Travel Program Assessments

Players who are interested in joining a travel team are strongly encouraged to attend assessments.

Assessments are used for travel team placement only. To be considered for an Academy team, candidates must attend an ID Clinic.

Newton Girls Soccer goes to great lengths to ensure that every girl has the opportunity to try out for a team and to evaluate all players consistently. We use a wide range of feedback to evaluate players to make sure that we are getting a complete picture of each players’ strengths and making appropriate placements. To that end, we collect feedback in the following forms:

• Coach ratings on a variety of physical attributes, technical and tactical skills, psycho-social traits, and attendance, along with written feedback about each player and a ranking of that player within their current team.
• Grade-wide assessments by Professional Trainers where the players are evaluated in small-sided games against players from a variety of other teams.
• Feedback from the DOC and the ADOC based on their observations of skills clinics, practices, scrimmages, and games throughout the fall and spring seasons.

Assessments are a key component of the team formation process, and we strongly encourage all players who are interested in being on a travel team to participate. In the event that an athlete is unable to attend an assessment session, placement will be made using whatever other data is available to the travel committee. There are no “make up” assessment sessions.

To participate in assessments, a player must be registered for the upcoming season.  Registration opens in early-May for the following season.

Assessments are similar to a large practice.

Upon arriving, players will check in and receive a number and a pinnie, then break into smaller groups for the assessment.

We organize the assessments in a way that will be fun and will lessen anxiety among the girls and their parents. The structure of assessments includes a technical warm-up, small-sided games and larger sided scrimmages which will evaluate players in the four pillars of the game – Technical, Tactical, Physical and Psychological. Each of these games is watched by a group of evaluators who are experienced soccer coaches or players and, when possible, are not directly connected or interested in the age group trying out. Evaluators are not involved in selecting the actual teams within the age group; they are tasked with providing an impartial evaluation. These evaluations are coupled with the written evaluations from each player’s current coach to be used during the player selection process. Coaches’ evaluations from prior seasons are not used in this process, so that girls start each season with a “clean slate.”

Once assessments are underway, parents will have a brief meeting with representatives of the NGS Travel Committee. We’ll present an overview of the travel program, discuss how players are assigned to teams, and answer questions. Parents are asked to stay at a distance from the field and to refrain from cheering or making any comments. Any type of assessment involves some level of anxiety, and it is important to have the support of parents to keep things in perspective.

There are no cuts.

Travel players are placed on teams according to their current level of soccer development. Teams range from division 1 (highly skilled, highly competitive) to division 4 (less skilled, more recreational). We place kids on teams using a combination of assessments scores, parent coach evaluations, and pro trainer observations made throughout the season. We know that girls sometimes have a bad day, and an assessment result that is wildly inconsistent with a girl’s coach evaluation or pro trainer observations will be discounted in the selection process. There is no minimum bar that has to be met. All girls of the appropriate age who register on time for the travel program are placed on a team.

WE DO NOT ACCEPT FRIEND REQUESTS IN THE TRAVEL PROGRAM. IF THAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOUR CHILD, REGISTER FOR THE CITY PROGRAM.