"Cherry Picking" My experience when my oldest was on a pool team, was that for the vast majority of the year it was purely random. Come very late Spring or when we went to a bigger tournament they would put the kids into an "A" and "B" team by ability. I was not a big fan of the big pool team, but my perspective is biased by the large diversity in talent that my daughter's pool team had and the difficulties that resulted from same. I think the pool concept works so long as you have children on a given pool team with very similar talant. The year my daughter's team struggled with the pool the parents that I talked to on the boys side of the equation did not face the same problems. The hard part for kids and parents is that first game when they know that the coaches has divided the team into "A" team and "B" team. It's almost like tryouts all over again.
