College Commitments
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Anonymous
PP here. U15 is one of, if not the most, important development year for future college recruits. First, there is a big difference between winning and developing as a player. Your goal for the U15 year should be rapid improvement. What you want to look for is a team that competes at the level that will challenge your DD to raise her performance. Second, balance the development focus with having fun and being around great teammates. The biggest reason potential recruits don't get recruited is because they burn out of the sport and/or choose not to play in college. For proof, look at the Prep Dig lists and notice how many don't commit. That list is built at U15, and many very good players don't play in college at all. Third, realize if you want to play in college and you put in the effort to get better, you will likely be able to find a place to play. It may not be the type of college you want to go to though. You need to focus your development efforts to match your college aspiration. This includes your academic and extracurricular development. Remember that after being noticed, the biggest hurdle to recruitment these days is the coach's answer to the question, "Can she get in to my school?" If you are aiming for a good academic school with tough admissions and your grades aren't quite there, you may want to focus your $ more on school than on volleyball. Fourth, you don't need just one coach any more. Your player needs to be able to improve their skills (with a good skills volleyball coach), improve their understanding of the game (with a good tactical volleyball coach), improve their physical performance (with a good strength/agility coach), and improve their mental performance (with good sports psychologist). The combination of these means the most important choice you have to make at U15 is who coaches your player. Its more important than winning or losing, more important than the level of competition the club plays at, and much more important than the clubs historical performance in recruiting. Your player is unique and you need to find the coach who fits their uniqueness well. |
Anonymous
Adding to the above, so how to you choose a good coach at U15? Start with the obvious - perceptions of the coach about your player matter. There is a very strong link between the perceived potential of a player by their coach their actual performance both in year and in future years. A recent study in soccer academies (where there is a lot of money on the line for future players) found that both subjective ratings of performance and objective measures performance are linked to coaches’ perceptions of future potential. This means coaches often have an inherent bias about current playing time that is strongly linked to the players future ability. As you look at clubs and coaches, you need to ask what future potential is important to them. If the clubs' goal is to win now, the future potential window is just about the current season. If the clubs' goal is high D1 recruitment, the future potential is focused there. You need to find a coach that either believes strongly in your players development ability or has shown an ability to see their bias and combat it, usually through ensuring everyone on their team plays enough match time to drive real growth for all players. You do not want to be the player that sits on the bench for matches at a time and/or only comes in for mop-up duty in a match, especially if your practice gym doesn't give you a challenge above the level of your match competition. Counterintuitively, you also don't want to be a player that plays 100% of the points or only comes in when the game doesn't matter any more. Watching the game from the sidelines is also part of their development, and its why so many college coaches focus intently on you when you aren't playing -- they are looking for a player who is engaged at all times, supportive of their teammates and isn't focused just on themselves. That coach also needs to provide a safe space for the player and grow their love of the game. But it has to match your players uniqueness. Some players want a gym that challenges them while being supportive and others are OK when the coach screams at them. Remember that U15 is a tough year for many players outside of the gym, and focus hard on getting them into a gym the increases their stability and internal view of their self-worth. This is especially important for females where a lot of research in early HS sports has shown that there is a strong correlation between internal belief in oneself and future athletic performance. Consider supplementing the club coach with either a strength/conditioning coach provided by the club or you bring in individually. Go to clinics/open gyms and make sure that the coach you are interested in is there. After they've seen your player a couple of times and expressed an interest in them, ask to talk to them privately outside of the clinic/open gym. Have a list of questions prepared. For example: - How much did the player with the least amount of playing time play? - At practice, how much time do you spend on individual skill improvement vs. team performance improvement? - If a player said they had a bad experience playing for you, why would they say it? - How many players have you coached that either are or committed to playing in college? Where are they playing? - How many players that play for you at U15 go on to play U17 or U18? That last question is especially important if you haven't played high level club volleyball yet. It really is a different environment from a lower level team at a big club or a top team at a lower level club. The pressure, speed of the game, expectations and work required are all higher, while the margin for error is lower. Some players can't handle it, others thrive. But for those that can't, leaving the game after their U16 year is a big red flag. They were talented enough to get onto a great team, but a year or two later they've left the sport. Either they stopped playing because of an external conflict (usually pursuit of another sport), which is fine, or they stopped playing because they stopped loving the game -- which is almost always due to their club experience at U15/U16. If they play through U17 without college as a focus, it means their coaches probably did something right. For clubs to consider, the list showing where players in the 2025 class played their U15 year is a very good start. Coaches change though, so check to see if the same coach is there or be sure to do your homework on the new coach. |
Anonymous
Data on boys volleyball is a bit harder to come by. There is good data nationally on recruiting though. # Of Men's Teams D1: 26 D2: 30 D3: 110 NAIA: 43 Full list is available on multiple recruiting sites like Stack Athlete and NCSA. Like women's, D1 & D2 men's programs offer scholarships. Historically only 4.5 players could receive a scholarship on each men's team. The House settlement put the number of men's and women's scholarships at the same level, along with the new roster limit of 18 players. The settlement allows schools to add up to 18 scholarships, and every athlete on the roster can receive a full, partial or no scholarship depending on the schools approach. Haven't seen any data on how the wave of offers for boys for the 2025 & 2026 classes played out in terms of scholarships -- the NCAA publishes that data a year or two after the matriculation year for students. Bigger men's programs now have the ability to offer scholarships to the entire rosters. Haven't heard yet if they are actually doing so. This might result in "roster stacking" where really good players congregate at the schools willing to give the most scholarship dollars. Prior to this year, men's players may have been good enough to play at a school but weren't offered a scholarship, so they sometimes chose to go to a different school that offered money. Now big schools can counteract that, which may open spots at other schools for scholarship opportunities. Outside of scholarships, remember that there are only ~560 roster spots in D1&D2 and only ~3,800 total across all programs. That number seems really low at first. But compare it to the number of players playing club at U18. 884 teams X average roster size of 10 = 8,800 players. Divide that by 4 on the assumption that rosters are even between classes. So if every club player wanted to play in college, 2,200/8,800=25% have a spot to do so. Maybe a little less if teams don't carry 18 players, which can happen at D3 levels especially. |
Anonymous
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I’ve always found this data that calculates the percentages of HS athletes that go on to play in the NCAA across all sports to be interesting. https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2015/3/2/estimated-probability-of-competing-in-college-athletics.aspx
Does any know whether there are similar stats derived from club volleyball numbers rather than HS? |
Anonymous
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