How to Mentally Prepare for Soccer Tryouts: A Step-by-Step Guide for Competitive Athletes
If you’re anything like me when I was a kid, the night before a tryout, your brain does something annoying: it starts running through every scenario. What if you have a bad first touch in front of everyone? What if the player next to you is clearly better? What if you've already decided, somewhere in the back of your mind, how this is going to go — and it's not good?
If you've felt that, you're not broken, and you're not alone. Every competitive player I've ever known, including teammates who'd played in front of fifty thousand people in the Champions League, has felt some version of that the night before something that mattered.
Here's what I want you to take from this post: the goal isn't to make that feeling go away. It's to have a process for what to do with it. What follows is the mental prep process I've used myself, adapted for what a competitive youth tryout actually looks like.
The Week Before Tryouts
Mental prep doesn't start the morning of the tryout. It starts with where you put your attention in the days leading up to it.
Here's the shift: stop thinking about making the team. Start thinking about what you're going to do in the first five minutes. Whether you make the team is an outcome that depends on other players, on the coach's needs, on things you don't control. What you do in the first five minutes is entirely yours.
This is the difference between outcome focus and process focus, and it's not just a mindset trick — it changes what you actually pay attention to during the week. Instead of spending energy wondering who else is trying out or what the coach is looking for, you spend it on your own preparation, your attitude, and your effort. Those are the things that are actually in your hands.
The Night Before: What to Do and What to Avoid
What helps the night before a tryout is usually less than people think: a short, honest review of what you do well. Not a highlight reel, but a reminder to yourself of your strengths. It could be line-breaking passes, scanning, pressing, winning 1v1s, but whatever it is, reinforce what you’re good at.
Then, do your regular pre-sleep routine: get off of screens an hour before you’re going to bed (this is your regular pre-sleep routine, right?).
What doesn't help: rewatching footage of your mistakes the night before, having a long conversation with someone about whether you're going to make it, or trying to “get pumped up” with high-energy content right before bed. All of that adds noise at exactly the moment your brain needs to settle.
And don't underestimate sleep. A tired player performs worse no matter how dialed in their mindset is. If there's one thing to protect the night before, it's a normal bedtime.
We've written more about building a consistent pre-game routine here.
Setting the Frame the Morning Of
How you start the morning of a tryout sets the tone for everything after it. Keep it as normal as you can: your regular breakfast, same routine, nothing dramatically different. A normal morning tells your nervous system that today is manageable, not a crisis.
One thing I do recommend adding: take two minutes and write down three things you do well that you're going to show today. Not outcomes, but behaviors. Things like “I communicate on the field” or “I track back on defense every time.” This isn't about hype. It's a way of pointing your focus at something concrete before you walk in.
Managing the Mental Noise on the Drive Over
The car ride is usually where the mental noise peaks. Here's what to do with it.
First, name what you're feeling instead of trying to talk yourself out of it. “I'm nervous, which means I care about this” is a more useful sentence than “stop being nervous,” because it's true, and it doesn't fight your own body.
Second, use a simple breathing protocol to bring your nervous system down a notch: box breathing. Inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. Repeat it three times. It's the same technique used by military personnel and elite athletes under pressure, because it works physiologically. If you don’t believe me, stop and try it now.
Don’t you feel better?
(And for parents reading this: the drive over is not the moment for a pre-game speech. Keep it low-key and normal. The player is the one running this process — your job is to not add to the noise).
The First Five Minutes After You Arrive Matter
What you do in the first five minutes after arriving matters more than most players realize.
Get on the ball early instead of standing around watching other players warm up because waiting and observing is exactly when the nerves get louder. Introduce yourself to players you don't know. It feels small, but it shifts your focus outward, away from your own anxiety and onto the people around you. Grab a ball and get some juggles in.
And shrink your focus to the smallest unit there is: this touch, this run, this moment. Not the tryout. Not the team. This. The player who arrives and immediately engages is already performing better than the one standing on the edge, watching and waiting.
For more on what coaches are actually watching once you're out there, click here.
The Reset Protocol During the Tryout
The single most important mental skill during a tryout is what you do after a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone recovers well.
Here's the three-step reset I use: one sharp exhale, to physically discharge the tension in your body. One short internal phrase like “next play” or just “move” does a great job redirecting your attention. Then take an immediate action: start moving, make a run, drop back to help on defense. The whole reset takes two seconds or less.
This is visibly different from a player who lets a mistake linger. The player whose head goes down, shoulders slump, and spends more than a few seconds of being somewhere else mentally. Coaches notice the reset. They also notice when it's missing. And here's the good part: this is a skill you can practice in regular training long before tryout day, so it's already automatic when it counts.
Regardless of the Outcome, Here’s What to do Next
The mental work doesn't stop when the whistle blows. Whether the tryout felt great or not as well as you’d like, your job afterward is the same: notice what you controlled well, notice one thing you'd do differently, and then let the outcome go until you hear back.
Replaying the tryout over and over in your head doesn't change the result. And if it doesn't go the way you hoped, that's its own conversation.
We've written about exactly that here.
This process — building real mental preparation for high-stakes moments, not just before tryouts but before games, college showcases, and every pressure moment that matters — is a big part of what we work on at Beyond Goals Mentoring.
Learn more about 1-on-1 mentoring here.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Name the feeling instead of fighting it — “I'm nervous because I care about this” — then use box breathing in the car: four counts in, four hold, four out, four hold, repeated three times. Once you arrive, get on the ball early instead of standing around.
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The smallest possible unit — this touch, this run, this moment. Not the outcome, and not who's watching. Worried players tend to think too far ahead; pulling your focus back to right now is one of the most useful things you can do.
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Keep your routine normal, get to sleep at your usual time, and write down three things you do well that you plan to show the next day. Avoid rewatching mistakes or having long conversations about whether you'll make it.
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One sharp exhale, one redirect word like “next play,” and immediate movement. It takes less than two seconds, and it's one of the most noticeable things a coach sees — in a good way.
