With Whitehorse abuzz this week with Arctic Winter Games (AWG) preparations, potential athletes will look to leave good impressions on coaches as opening trials for three sports will be held this weekend.

Basketball, indoor soccer and table tennis tryouts will all be held this weekend, with other sports following suit in the coming weeks.

Like girls basketball, the AWG boys basketball opening tryout is a three-day event.

The first tryout is scheduled to start tonight from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and continue on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. – all at the F.H. Collins Secondary School gym.

Anyone who has played within the Basketball Yukon system will know what to expect, head coach Tim Brady said. The U19 tryout will include on-court movement drills, fundamental skill work and scrimmages.

"As our session goes on, we'll do some break-down stuff, some one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three, etcetera, and wind up playing some games, some full-court and half-court games, putting these guys in competitive situations,” Brady said.

The final selection will likely take place within the next month.

For Brady, there will also be few surprises with the pool of players he expects to come out, having worked with many of them in the past.

"We have some boys that have put a lot of time in all ready, over the course of this year and years previous, and have worked on developing themselves and their athletic abilities,” Brady said. "I think they're reasonably familiar with some of the things that we're going to try to do, our operating systems and how we're going to play. So I think it's going to be a fairly solid, competitive team. We have some size, we have some speed.”

Brady expects the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to be in the same position as the Yukon team.

"We expect a very competitive tournament in Whitehorse in March. We know the other two territories bring strong, solid basketball teams. We've worked with them, and we know who they have as well; they know what we have. There's some familiarity with all three territories, and Alaska is always strong.

"It's going to be a great tournament here, we're anticipating that, and we have an opportunity to prepare ourselves to play in that tournament and showcase some of the local talent in Whitehorse, which we don't always get the chance to do.”

The boys basketball squad has a competitive schedule established which will take them Outside for tournaments and games starting in November and continuing each month until March.

"Hopefully, come March, we can stay reasonably healthy and intact, and we can be ready to play – and play at a high level,” Brady said.

"This is the start of the process for this group, and we're really looking forward to it.”

Girls basketball will be held from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday and 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at F.H. Collins.

The table tennis trials will be held Sunday starting at 10 a.m. at Whitehorse Elementary School.

The indoor soccer ID camp will take place Saturday and Sunday at the Canada Games Centre for juvenile male and female (born in 1997 or later), junior male and female (born 1995 or later) and for intermediate female (born 1993 or later).

The 2012 Arctic Winter Games will be held in Whitehorse from March 4-10.