Free Basketball Tryout Evaluation Form & Scorecard

The scorecard loads these nine columns. They are short labels, and the labels hide most of the judgment, so here is what an evaluator is looking at under each.

• Ball handling. Control with either hand and the head up, against a defender and not only through cones. Cones show you a handle; a defender shows you whether it holds. Score how often the player loses the ball under pressure as much as how good the moves look.
• Shooting. Form, balance and repeatability from the spots you test, not only whether the ball goes in. Ten shots is a small sample, and a good shooter can miss five of them on a cold morning, so score the stroke and write the makes down as a number in the table below the grid.
• Finishing. Getting the ball in near the rim with either hand, off a drive and through contact. A player who finishes only with the strong hand, or only when nobody is there, is stopped quickly in a real game, so watch the weak hand and at least one finish with a defender close.
• On-ball D. Stance, slides and staying in front of the ball handler without reaching. Closeouts that arrive under control and do not fly past the shooter count here too. It is the criterion most affected by effort, so watch the last slide of the drill and not the first.
• Help defense. Seeing the ball and the player at the same time, standing in the gap, and rotating when a teammate is beaten. It only shows in live play, so score it in the 3-on-3 and the scrimmage and leave it blank after the drills.
• Court vision. Passing and seeing the floor: finding the open teammate and putting the pass where the receiver can use it, on time, including under pressure. This is the passing column. Assists are a poor measure at this level, because they depend on whether the teammate makes the shot, so score the pass and not the box score.
• Rebounding. Finding the ball, boxing out and securing it with two hands, at both ends. At youth ages the best rebounders are often not the tallest, so watch who goes after the ball and who waits for it to come down.
• Basketball IQ. The decisions: a good shot against a bad one, when to pass, where to stand to give a teammate room, what to do in transition. It separates a player who is busy from a player who is useful, and it only shows when the pace is real.
• Coachability. The player who adjusts when shown something, not the one who nods. Teach one small change in the middle of a drill, such as which foot to land on for a layup, and watch who makes it on the next try.

A five point scale gives evaluators a consistent way to compare players across the same drills and the same age group. It is printed above the grid so every evaluator reads the same words, and the last column is an average, not a total.

• Agree on the 3 before anyone is scored. Have every evaluator watch the same ten shots, two dribbling reps against a defender and one finish through contact, and say out loud what a 3 looks like for this age group. A lot of the disagreement between evaluators is about where the middle is, not about the players.
• Score what you saw, when you saw it. Write the number before the next player steps in. Leave a cell blank for a skill the session never tested, such as help defense for a player who never played live. A blank costs a player nothing, because the average only counts what was scored.
• Score each column on its own. A good shooter should not lift a defense score, and a loose handle should not pull down rebounding.
• Score independently, then average. Two evaluators who confer during the session produce one opinion twice.
• Score the scrimmage from both ends. Ten players moving at once is too much for one pair of eyes. Put an evaluator at each end and compare afterwards.

This is the basketball version. The general tryout evaluation scoresheet works for any sport, and the basketball forms and templates page lists the other 5 basketball documents.

Playbook Logix provides customizable templates for informational and administrative use. They are not legal advice and will not meet the requirements of every organization, sport or jurisdiction. Review anything you intend to rely on with your own attorney or your insurance carrier, and check your league and state requirements.