A racing heart and sweaty palms—a league championship game or just try-outs? Everybody gets nervous before try-outs—even returning players. The only thing that cut sports achieve is putting the athletes through an emotional tornado. What are healthy mediums or alternatives cut athletes could take?

Many sports cut because they have physical limitations on the number of players allowed. It may be that they are only allowed a certain number of players on the team. Either the facilities can only accommodate so many or having excess players would hinder the overall performance of the team. Sports such as volleyball, lacrosse, basketball, badminton, tennis, gymnastics, softball and soccer are cut sports because of the limited number of facilities and positions. Also, if these teams didn’t cut they would have players of lower quality playing alongside players of higher caliber. According to athletic director Matt McGinn, soccer can only sub out so many people until you start to lower the quality of talent on the field.

For other teams, more participants places the team into a better position for the season. Sports such has football, cross-country, track and field, wrestling, swimming and water polo employ this tactic. These sports require a large amount of people for the team to perform at its highest. Football needs a lot of substitutes in case of injury. In others, such as swimming, the highest amount of cumulative points wins, so more players equals more points and a higher probability of winning. These sports usually have more access to facilities.

Trying out for a team that has cuts may shy away potential players. “Mostly the players who are dedicated enough to play are the ones that show up to each day of try-outs,” boys’ basketball head coach Chris Redfield said. “The dedicated players will most likely come out to try-outs whether they are intimidated or not.”

Opponents of the cut-sport system are less enthused. “People can be turned away by try-outs,” boys’ water polo head coach Mark Hernandez said. “And you can miss out on good players. It is difficult to see how good someone can be in four weeks’ time.”

Some sports provide freshmen-only teams so they can develop basic skills early and later move up to junior varsity and varsity teams.

Water polo has never cut on ability, according to Hernandez. At the moment, the only reason for a cut would be if a player does not come to practice or conflicts with forward movement of the team. “We do not have the luxury to cut people,” Hernandez said. “Water polo does not have the crowd appeal as a sport like basketball that has a large group of kids coming to try-out year after year.”

Although some quality players may be lost in the midst of try-outs, there are some good things that come out of cuts. Wrestling, which used to not have a large outcoming, is now starting to receive players that were cut from basketball. Having sports that do not cut in the same season as ones that do provides an option for those still looking to play a sport. And we also cannot forget that there are always club teams outside of school. However if those prove too intense, one can always join one of the many sports clubs at school.