Team applications: Yes, or no?

[sanddrag]

We have never had the problem of too few interested students. We have always had and application, recommendation, and interview process. This in process in itself weeds out A LOT of potential applicants which is a good thing. If you can't work your way through an application, most likely you will have too much difficulty in much more complicated things we do. This year we actually turned down a few students for various reasons. We have also expedited a few applications through the process due to personal recommendations from people such as myself. The application process has traditionally opened in October, but this year we're planning to do early application in May (end of previous school year) for next season's team. We also plan to have a trial period in which students are accepted for a probationary period to gauge their interests and we can see their performance and commitment before the season.

We do not have the number of adults to support a team of 50 students. We can get by with 32 but that's about tops. You don't want a situation where more students = less work getting done (which often happens).

One difficulty we need to solve is finding a way to make the application process more standardized and objective. We made an error rejecting a student this year. We later reversed our decision an welcomed him to our team, which was one of the best things we ever did in this particular case.

If you have to try out for football, why not have to try out for robotics? My question is what exactly should the tryout be, and does it justly prove or disprove that a person would be a good team member to have?