I Tried Out for the Earthquakes at 29 and Played It Safe
A few months before my thirtieth birthday my cousin called and told me there were open tryouts for the San Jose Earthquakes and that we should go.I laughed at him. He called again the next day. And the next. And the next.Then he said something that got me in the car, and I have been repeating it to players ever since.
The sentence that changed it
"Don't you at least want to be able to say you tried?"
That was it. That was the whole argument.
For how simple it sounds, I had never once thought about it that way. My whole life I had done things because I wanted to do them. I tried new things because I enjoyed them. I had never framed a decision as: not doing this will cost me something later.
I sat with that. What if one day I look back and go, I wish I had done that. I could have. I should have.
I signed up. The tryout was about two months out.
The plan that fell apart in two weeks
The plan was simple. My cousin and I would train together and give our best possible showing.
His schedule got busy. It got harder and harder to line up. So I called my brother and he came out a few times, and then his schedule limited it too.
About two weeks in I had to face something. If I was going to get better it was not going to happen in a few hours a week that depended on other people being free.
That is a realization a lot of players never have, and the ones who never have it tend to plateau exactly where their teammates' availability sets the ceiling.
What I built instead
So I went to the park by myself.
It started as running with the ball. That turned into juggling. Juggling turned into sprints with the ball. Sprints with the ball turned into sprints between cones finishing with a shot. Then I found a wall, and the wall became a partner: pass into it, receive, turn, shoot.
Eventually I was building game situations for one person. And I started picturing myself playing well, so that when I trained alone I was training against imaginary players who were better than me.
Forty-five days. I went from 220 pounds to 170.
I should be straight about that number, because it is not a goal. I was a twenty-nine-year-old adult who had been away from the game for years, and dropping weight that fast is not healthy and not something a young player should be aiming at. It is what happened, not a target.
But the weight was not the interesting part. Guys I had played with for years in Sunday league started telling me something had changed. More confident, stronger, faster. They could see it before I could.
Everything I have built since comes out of those forty-five days, including the whole idea that a named detail beats an unfocused hour.
Walking in
Tryout day. Sign-in office, stand in line, get your bib, go warm up.
It is impossible not to size up the room. I saw guys who were too short, too heavy, too thin. I saw guys who looked like athletes. I was intimidated at points and I had to talk myself back up, which is a skill of its own and one most players never practice. If that is the part that gets you, the choking piece is about exactly that.
Then we played.
I played well
I want to be clear about this because it matters to the point.
I was a center back and nobody got past me. My communication was loud and constant. My back line was organized. My passing out of the back was clean.
They subbed in a forward who was clearly fast. I remember thinking it the second I saw him move. So every time the ball came near him I stepped to him early and closed the space before he could turn, and after a few attempts I could hear the frustration in his voice.
Two hours later it was over and I drove home feeling like I had done exactly what I came to do.
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The drive home
On the way back I started running the coach's side of it in my head. Not mine. His.
He has a number of spots. He is watching two hundred people. He has academy players he already knows and has been tracking for years. He has to walk out of there able to name the handful of people worth a second look.
So the question is not "who played well." Everyone there could play. The question is "who did I notice."
Open tryouts also have their own economics. Two hundred people paying an entry fee is a real day's revenue no matter who gets signed, and understanding that is not cynicism. It just tells you the odds are not the point. Your showing is the point.
Then I remembered what I did to my teammate
Here is the part that still gets me.
One of the guys playing defense alongside me pushed forward during the session and started playing more like an attacking midfielder. He was good at it. He took players on, he pulled off some real moves, he got shots off.
And I told him to get back into the defensive line and help out.
I was trying to organize the shape. I was doing what a good center back does in a real match. And I was telling a man at an open pro tryout to stop doing the only thing in that session that was going to get him seen.
I spent two hours defending safely, staying in my lane, and doing a genuinely good job that stood out to exactly one person in the building, and that person was me.
A tryout is not a game
That is the whole lesson and it took me until twenty-nine.
In a game, your job is the job. You hold your shape, you make the safe pass, you do not take the risk that costs your team a goal, and doing that well is winning.
At a tryout, nobody is keeping the result. The scoreline does not exist tomorrow. The only thing that survives that session is whether a stranger wrote your bib number down.
So the safe pass that is correct on Saturday is invisible on tryout day. The risk you would never take in a match is the entire reason you drove there. You are not being asked to win. You are being asked to be memorable, and those are different assignments that happen to use the same ball.
I went there to work with teammates and win. I should have gone there to show them what I could do. Big difference.
What I tell a kid going to an ID camp now
Same rules, younger player, higher stakes, and the same trap waiting.
Go do the thing you are best at, on purpose, as often as the session allows. If that is beating people one on one, beat people one on one. If it is hitting a forty-yard ball, find the chance to hit one.
Be loud. Communication is one of the few things a coach can evaluate instantly and almost nobody does it.
Do not spend the session organizing other people. It feels like leadership. At a tryout it mostly reads as an absence.
And if a teammate starts doing something that will get them seen, leave them alone. I did not, and I am still thinking about it fifteen years later.
If you are looking at college ID camps, everything above applies the day you walk in.
Frequently Asked Questions
By doing the thing you are best at, deliberately and often, rather than by playing a correct team game. Evaluators are not tracking the result, they are trying to leave with a short list of names. If nothing about your session was distinct, a good performance can still be invisible.
Play it, but not the safe version of it. The habits that make you reliable on a Saturday, holding shape, taking the simple option, managing other people, are exactly the habits that produce a forgettable tryout. Take the risks you would normally decline.
Something they can name afterward. Speed, one-on-one ability, a weapon of a left foot, constant communication. Broad competence is hard to remember. One clear strength is easy to write down.
That depends on what you want out of it. The odds at an open tryout are long and most spots go to players a club already knows. But the preparation is real, it is yours to keep, and not going is its own permanent answer.
You almost certainly will not be, and it changes nothing about the approach. Sizing up the room is normal and it is not information. Everyone there can play. The separator is whether you did something distinct, not whether you were the strongest athlete in the warm-up line.