DD devastated for not being picked at her favourite sport

[February2026]

DD8 is in a prep school. She has some mild SEN (a bit literal and slightly younger in her interactions) but doing very well across all subjects.

They are forming the sports teams now and she loves Netball. She has been playing it since Y1 and is pretty good at it. Shes also one of the tallest in her class. School has played against other schools several times in the last couple of months and she was the only one who scored on her team.

Today she came home absolutely devastated that there is a tournament at the end of this week and she is one of the few girls who didn't get chosen to take part. She's absolutely devastated 💔 and I'm devastated for her.

How do you deal with this? I'm just concerned it will put her off sport completely. She already doesn't like hockey or football.

OP my kids are also at a prep school and there a few very talented kids who almost always make the team and the rest all take turns. At this age the point of sport is not just to win, but to take part, be a team, learn to win and lose gracefully.
Its a life skill. Yes, its disappointing not to get picked this time. Its certainly not devastating though. Show your child how to deal with this gracefully, keep trying, and support and be happy for her teammates. It is not a big deal. You want a resilient child who can deal with life's constant little disappointments, not a child who is devastated at not making a team at 8 years old.
'Oh well DD, perhaps it was someone else's turn? Or maybe someone played better? Make sure you ask how the team did snd congratulate or commiserate with them. And keep trying your hardest, hopefully you'll be picked again soon.'

Isn’t this life though? DS is on the A team for a sport and they do a few A team only tournaments but he’s never picked for the school play main parts or choir solos.

He gets disappointed but we talk about how we can’t all do everything and it does feel sad when we don’t get picked for something, and how we can react to it.

This. Don’t make a fuss. Acknowledge her disappointment but you do need to make it clear you expect her to carry on with life and netball regardless. If you make a fuss about this she will learn that it’s ok to go to pieces when something disappointing happens.

It can sometimes be impenetrable how they make these decisions. DS' primary have just chosen a rugby team for y2 no friendlies or trials they don't even play rugby in PE. DS does outside of school and he's good. He's not good at football. He didn't get picked because they picked from the cross country and football teams and a couple of children from the SEND unit (no issue with this very good for them to have the opportunity) , so DS had missed out on a sport he loves and so has another boy who is only into rugby, and the school are missing out in terms of fielding a team against other schools, one of the dads who coaches at DS' club said he thinks it's bizarre.

He's really upset and I find it hard to tell him why the decisions have been made, it's someone else's turn doesn't really work when most of the children playing already play in other teams for the school.
It's also not because he plays out of school, the whole football team plays football for clubs out of school.

There is a fantastic lesson here: in life, there are disappointments.

Thank you all. It was good reading all the different perspectives. She is fine now. She was very upset as her teachers (who are treating them military style btw) told everyone they are taking on just the 'good ones', so she felt she wasn't good enough (when she is the scorer in her class and some of the girls who were picked never even scored). So she was pretty upset by it, not sure what really was the criteria, but they could have been kinder about it and not telling the girls who weren't picked they are not good enough, not at this age.

Nevermind though, I think the silver lining is that she won't have to train extra with her school teachers. We do have a very good netball club near us and she can join in Sept if she wants to. They do tournaments and this might give her the opportunity to make new friends outside school.

And of course she building some resilience in the process.

And she'll probably be a good B team player in the future.

The teams were certainly picked on ability at the prep school my children attended , nothing random at all .

I do believe it's ability but not ability at netball in my opinion. Some of the girls picked aren't particularly good at netball but they were consistently good at sport over the last few years, the ones who got the most medals in Sports day for instance. I think that's the criteria.

DD was above average at all athletics but she hasn't excelled at any. So the fact that she is good at netball was a bit overlooked, I think. I could be completely wrong. But that would explain why a girl who got picked can't even pass the ball very well or score at netball (very petite), but she's the fastest runner in the class.

Netball is a team of 7 and only 2 of those positions can score so most of the girls selected won’t need that skill. Speedy runners for example can make really good centres. I’m sure DD is decent but if she typically plays an attack position maybe there was just a lot of competition for those spots and she wasn’t ever in contention for other positions. It’s disappointing but I would get her into the netball club and hopefully next year she’ll get chosen. If not then no big deal, remind her of the importance of having fun and keeping healthy- it’s not all about the competition.

At 8 it’s very very early to be selecting “good” players for a team. Far better to take all those who are keen and play it with rotating subs to give as many as you can a chance to have time on the court.

Poor approach on behalf of the school - but good attitude to encourage your daughter to carry on and roll with it.

Absolutely!

I would love to see the year one netball lessons. I watch year one football and it's chaos. Add in having to catch and throw the ball, not run with the ball, and know the positions on the court. I imagine it's like herding cats who can't catch.

It wasn't bad at all, it was a mixed class and there were only about 2 or 3 Y1 girls, the rest were Y2 and Y3. They were very little and didn't know what they were doing at first but by the end if Y1, DD learned some good skills.

I'm guessing you don't know a lot about netball if you're assessing ability as scoring.

Only 2 are allowed to score goals and so the majority of layers on a team will never score.

But on One hand you seem to be saying you think you're should be on the team because she's better, on the other hand you're saying it's not fair that they selected by ability. You can't have it both ways.

As someone who was generally not sporty though, it can be pretty miserable being the weak link on a team. Even at that age the girls want to win, so if you feel you're letting them down, it's a miserable feeling, even if they're nice about it.
And assume that the school has done this tournament before and knows what the ability is, so they want to make sure they can do their best.
I play tennis and whereas you can have lovely matches you lose badly, it's really disheartening even as adult when you play match after match and lose badly.

Find a nice out of school club that has lots of teams and get her playing there. Playing out of school gives her more practice and helps her game. But also if she's playing out of school, those matches become less important so not being picked doesn't feel as bad.

She is generally doing very well in a match, particularly good at scoring! That's all!

Could you find a netball team for her outside school? I am a great believer in out of school friendships anyway as it gives kids other friends options. Not spending all day together can be good.

Yes, there is one near us that I didn't know about until recently. So that's a good option if she wants to do it. They take them from the age of 8.

I completely agree with this. It is really healthy for DC to have friendship groups outside of school for all sorts of reasons.

It was also mentioned by a PP but I’d encourage your DD to participate in lots of different sports. At that age it’s about trying different things and having fun. You don’t know - you may actually have a future rugby or cricket star in the making!

100% we are going to do this.

I was just thinking that in her half year report the PE teachers mentioned she got good hockey skills so she might be picked for that, who knows. The only problem is she really doesn't like hockey and wasn't keen on being in a team, if she was picked. Maybe this changed her perspective.

I'm guessing you don't know a lot about netball if you're assessing ability as scoring.
Only 2 are allowed to score goals and so the majority of layers on a team will never score.

That’s a good point, my DD couldn’t score even if she was the only person on the court and had all the time in the world. Yet she regularly captains her school’s first team. Mainly because she is vocal on the court, keeps morale high, is extremely competitive and is an excellent defender.

Also, OP, my DD hated hockey when she was in prep. It is now her preferred sport as a 16 year old and she is planning on dropping netball to focus on hockey.

Just keep her enthusiasm up for all sports and she will naturally gravitate to one over time. Once they start going through puberty it all shifts a bit.

I thought I'd give an update.

First of all, I agree I don't know much about netball. However every team will need a good shooter as how can they win a game if they can't score? That's my DD's point.

I spoke to one of the teachers last week after her netball club (asked her how can DD improve) and she said she is a very good, very precise shooter but needs to work on her speed and quick decision making, fair enough.

Last Wed they had another friendly match and DD (again) was the only one who scored and won the game.

Anyway, on Sat the girls chosen for the tournament (1 third of the school year) came last (6 schools, they came 6th). They were very sad on Monday and apparently were asked to talk in front of the class about it. We are very surprised by the girls chosen, as I pointed out last week, as although some are good at netball, quite a few are just good at sport in general (not so good at netball) and have done well at sports over the years. So maybe teachers might rethink when setting up the teams in Y4. I understand they aren't setting up teams this year.

How do you know how good the other girls are if you don't know much about netball?
It sounds like you are far too invested in something that ultimately is just about enjoying sport at this age. Being disparaging of other girls because your darling girl must be better isn't a great look.

This doesn’t really make sense to me re netball. If she’s petite and fast, she would be centre. Not Goal attack or goal shoot. Those are the only players who can score out of the 7 players. My Monday league we struggle to get a shooter each week. I’m talking adult netball but similar applies in all sports. The centre will be fast and quick. The goal keep will be tall and amazing at interceptions. Defence vs attack?
completely misses point of post 🤦‍♀️😂

When I was about 9/10 in junior school there was a child who was always picked to sing solos. I was very jealous as I was convinced I had a voice at least as good. When I went up to secondary school (she went to a different school) I was quickly singled out to sing the solos and duetes in house competitions. Looking back on things my rival was quite an ugly little kid, very plain with bright red cheeks like a cupie doll. Perhaps being picked for singing made her feel very special. I was top of the class in 5 academic subjects but useless at sport. No one can be good at everything.