editable so your program can match its own criteria. See the basketball tryouts page for the full workflow, and pair this form with the basketball tryout drills that make each criterion visible in under ten seconds of observation. Once the roster is set, the basketball practice plans hub covers the first weeks after cuts.

Eight to ten. Fewer than eight and you cannot separate roles; more than ten and evaluators stop filling in rows by mid-tryout. The nine on this page cover ball handling, shooting, finishing, defense, rebounding, passing, athleticism, effort, and scrimmage play, with two or three observable skills inside each.

Use 1 to 5 on paper and 1 to 10 in an app. Five points is fast with a pen; ten points separates a large field better when tapping is as fast as writing. Either way, define what the middle number means for shooting and defense before the tryout, and calibrate evaluators on the first few players.

Same form, different weighting. Score everyone on all nine criteria so you can compare across the whole field, then weight ball handling and decision-making for guard candidates and rebounding and rim finishing for bigs when you rank by role. A separate form per position makes cross-position comparisons impossible, and those are the comparisons cut night runs on.

Paper works fine under about 25 players with two or three evaluators. Above that, totaling sheets becomes the bottleneck: a 40-player school tryout generates well over a thousand individual marks. Digital scoring totals continuously and lets you sort the field between sessions, which is when callback and cut decisions actually get made.