Your kid is nine. Tryouts are tomorrow morning, he has barely touched his dinner, and he has asked a question every two minutes since he sat down.

At 8 to 10, he knows what a tryout means. A five-year-old shows up to play, while a nine-year-old shows up knowing some kids won’t make it.

Keep tonight ordinary

Serve a familiar dinner, not a special one. Eat together and skip the sit-down prep speech, and see the pre-tryout dinner piece if you want the food details.

Don’t review skills. Tonight is too late to teach anything new, so leave the backyard drills and coaching videos for another week.

Lights out at his usual time. An early bedtime leaves a nervous kid staring at the ceiling, and a late one costs him in the morning.

Tell him what tomorrow looks like

Walk him through the flow so nothing surprises him:

We get there at 8:50. Warm-up first, then drills in small groups, then a short scrimmage while the coaches watch.

Then give him one job: Your job tomorrow is to hustle, and that’s it.

Effort is the part he fully controls. At this age, what coaches evaluate leans on effort and coachability more than polish.

Skip the promises. Don’t tell him he’ll make it for sure, because you can’t know that and he’ll remember you said it.

Tell him instead: We’re proud of how hard you’ve worked, whatever the list says. He can believe that one.

The morning, the drop-off, and the wait

Run a normal Saturday morning. Same breakfast, the clothes he always plays in, and music low in the car with short answers to his questions.

At drop-off, hug him and say Have fun. We’ll be here at noon. Then walk away instead of hovering at the door or texting the coach later.

At pickup, don’t ask whether he made it. He doesn’t know yet, so ask how was it and listen.

Clubs post results on their own timelines, so find out when and how the list goes out. The post-tryouts wait covers what’s in his head until then.

He’ll try out for a lot of teams over the next ten years. Tonight just needs a normal dinner, a normal bedtime, and a parent who isn’t keyed up about either one.