Answer

We don’t hand pick teams, but rather utilize a process that strives for fair and balanced teams.  The first step in forming the teams is to find practice times that accommodate both coaches schedules.  We try very hard to have more than one team per grade practice at the same location for carpooling purposes and to allow for scrimmaging.   Once the coaches practice times are confirmed we use information provided by the parents to identify each child's availability and conflicts.  We identify children that play other fall sports.  We diligently try to accommodate all known conflicts before forming teams.  That is why we ask for your known conflicts at registration.  We use trainer ratings for players that give us a quantitative measure of overall skill so that skill levels are evenly distributed across each age group.  Once this information is gathered, we put all players in each age group into a blind draft.  Each player is autonomously assigned a number and is rostered to a team.  We achieve balance by evenly distributing players based on their skill and availability, without identifying any individual player.   Personal requests are not factored into the rostering process.