Most always the best players are recognized and make the team, but there are always a few hard cuts that have to be made by the coach. Coaches get ragged on for some of these hard decisions, but in my experiences those criticizers have predominantly been the players who have been cut, family of those cut, or friends of those cut. I am not saying that high school sports are free from favorites and politics, but most of the accusations on the fairness of the tryouts are worthless. Maybe even mine was. Many people I have talked to almost wish they never played hig hschool sports.
Exhausting practices are practically everyday and last for hours.
Free time is shattered and a job is almost impossible to maintain. Homework becomes a harder task, seeing there is less time and less energy from grueling practices. Also, in basketball there are somewhere around 15 players who are on the roster. On most teams only half of them ever see real playing time. At my school there were more than a hundred people on the varsity football team.