The Aurora Minor Hockey Association was struggling to efficiently evaluate players during tryouts. When players showed up for evaluations, the club could not access previous tryouts results and coaches’ feedback. Instead, they were limited by only the information coaches and evaluators could gather from their on-ice performance when forming teams.

“Tryouts were somewhat cumbersome only because coaches were not able to facilitate any of the feedback that we had from other coaches,” Aurora Minor Hockey president Joe Bentolila said. 

The Aurora, Ontario hockey organization resolved this issue by using the TeamGenius player evaluation app. In addition to using the app to score players at tryouts, they also utilized the coaches’ evaluations tools. This allowed the association to save all of the players’ past evaluations in the app. This way, when a player participates in tryouts in the future, the new coaches can pull up his past results. 
 
“All of the evaluations are on there, and wherever that player goes, [the coaches] are able to look at that information and assess that player for their level of hockey. So [it’s a] great tool,” Bentolila said. 

Using the TeamGenius app has allowed Aurora Minor Hockey to provide players with useful feedback to improve their skills and increase the transparency of the organization’s tryouts process.

The association requires its coaches to evaluate players three times a year – at the start, mid-season, and at the end of the season. These evaluations are recorded in the app and delivered to the players in person so the coach can explain where the athlete is excelling and what he needs to improve on.

During tryouts, they can now utilize these past evaluations to ensure they are putting kids on the right teams. 

“It gives us and our coaches the ability to look at the evaluations to actually evaluate that player so when that athlete does come to try out again, we can always look at that and say, ‘hey wait a minute, the previous coach has evaluated him with this, what’s going on, what did we miss?’  That way the athlete is always getting a fair shake,” Bentolila said. “It’s just a great, great tool that’s allowed us to give the athletes that little bit extra, which I think is extremely beneficial for them,” Bentolila said.

Using the TeamGenius app to evaluate players at tryouts and to provide in-season feedback has been greatly received by the players and their parents. 

Parents love that they can see their child’s scores and that they know the club is going off of more than just word-of-mouth when evaluating athletes. If there are any discrepancies or questions over why a player was placed on a particular team, the club can go back to the TeamGenius evaluation and look at the player’s scores.

“The fact that we have something that is in front of them is worth its weight in gold,” Bentolila said. “It adds transparency to our process.”

Bentolila added that using the TeamGenius app to evaluate players helps take the onus off of the association as they can easily show parents and players how an athlete scored. It also helps the club ensure they are forming accurate teams that will put each player at the level that best fits his abilities. 

“We’re all in this to help the kids, not to let them fail. We don’t want to set them up for failure (by putting them on the wrong team),” Bentolila said.