Stepping back from DA to play High School soccer as a senior

[Anonymous]

Doesn't seem wise to me.

My son played on his club team and the HS team last year and will not be doing it this year. The skill level of the players on his HS team as well as the teams they played were not the same as he's used to. Also, much more dirty play and injuries happened.

Our club allows it, but the coach strongly advises against it and now my son sees why.

One blown knee and there goes that potential scholarship.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RSD, I think you make a lot of good points, especially the one about how coaches may perceive you dropping back as a lack of seriousness on the athlete's part.

I also kind of wonder if there isn't a bit of truth to that. Some players do take the "I have arrived approach" and get a little lazy their senior year.

Also, in terms of sending to the pros, I have heard that the top D1 programs are very sensitive to that and to what their athletes do beyond college. Some colleges are even talking about coming up with full year programming and reducing the train to game ratio.

That's an interesting question. The "I have arrived" approach has been an issue at several levels. MLS clubs got sick of dealing with kids who had been through the U17 residency in Bradenton and thought they were God's gift to a soccer field.

College soccer has always had *some* sort of full-year programming -- the spring games are just scrimmages that aren't taken too seriously. But the experiment last spring with no re-entry and so forth could very well be the start of some serious reform.

(As for the rest of this thread -- yeesh, folks. Calm down. Get some perspective. Go for a walk. Meditate. Get therapy. Anything to keep you from firing away at other people anonymously. It's like 4chan without the user names.)

It’s funny you say that about the long lost residency. I see parents and kids act like that just because of NTC attendance, as if their kid is practically national team. But something in the American soccer system seems to lend itself to a lot of players and parents over-estimating where they are really at, both in the scheme of even the US itself and also where they are compared to world wide talent.

I do tend to think some needed reform is coming to college soccer. The existence of pro teams probably has college coaches asking themselves better questions about their own programs. This may seem less obvious but I also wonder if the loss of relevancy of high school soccer has colleges - some at least - wondering if that could spread upward to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many girls in MD and VA actually make it into a top 10 D1 school in any given year? Look it up. Who are all you people commenting?

OP here. The girl I know is in and from NY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:RSD, I think you make a lot of good points, especially the one about how coaches may perceive you dropping back as a lack of seriousness on the athlete's part.

I also kind of wonder if there isn't a bit of truth to that. Some players do take the "I have arrived approach" and get a little lazy their senior year.

Also, in terms of sending to the pros, I have heard that the top D1 programs are very sensitive to that and to what their athletes do beyond college. Some colleges are even talking about coming up with full year programming and reducing the train to game ratio.

That's an interesting question. The "I have arrived" approach has been an issue at several levels. MLS clubs got sick of dealing with kids who had been through the U17 residency in Bradenton and thought they were God's gift to a soccer field.

College soccer has always had *some* sort of full-year programming -- the spring games are just scrimmages that aren't taken too seriously. But the experiment last spring with no re-entry and so forth could very well be the start of some serious reform.

(As for the rest of this thread -- yeesh, folks. Calm down. Get some perspective. Go for a walk. Meditate. Get therapy. Anything to keep you from firing away at other people anonymously. It's like 4chan without the user names.)

It’s funny you say that about the long lost residency. I see parents and kids act like that just because of NTC attendance, as if their kid is practically national team. But something in the American soccer system seems to lend itself to a lot of players and parents over-estimating where they are really at, both in the scheme of even the US itself and also where they are compared to world wide talent.

I do tend to think some needed reform is coming to college soccer. The existence of pro teams probably has college coaches asking themselves better questions about their own programs. This may seem less obvious but I also wonder if the loss of relevancy of high school soccer has colleges - some at least - wondering if that could spread upward to them.

College coaches of schools with good men's soccer programs are already well aware that some of their top recruits may never make it to campus. UCLA often loses a majority of its recruiting class, and Maryland, Indiana, Duke, UNC, and lots of other schools lose kids too. Bigsoccer has a threads on college recruiting classes, and they are always speculating, then tracking, which kids will end up skipping college. This has nothing to do with the relevancy of HS soccer, though. Top prospects are recruited from DA or good club programs, and an ever-increasing number of them take the gamble on going pro whether it's overseas, via homegrown deals with MLS teams, or USL.

Many of the best college coaches advocate for NCAA rule changes that will permit a 10-month season in large part for this reason. They want their kids to have the sort of training and competition structure that will permit them to go pro after their years of college play are done. This is much more of an issue on the men's side given the paucity of decent pro options for women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many girls in MD and VA actually make it into a top 10 D1 school in any given year? Look it up. Who are all you people commenting?

OP here. The girl I know is in and from NY.

Plenty of girls and boys make it into top soccer programs from our area. Here are some recent ECNL commitments: http://www.mcleansoccer.org/college_commitments You can also check out Top Drawer Soccer to see where boys and girls are headed by state and by class: https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/search/?area=commitments

[Anonymous]

If your stats are generally accurate, then the local clubs are poor in developing the players (not the world class players, but rather high level college team level). Any thoughts on why this is the case?

[Anonymous]

So basically not the abject failure, but rather a middling mediocrity.

[Anonymous]

Does a database exist of all NCAA players in a central location or did you have to go school-by-school to the rosters? Would be interesting to see how many were DA players and how many came from other paths.

[Anonymous]

RantingSoccerDad wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your stats are generally accurate, then the local clubs are poor in developing the players (not the world class players, but rather high level college team level). Any thoughts on why this is the case?

I didn't specifically count other areas, but there were a few places that kept coming up repeatedly, none of them a surprise:

- Southern California
- Northern California
- Colorado
- New Jersey
- Dallas area

And more from Georgia than I expected, but I'm originally from Georgia, so perhaps it stood out.

I've often thought about doing a larger-scope survey, but it would take a LOT of time. Even this one took a while, and that's just 26 college rosters.

So I don't know if the DMV is specifically lacking in some way. But the idea that the area is significantly *better* than other metro areas just doesn't hold a lot of water as far as I can tell.

I don't think you can draw very many conclusions from this particular snapshot of college rosters. It seems like you are assuming that all the best players would want to go to the schools you listed if they had the opportunity, and that's by no means the case. From my personal experience, I know kids who were recruited by power-house schools but instead chose:

An Ivy or other more academically highly ranked school
A school that offered more scholarship dollars
A school that was closer to home
A school/coach that would work with the student so they could pursue an engineering or lab-heavy degree
A program that would likely offer more playing time
A program where they loved the coach and/or thought the team was a better fit
To postpone college and try their hand at going pro

You also aren't accounting for kids from our area who may have started out at any of those schools but got injured or transferred for any number of reasons.

[Anonymous]

A general question about whether you should step back from DA to play HS soccer as a senior is very different from a question as to whether you should do so if you will be playing for a top college program. And the answer to the general question is always going to be: it depends. There are ambitious coaches of lower level or less well known programs who care just as much as those from top programs, and there are some coaches of teams at all levels who'd be fine with it. Regardless of your situation, you should check in with the college coach before you make any major changes to your soccer routine, and if they have some concerns, you should weigh those along with whatever factors are driving the decision.