Ep 165 The Way You Cut a Kid Tells the Whole Town Who You Are

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Tryouts are coming, and with them the part of coaching nobody puts on a highlight reel. In this episode Coach Collins takes on cut day, the two hours a year that reveal more about a program than any game on the schedule. After a long career he is blunt about it: it never got easier, not once, and it should not.

The central idea is that everybody in the building is watching how you do it. The kid being cut is watching. His parents are watching. His friends in the hallway are watching. And your returning players are watching the closest of all, because they are learning exactly what a person is worth in your program once he stops being useful to you. How you cut a kid is not a side issue. It is one of the loudest culture statements you make all year.

Coach Collins walks through four things worth fighting for. Tell players before tryouts exactly what you are evaluating, how many days it will take, who is deciding, and when they will know, because kids can handle bad news but mystery wrecks them. Deliver the news face to face, not on a list taped to a door or in a group text, because a list tells a sixteen year old he was never a person to you, just a name. Give him something he can actually use instead of hiding behind roster numbers, and then hold the door open by telling him when open gym is and that you want to see him there. And watch what gets said about him in the coaches office afterward, because if a kid is disposable in your office, your players will feel it on the floor.

The episode also asks the harder question underneath all of it: do you have to cut at all? Rosters have limits and gyms have limits, and sometimes the answer is yes. But Coach Collins pushes coaches to think carefully about the junior who works, will never start, and loves the program, because sometimes that kid is the culture, and a roster spot is the cheapest investment a coach will ever make. When the answer really is no, the rule is simple: make sure the reason is basketball, and make sure you can say it out loud to his mother.

It closes with a practical assignment. Before tryouts begin, write down the exact criteria you are evaluating, and write down the first sentence you will say when a kid sits down and it is bad news. Write it while you are calm, because you will not find the right words in the moment, and that kid will carry the wrong ones for twenty years.
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