Making the cut is a tough task

We’ve just had our open tryouts with the Baltimore Blast.

There were 30 to 40 players that showed up to display their talents and they were all mainly local guys with little to no professional experience.

However, they all clearly have a passion and love for the game. 

These are players that who may have performed well in their high school or respective local colleges but did not get the opportunity of being scouted or drafted by a professional franchise.

Each year Baltimore Blast conduct open tryouts to give our local players a chance to show what skills they possess. 

We feel it is very important to give players in the local soccer community a chance to live out their dream of being a professional athlete. Some of the players showed well and some struggled with the pace of the game and the required skills needed for indoor football. 

We selected 10 to move to the next stage of being a professional player, which is the invitational tryouts that start today and end Friday. 

The invitation includes 20 other players that already have experience playing professional outdoor and indoor football with other teams. 

Some will be flying in from Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica and other islands. They all come with the hope of continuing their pro careers. 

Once those 10 selected open tryout players and 20 invitational players meet to compete in  the next three days, we as the coaching staff will have to make a decision on who we want to invite back to our pre-season. 

The players that are able to play at a high level consistently will have a chance of making it.

From today we will be very critical with our assessment and will only look to invite players that are able to meet all the criterias we have set for them. 

The hardest part to this job is telling a player that he is not going to make it.

It is hard cutting a player but this is the professional life and the reason why only .01% players make it professionally. Once pre-season starts all the players will go through two-a-day sessions that will start at 7am for three weeks. 

We will have two practice games and be cutting players each week until we get to our roster of 20. 

It will be a tough road for many but at the end it will be the greatest feeling when we hand them their professional contract. 

Until next time! 

David Bascome is a coach at Baltimore Blast and founder of the Hope4Life Foundation and the Bermuda100 initiative, which aims to support schools, and recruit and train leaders in our community.