The email lands at 9:40 on a Tuesday night and it is three sentences long. Thank you for coming out. We had a lot of talent at tryouts this year. We are unable to offer your son a spot on the roster. Your kid is on the couch six feet away with an iPad, and he already knows, because two boys from his school posted the team photo an hour ago, taken on the turf at Eisenhower Park. You have about ninety seconds before he looks up at you. This is what to say in those ninety seconds, and what to do with the eight months before the next tryout.
Written by Fernando, founder of Tiempo Soccer Academy (Rockville Centre, NY). Last reviewed: September 2026.
Your kid got cut. Here is the honest answer
A cut is not a judgment on your kid. It is a roster decision made by one adult who watched him for roughly ninety minutes, against a team sheet that already had most of its lines filled before the whistle blew. That is not a consolation prize. It is the actual mechanism, and once you see it that way you can work on the parts of it you control.
Here is the scale you are inside of. LIJSL runs about 60,000 players across 97 member clubs, more than 3,500 teams and over 1,600 travel teams (NY Red Bulls / LIJSL, 2026). One club said no. There are ninety-six others, plus rec, plus school, plus futsal in January. What ends a soccer life is not the cut, it is the eight months after it. Kids leave organized sport because it stopped being fun and stopped being theirs, not because a coach ranked them fourteenth on a list of twelve (Changing the Game Project), and a large share of American kids walk away by the middle-school years (Aspen Institute Project Play, State of Play 2024). If the levels are still fuzzy, start with the Long Island youth soccer development guide. This page assumes you already tried, and the answer was no.
What to say that night
The next ten minutes matter more than the next ten weeks. Your kid is not processing a roster decision. He is reading your face to find out how bad this is supposed to feel. Most of us say something loving and wrong.
| What we say | What he hears | Say this instead |
|---|---|---|
| “That coach has no idea what he is doing.” | “It was unfair, so nothing I do changes it.” | “That is a hard night. I am glad you went.” |
| “Don’t worry, you’ll make it next year.” | “The only thing that counts is a roster spot.” | “There is another tryout in May. We have eight months. We will figure out Sunday what to do with them.” |
| “We’re getting you private training.” | “I am broken and now I am being fixed.” | Nothing about training for forty-eight hours. |
| “Did Diego make it?” | “I am about to be compared to my friends.” | “You hungry?” |
Three rules underneath that table. Say the true thing out loud, because a kid can tell when the room is pretending. Take the weight off him without hanging it on the coach, because “the coach was blind” teaches him that outcomes are random and effort is decorative. And do not build the comeback plan that night. Grief first, plan Sunday.
Then, that week, ask him what he wants and mean the question. Some kids get cut and burn to go back. Some feel a relief they are not allowed to name yet. Both are information, and the second one is not failure. Person before player is not a slogan reserved for the good nights.
What actually got him cut
Four common answers on Long Island, and only one is about ability.
Roster math. Twelve returning players, sixteen at tryouts, three spots. Your kid can be the fourth-best of the sixteen and still be home. Most frequent reason, never stated in the email.
The birth-year band. Age groups run by birth year, so a kid born in November competes against kids born the previous January. Ten months at age eleven is a body difference, not a soccer difference. Temporary, and invisible to a coach running four stations in ninety minutes.
One readable gap. Speed of play, first touch under pressure, defending when he does not have the ball. A tryout coach is less scouting talent than scanning for a reason to stop watching. One repeated flaw does it.
The level was wrong for right now. This is the honest one. If he is not asking to play on his own, not handling correction, and not able to name one thing he wants to fix, travel was the wrong purchase this year and the cut saved you $3,000 and forty Sundays. The readiness checklist and the rec, travel, academy and ECNL breakdown tell you which of the four you are in.
Then send one email. Not a complaint, one question: “Thanks for the look at my son. If he tries out again in May, what is the one thing you would want to see different?” Most coaches here are volunteers with day jobs, and they answer that one, because it is the only email that week that is not an argument. Some will not answer. That is information too.
Most training builds technique. Tiempo builds skill.
The eight-month plan, month by month
Travel tryouts for the next LIJSL seasonal year run mainly in May and June. Count from October and you get eight months. Enough time to change what a coach sees in ninety minutes, and enough time to lose a kid entirely. The order below matters.
1. October: stop training, start playing
Nothing structured for four weeks. Rec, backyard, the wall behind the garage, pickup at the park, the school team if there is one. The most common Nassau County mistake is booking a training package inside seventy-two hours of a cut, which teaches a kid his job now is to be repaired. Let October be soccer he chose. If he stops asking for the ball by November, you learned more than any drill would have taught you.
2. November: name the gap in one sentence
Not “he needs to get better,” which is not a plan, but “he loses the ball when a defender arrives from behind his left shoulder.” Specific. Coachable. Measurable. Get it from the tryout coach’s reply, from his club or school coach, or from twenty minutes of watching with a real question in your head. Write it on the fridge. December through April serves that sentence.
3. December: winter is where Nassau kids actually separate
Outdoor soccer here goes quiet and most families go quiet with it. That is the opening. Indoor and futsal put a kid on a small surface with constant touches and nowhere to hide, which is the environment that fixes speed of play. The Nassau indoor and futsal guide covers what runs December through February. And if he plays basketball, keep basketball. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends delaying single-sport specialization until around age twelve, and kids who specialized in one sport early carried roughly 2.25 times the odds of overuse injury compared with kids who did not (Brenner, AAP, Pediatrics 2016; Post et al., AJSM 2017). A cut is a terrible reason to drop the other sport.
4. January: build the engine
The boring month, because it is dark at five and nobody wants to do it. Two short sessions a week, twenty minutes each, on the fridge sentence. Add change of direction and repeated sprints if he is twelve or older. If he is nine, skip fitness and give him touches. Nine-year-olds do not get cut for fitness.
5. February: put it under pressure
Something that only works in an empty gym is technique, not skill. February is when a defender goes into every rep. Small-sided games, one-versus-one to a target, anything where he executes the fridge sentence while somebody tries to take the ball off him. Most home programs skip this month. It is the month that decides May.
6. March: get him back into games that matter to him
Spring registration across Nassau opens now and closes faster than families expect. Get him on a roster he cares about, rec included, so April is not his first competitive minutes since October. The Nassau spring registration guide has the timing. A kid with eight real games behind him walks into a May tryout differently than a kid with twenty-four weeks of drills.
7. April: shrink the plan to one visible thing
By April the work is done and the job is display. He gets ninety minutes in front of a clipboard, and a coach sees maybe three things per player. Pick the one he does best now and make sure it shows in the first ten minutes. The tryout preparation guide covers the day-of script, warm-up, body language and the multi-tryout weekend trap. Nothing new after mid-April.
8. May: try out, and have plan B written before you need it
Two tryouts. Not one, not five. Before the first, write down what you do if both say no: which rec division, which winter program, which club runs fall evaluations. The fall tryout guide maps the doors that open in August and September. Plan B on paper before May means a second cut, if it comes, is a Tuesday and not an identity crisis.
Nassau County in the eight months: where the doors actually are
A cut in Rockville Centre does not close Lynbrook, Valley Stream, Oceanside, Baldwin, East Rockaway or Malverne. What families miss is that these doors do not all open in May.
Village rec keeps running through the fall in most of these towns, and rec in Nassau is not the consolation league people describe at the sideline fence. Clubs backfill rosters in November and January when families move or kids quit, so the registrar to call is the January one. School tryouts run on the school calendar, so a kid cut by a club in September can still make a team in the spring. Winter indoor and futsal run December through February and take players individually rather than by team. The Nassau club selection guide covers how to judge the club on the other end of that call.
The call is four sentences. My son tried out in September and did not get a spot. He is working on one specific thing this winter. Do you keep a waiting list or hold midyear evaluations? If a spot opens in January, what is the process? Ninety seconds, and almost nobody makes it.
The money question nobody asks after a cut
Competitive youth soccer on Long Island runs roughly $2,000 to $5,000 a year once you count club fees, uniforms, tournaments, travel and gas. Private training runs about $125 a session at some academies and $75 to $95 in a pack at others, and marketplaces like CoachUp list trainers from around $50. Thirty sessions is $1,500 to $3,750 on top of what you already pay. The Nassau cost breakdown has the arithmetic.
Here is the part that matters after a cut: you are making that decision while you feel bad, which is the worst possible time to make it. Pay-to-play already skews toward higher-income households, with roughly 70% of families in organized youth sports earning above $50,000 a year and about a third above $100,000 (SFIA State of the Industry, 2018), and in the Aspen Institute’s April 2026 look at youth soccer across New York City and New Jersey, 32% of families named fees as the main barrier to playing at all (Aspen Institute Project Play, 2026). The October panic package is the worst purchase in Nassau County youth soccer. It costs the most, it lands when the kid wants it least, and it buys reps against nobody. Spend in January and February instead, on the fridge sentence, under pressure. A third of the money, most of the result.
Where Tiempo fits
We are not a club. We do not run LIJSL travel teams and we do not compete in tournaments. We are the structured individual development layer that sits next to your kid’s club or school program, on fields in Rockville Centre, Lynbrook and Valley Stream.
So our answer to “can you get him ready for a tryout” depends on when you call. In October, no, and we will tell you to let him play. In November we help you write the sentence. December through March is the block we are built for, and that is the Athlete Development Blueprint, a structured six-week intake that produces a plan rather than a schedule, coached through the PaC Method and the four values we coach in the language we coach them in: Confianza, Responsabilidad, Habilidad, Pasión.
And if your kid got cut and does not want to go back, we will tell you to stop. Do not buy him sessions to prove a coach wrong. The point is to be in the right place, not in our place.
Frequently asked questions
When is the next travel soccer tryout in Nassau County after a fall cut?
Club tryouts for LIJSL travel run mainly in May and June for the following seasonal year, roughly eight months after a late-September cut. Some clubs hold fall evaluations in August and September, and some backfill rosters midyear when families move. School tryouts run on the school calendar, a separate door entirely. Call registrars in January rather than waiting for May.
Should we try a different club in the spring instead of the same one?
Try both. Going back to the club that cut him is not humiliating, it is efficient, because that coach already told you what he wanted to see and can see whether it changed. One neighboring club gives you a second read. Two tryouts is the number. Five in one May produces a wrecked month and a kid who plays scared, which the tryout preparation guide covers.
Is private training worth it after a cut?
Not in October. Buying sessions inside a week of a cut spends the most money at the moment of least motivation and tells your kid he is a problem to be repaired. If you spend, spend December through March, on one named weakness, with a defender in the drill. Under about age nine, spend it on unstructured playing time instead. The private training guide has the full test.
My kid says he wants to quit soccer. Do we let him?
Let him stop for four weeks without calling it quitting, and watch what he does with a ball in that window. Kids leave sport because it stopped being fun and stopped being theirs (Changing the Game Project). A cut can also be the moment a kid discovers he was playing for you. Better to know that at eleven than at fifteen, and getting cut at ten predicts nothing about a high school roster.
We speak Spanish at home. Could that have been part of what happened at the tryout?
It happens more than people admit. Tryout instructions come fast in English, a bilingual kid translates in his head, and he arrives half a beat late to a drill he understands perfectly. On a clipboard that reads as slow. It is not a skill gap. It is a language gap mistaken for a skill gap, and the guide for Spanish-first families on Long Island covers what to do about it, including what to ask the coach.
Sources
- NY Red Bulls / LIJSL league partner page, 2026. newyorkredbulls.com; lijsl.com, accessed September 2026.
- Aspen Institute Project Play, State of Soccer in NYC and NJ, April 2026. aspeninstitute.org
- Aspen Institute Project Play, State of Play 2024. projectplay.org
- Brenner JS, American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatrics 2016;138(3):e20162148. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Post EG et al., American Journal of Sports Medicine, 2017. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- SFIA State of the Industry, 2018. sfia.org
- Changing the Game Project. changingthegameproject.com
- CoachUp soccer marketplace, accessed September 2026. coachup.com
The bottom line. One club said no in September and the calendar gave you until May. Spend October letting him play, November naming one thing, and December through March fixing it with somebody in his way. If he still wants it in April, he tries out better than he did this fall. If he does not, you found that out honestly, and that is worth the eight months too.
¿Prefiere leer en español? Lea esta guía en español: a su hijo no lo escogieron en el equipo travel.
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– Fernando, Tiempo Soccer Academy · Rockville Centre, NY · tiemposoccer.com
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