Soccer try outs..

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My 9th grade son decided to sign up for soccer this year, instead of football which he'd played the last 2 years in a row. He used to play soccer on the community league as a child, and was really good at it. He never played football until 7th grade and wasn't so great. I'd been telling him to switch back to soccer.. and he finally listened. As a 9th grader, he's automatically on the "modified" team, which is our school district's word for Junior Varisty. Modified is for 7th, 8th, and 9th graders while Varsity is for 10th, 11th, and 12th. So, we got the letter in the mail about when modified soccer practices begin and all that. We also got a letter stating that there were 48 kids who signed up for modified soccer this year, so the coach was encouraging the 9th graders to try out for the varsity soccer team. Try outs are every day of this week. You must go everyday, then on Thursday the coach will say who is on the team and who isn't. If my son doesn't make varsity.. he still has a spot on modified, but the modified team will have to cut some 7th graders and possibly 8th graders because there can't be 48 kids on the team. I figured varsity would be a long shot. He hasn't played soccer since 5th grade, so he was a bit rusty, and I figured there'd be a lot of older kids with experience, and my son wouldn't stand a chance against those kids. But we went to try outs anyway. Why not? Like I said, even if he didn't make it, he's guaranteed a spot on modified since they can't cut 9th graders. Plus, the try outs would at least give him a bit of practice and get him back into the swing of things before the modified season started. So, we were there 9am Monday morning. He practiced for 3 hours. There weren't a whole ton of kids there, so I thought maybe he had a good shot, but I still didn't want to get my hopes up too high. In the back of my mind I was thinking perhaps there were some players from last year's team that did not need to try out, and were automatically on the team. Perhaps these try outs were just to fill a few empty spots left by seniors who graduated last year. So I did not get my hopes up about my son making the team. I watched some of the practice, and it looked like all the kids were evenly matched, skill wise. None of them looked really bad.. actually they all looked decent.. like a real soccer team. Mostly I paid attention to my son. I know he was good when he played as a kid, one of the best on his team. But he hadn't played in awhile, so I watched to make sure he was keeping up with the other kids. He seemed to do pretty well. So, after the practice was over my son got in the car and I asked him how it went. Still, I wasn't expecting anything. The letter said we'd know on Thursday if he made Varsity. So he says "I made the team" He actually made the Varsity soccer team as a freshmen! Yes, I am excited for him. Apparently, the kids who were there at try outs was it.. there weren't any other kids who automatically had a spot. Since only 16 kids showed up, and they were all pretty good, they all made the team! 4 of the kids are freshmen. So it's really exciting that my son is a varsity soccer player already! Though part of me would like to know if he would have made the team if more kids had shown up. Do you have any sports try out stories to share?