Call it a necessary evil. For all the fun and glory that comes with playing sports, there is a nasty part of the process that can leave an athlete’s stomach in knots. And it comes before the season even starts.

Tryouts. If an athlete does not show well there, he or she might not have a season to worry about. That can make for a worrisome workout.

“They’re pretty stressful because you want to do your best so you can make (the team),” said South Junior High eighth-grader Emily Peterson, who plays basketball, softball and track.

“At the beginning it was stressful,” said West Junior High seventh-grader Jake Walter, who now considers himself a young pro when it comes to the tryout scene. He runs track and plays basketball, football and soccer.

“Sports take up a lot of my life, so I’m used to it,” he said.

The stress may be commonplace for Walter now, but he can still feel it. “People are out there watching you and judging you,” he said. “You have to do your best, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them from finding out if you’re bad or good at the sport.”

The key to succeeding under the scrutiny of those judging eyes, said Central Junior High ninth-grader Jake Weber, is relaxing.

“I never go into a tryout feeling really stressed or nervous because that makes you perform worse. I just see it as your first practice,” said Weber, who participates in basketball, football and track. “If you go in there stress-free you’ll end up doing 10 times better.”

Walter said one of his most trying tryouts came when he attempted to earn a spot on the state’s Olympic Development Team for soccer.

“I’ve always been good at soccer and the people there were really, really good and most of them were better than me,” he recalled. “I almost didn’t want to go out there because I felt like I wouldn’t do good, but I ended up making the team.”

For Peterson, the most difficult tryout she had was earlier this year when she went through two days of workouts in order to make the Northeast Lady Prospects basketball team.

“You have to be good in all aspects, or they really don’t want you,” she said.

The whole ordeal can be as exciting as a trip to the amusement park. “It’s like when you’re going up for the first big drop on a roller coaster,” said Walter. “You can’t stop wondering how bad it’s going to be, and once you get down that first drop you’re really relieved and you can’t wait to get to the rest of the roller coaster.”

It can also be as nerve-wrecking as landing a job. “It’s unique,” Weber said. “You could compare it to a job interview.”

Call it a job interview with heavy lifting. “They’re much harder than anything you’re going to do the entire year,” Weber said. “That way the coach knows you can rise to that occasion.”

Peterson compared tryouts to a wearisome part of the school year. She said waiting to see if she made the cut was like waiting to see the grades on her report card, but worse. “I have way more nerves for sports,” she said.

Nevertheless, these athletes do not think the process should be changed. “I think it’s a pretty good setup,” Walter said.

“You want it to pick out the people who shouldn’t be on the team,” Weber added.

Peterson agreed – with one minor exception: “I would make them shorter,” she said.

Like any nauseating roller coaster, palm-sweat-inducing job interview or end-of-semester stress, the best part of a tryout is when it ends.

“It’s a relief to have it over with,” Walter said.