If your child plays sports in college when did it become clear she/he/they had a chance to make it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So which sports are the easiest for boys to get into at the D1 level? Obviously not soccer or tennis...

Lacrosse
Track & Field
Baseball
Cross Country
Volleyball (but not many teams)

LOL take baseball off this list. The reduced number of draft rounds is making college recruiting a mess.

How so?

The cut the draft from 40 rounds to 20. So there’s a significant number of players who would have been drafted in previous years who are attending college to play instead. And they’re going to the best baseball schools, so there’s a trickle down effect making each level more difficult in terms of recruiting.

Interesting. So, in some ways analogous to what is happening in men’s soccer: more kids competing for fewer spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man, I am so thankful baseball isn't dependent on size and there are tons of late bloomers. Hitting consistently is so hard.

The soccer discussion on this thread is depressing.

More depressing than it needs to be IMO. This is a soccer hotspot, and kids from this area have always done well in college recruiting. I’d be cautious but listen to the boosters at least as much as the doomsayers if your kid is in HS and doing well. Just do your research.

The best thing to do is to keep an eye on the college commit webpages for 2022 and going forward. Prior to 2022 it’s a little irrelevant because of the transfer portal changes, as discussed above. But if you have a younger kid, you can get a sense of likelihood by watching the commit pages. Examples below:

http://arlingtonsoccer.com/programs/travel/college-placement/college-commitments
https://www.bethesdasoccer.org/commitments/

I would look at commit pages nationwide to get a better global sense too.

Damn this area a joke for top talent in boys soccer

Kids from California, Texas, and Arizona are generally going to have better options because of the quality of play in those states.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So which sports are the easiest for boys to get into at the D1 level? Obviously not soccer or tennis...

Lacrosse
Track & Field
Baseball
Cross Country
Volleyball (but not many teams)

The actual truth is that there are no "easy" sports for boys. Things are much different for girls.

Truth

[Anonymous]

Well, Matt Turner didn’t know. He was a walk-on soccer player at Fairfield Univ, just having picked up soccer at 16. He wasn’t in all these excessive leagues doing ridiculous travel and college showcases at 13. He was undrafted in the MLS. And now is 3 games in the World Cup with no non-penalty goals let in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, Matt Turner didn’t know. He was a walk-on soccer player at Fairfield Univ, just having picked up soccer at 16. He wasn’t in all these excessive leagues doing ridiculous travel and college showcases at 13. He was undrafted in the MLS. And now is 3 games in the World Cup with no non-penalty goals let in.

Yes, but goalies are entirely different. No way a kid in any other position could do that.

[Anonymous]

What's the obsession with D1 soccer or otherwise? D2 or D3 allows the kid to keep playing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think for D1 you want to have daughters tbh. They have a much better chance. They get identified earlier too.

Truth

For what sport? For our sport, only 3% of players go D1 and, of those, almost none get the coveted "full ride."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What's the obsession with D1 soccer or otherwise? D2 or D3 allows the kid to keep playing.

For men’s soccer, D2 and D3 are only marginally less competitive than D1, because the 18-year-old MLSNext/ECNL stars who can’t get on D1 because those rosters are 50-70% international 21-year-olds are now playing D2/D3.

Essentially kids who would have been D1 shoe-ins 5-7 years ago are now playing D2 and D3. The percentages are very low even for D2/D3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think for D1 you want to have daughters tbh. They have a much better chance. They get identified earlier too.

Truth

For what sport? For our sport, only 3% of players go D1 and, of those, almost none get the coveted "full ride."

That’s pretty good odds. My sport it’s .5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's the obsession with D1 soccer or otherwise? D2 or D3 allows the kid to keep playing.

For men’s soccer, D2 and D3 are only marginally less competitive than D1, because the 18-year-old MLSNext/ECNL stars who can’t get on D1 because those rosters are 50-70% international 21-year-olds are now playing D2/D3.

Essentially kids who would have been D1 shoe-ins 5-7 years ago are now playing D2 and D3. The percentages are very low even for D2/D3.

Right. Which is why all this talk about transfer portals and the impossibility of boys playing D1 in the future is beside the point. What’s the age you could tell your kid had enough talent to think they had a decent chance of being recruited to play in college? For our son playing D1 now it was 13. Maybe someone else with the exact same level of talent and discipline will only have D3 options in the future, but that doesn’t change the age at which future options start to become more clear.

We think our our youngest DS (almost 13) has enough athleticism and soccer talent to have a shot at a high level D3 if he stays on his current course. It would be interesting to have a thread on the official soccer forum where people made predictions about future recruitment and then followed up with outcomes. College Confidential used to have something similar in the Athletic recruiting forum where you could follow posters’ kids’ journeys throughout HS on various threads, and it was both interesting and informative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think for D1 you want to have daughters tbh. They have a much better chance. They get identified earlier too.

Truth

For what sport? For our sport, only 3% of players go D1 and, of those, almost none get the coveted "full ride."

That’s pretty good odds. My sport it’s .5

3%? It's really not. Saying it's better than .5% doesn't make the odds good.

[Anonymous]

I'm curious as to what your kids' coaches are saying about your kids' potential.

Do they say anything at all about a kids' potential? Do they push back on what you share about their potential or what the kids' goals are?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Son is a D1 lacrosse player.

Athletic ability was apparent by 8 or 9, very apparent once in HS; at that point, lots of late bloomers have caught up. He was still a standout.

However, lots of kids have the ability to play at college level, but they have to have the internal drive and competitiveness to make it happen. Ours did. Many others didn't - and that's completely fine, they have other interests.

Good rule of thumb: a parent should never care more about the sport than the kid playing it.

Agree 100%.

My kid got the natural talent but lacked the internal drive to continue past his Junior year in High School. He's still playing Varsity at school and Club but has no interest in pursuing it for College.

We push for academics but would not push for both, academics plus sports...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's the obsession with D1 soccer or otherwise? D2 or D3 allows the kid to keep playing.

For men’s soccer, D2 and D3 are only marginally less competitive than D1, because the 18-year-old MLSNext/ECNL stars who can’t get on D1 because those rosters are 50-70% international 21-year-olds are now playing D2/D3.

Essentially kids who would have been D1 shoe-ins 5-7 years ago are now playing D2 and D3. The percentages are very low even for D2/D3.

Right. Which is why all this talk about transfer portals and the impossibility of boys playing D1 in the future is beside the point. What’s the age you could tell your kid had enough talent to think they had a decent chance of being recruited to play in college? For our son playing D1 now it was 13. Maybe someone else with the exact same level of talent and discipline will only have D3 options in the future, but that doesn’t change the age at which future options start to become more clear.

We think our our youngest DS (almost 13) has enough athleticism and soccer talent to have a shot at a high level D3 if he stays on his current course. It would be interesting to have a thread on the official soccer forum where people made predictions about future recruitment and then followed up with outcomes. College Confidential used to have something similar in the Athletic recruiting forum where you could follow posters’ kids’ journeys throughout HS on various threads, and it was both interesting and informative.

Your kid playing D1 now would be extremely unlikely to make a D1 team as a senior now. I do not understand why you are fixated on dismissing the enormous changes to recruiting in the past year. I mean, head coaches of all the major D1 sports have been openly talking about how the transfer portal has fundamentally changed recruiting but somehow your kid would have been unaffected and you think soccer is unaffected. I am sorry, but your ego is blinding you to reality.

[Anonymous]

I imagine foreigners are taking up spots on D1 teams that have a hard time getting the best American players. I mean from this area, often the goal of soccer is to get a leg up on admission to an Ivy League school as opposed to just playing soccer. I think you’ll see more foreigners at less academically known schools.