High School Coaches: Using Rubrics for Transparency and Player Improvement

As students start school around the country, August and September also mark the beginning of the fall sports season. Before the season can start, coaches face the difficult task of evaluating student-athletes who show up for tryouts and narrowing down rosters at each level of their programs.

Within the group of eager student-athletes who show up at tryouts are returning players, incoming freshmen, and players of different skill levels, all wanting to make the starting lineup. Within one or two weeks, coaches must make cuts, place players on varsity or junior varsity, and then prepare for their first scrimmage or preseason contest.

Although it is an exciting time for athletes and the school community, tryouts present unique challenges for new and veteran coaches as they evaluate players while maintaining accountability for cuts and team placements. Decisions during this early part of the season must be both timely and justifiable to players and members of the school community, who may support or challenge outcomes.

These challenges are comparable to those that educators face when reporting grades or communicating course-placement decisions after evaluating a student’s performance. Strategies used in the classroom, such as rubrics for evaluating academic skills, can often be adapted for coaches to use throughout a high school athletic season.

Application to High School Athletics
In the classroom, a rubric is used to show how a student is making progress and performing relative to an academic skill or standard; it may assess or provide feedback for solving a math problem or citing textual evidence, but its modification can support coaches in describing what different levels of proficiency look like for various areas of athletic performance.

Rubrics are typically developed in a grid-like layout, with scores ranging from one to four or five, depending on the skill. Higher scores have qualitative descriptions that show mastery or progression toward a skill, while lower scores show areas of growth or emerging skill development.

Rather than identifying an athlete as a “good passer,” a rubric includes specific criteria for accuracy, consistency or tactical decision- making. Accuracy may be broken down using a rating scale in which a “1” describes a player who can make contact with the ball but struggles to direct it toward an intended target, while a “4” describes an athlete who consistently delivers accurate passes in both structured drills and game-like situations.

Skill Assessments and Tryouts
Depending on the sport, rubrics may be used to assess technical skills, such as passing or ball handling; tactical knowledge, such as positioning and decision-making; or sport-specific conditioning. Evaluation criteria may also include qualities that contribute to a positive team environment, such as coachability or sportsmanship.

Coaches can assign ratings based on an athlete’s observed performance throughout the tryout process. Within individual sports such as tennis, swimming, and track and field, where athletes may already be placed using objective performance data such as time trials or head-to-head competition in a ladder system, rubrics can still be used to evaluate newcomers and provide athletes with feedback on their abilities.

Objective Documentation, Creating Defensible Coaching Decisions
Rubrics can also support transparency and documentation before the start of the season. Coaches who publicize rubrics and evaluation criteria on their team website and social media or review them at preseason meetings disclose expectations ahead of time. However, even when expectations are communicated in advance and the tryout processes are transparent, concerns or challenges regarding cuts and team placement still arise.

Assigning levels or positions, and cutting student-athletes from competitive programs can be challenging for any coach to navigate, and reactions to posted outcomes are often emotionally charged for adolescent athletes. Such decisions are subject to questioning by parents or escalated to site administration, and in some school communities the assignment of levels or starting playing positions may even be shared with the local press or on social media.

In an informal conversation with a parent or formal investigation conducted by an athletic director, a coach may be questioned on how and why a player was cut or placed within a program. Clear evaluation criteria and documentation with quantifiable metrics, like those in a rubric, can demonstrate that a coach’s decision was made objectively and deter accusations of bias or favoritism. Conversations can then become discussions about which skills need further development and what may currently be the most appropriate placement.

Instructional Tool for Improvement
When coaches consistently reference the same criteria throughout a season using a common language, a rubric can become an instructional tool that strengthens athletes’ sport-specific knowledge and ability to engage in self-reflection. Rather than simply telling an athlete to “get better,” coaches can use the criteria to provide concrete feedback about what improvement looks like. This common language can later be used in verbal cues and individual conferences with athletes.

An athlete who does not make the team can identify specific skills to develop before the next tryout, while a junior varsity or varsity athlete can use rubric criteria to set goals for moving up. Rubrics can also support self-advocacy by giving athletes the language to articulate what they need to work on to parents or coaches they may work with in private lessons or clinics. Over time, the shared language and criteria established by the rubric can strengthen an athlete’s understanding of the game and provide a clearer framework for recognizing and evaluating performance.

Planning for Implementation and Final Thoughts
Developing and implementing rubrics requires additional work during an already busy time of the season; their implementation can be made sustainable by adapting existing resources, sharing assessment responsibilities among coaching staff, and staggering tryout groups when large attendance is anticipated. Assessments can be conducted in small groups while other athletes participate in live-ball activities, or detailed evaluations can focus more on newcomers and incoming freshmen. When thoughtfully designed and consistently implemented, rubrics provide a structured and documented framework for coaching decisions that may otherwise appear ambiguous to athletes and outside observers.

Dr. Monique Paris Anderson is a special education teacher and girls head varsity tennis coach at Freedom High School in Oakley, California. She is a member of the High School Today Publications Committee. She can be reached at dr.mparisanderson@ gmail.com.