If your kid got recruited at a top school for sports, how did the process go?
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Anonymous
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My kid is still in middle school, and I know it’s way too early to predict, but I’d like to keep doors open and I’m curious.
How does this work? Are there steps you took in 9th and 10th to get coaches attention? Camps? Social media? Reaching out directly? Kid is a soccer GK if that makes a difference. |
Anonymous
| The easiest pathway for soccer is to be a top player on a team that plays in the top league—that was DA, now MLS Next, who knows by the time your kid graduates from HS. ECNL is less elite for boys, but like MLS Next, will have showcases attended by huge numbers of college coaches. Youth national team experience is helpful too, though that’s not something you can control and USSF hasn’t really been doing much with the youth teams the last year or two. Grades are very important as well, if you are looking at academically elite schools, many of which have excellent soccer teams. |
Anonymous
| Ok so if the kid is on a high level team, do they then contact the coaches? Or wait for a coach to reach out? Are there other things they do? |
Anonymous
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You’ll get the hang of it. We started emailing coaches after 8th grade (not soccer) to let them know which major tournaments DC would be at.
It’s pretty rare for a coach to reach out first. But they may talk to your club coach. |
Anonymous
Your kid is at the stage now where the main job is to keep improving (so long as the kid continues to love the game). In HS, the first step is researching potential schools by whatever criteria the kid and family agree on, including academic fit, soccer level fit (which you probably don’t know in MS unless the kid is already a superstar), geographic criteria, affordability, and whatever else is important. Then visit those schools to the extent feasible. Sports often don’t work out, so you want to focus on a place where the kid will be happy. Kids should definitely register their interest through the school’s recruitment portal and reach out to coaches once they have a good school list. ID camps run by the school may or may not be useful—you have to ask around. Try to get tape from good league or showcase performances to share with coaches at the schools of interest. Check rosters at schools each year to get a sense of turnover, height and weight of players (avoid any team that only recruits tall players, unless you have a tall kid who doesn’t care about style of play), and percentages of international players. If you know or know of a player on a roster at a target school, reach out to the family for advice and candid info on the team, or see if you can find someone to put you in touch. You can get more targeted advice a bit later when it’s clear what level your kid wants/is realistic. |
Anonymous
+1 My DC is a recruited keeper in a T10 school. Goalie recruiting is very fickle, because most schools need no more than 1 per class. I'll add two suggestions to the great advice above. If you are located far from the schools your kid is interested in, attending a dozen college campus ID camps on the opposite coast may not be feasible cost or time wise. You may instead look locally for a multi-school ID camp with coaches from various colleges represented (they usually list who will be in attendance). Do this in his 9th grade. Having him establish face-to-face contact with those identified coaches and having them see him play will put him on their radar, and get him invited to their college's ID camps. This "screening" gives him a leg up if he's invited to the school's ID camp later on. Start filming and collecting video. You'll need clips from many games to assemble a comprehensive highlight video. And you'll need to update this video a least once per year as your kid's skills improve. If your club team has more than one keeper, it's hard to predict when your kid will play in a showcase. College coaches often don't have the time to observe both halves, and a match may be so lopsided that your kid has too little or too much action. Having a good video allows your kid to present himself in the best light. |
Anonymous
OP here, Thank you! What do you do with the highlight video. Do you email it to coaches? Post it somewhere? I'm having trouble imagining a 9th grader knowing where he'd want to target. I have another kid that age, and he has some vague ideas but there's no clarity. |
Anonymous
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^^I'm one of the PPs above, and my kid is not a goalie, but I think the process is similar. For the highlight video, you can email a link to the coach when you first reach out, and once the coaches are permitted to contact your kid under the NCAA rules, they may ask for additional game tape. Some want to see a whole or half game. Kids often post the videos on YouTube or Instagram as well, identifying their graduation year and contact info.
In terms of school selection, it was a simple process for our kid. He wanted a highly academic school with a very strong soccer program. We did not really have any other constraints and his goals never changed from 7th grade onward. It was clear by that point that, barring injury or some other crisis, those goals were realistic. Some of his teammates families had other priorities or criteria. Some kids were hoping to go pro, some of the families wanted their kids to go to a school in driving distance so they could see more games, others chose colleges based on the coach and style of play, others looked only at Catholic schools, etc. And, of course, lots of families need to take finances into consideration, so they need a school where a certain amount of financial aid will be available. Later in HS, it turned out that some kids had the grades for top D1 schools but not the talent (or vice versa) and many kids ended up choosing between D3 and lower-level D1 schools. One great way to start the process is attending local D1 and D3 games. If you are in the DC area, there are loads of good spectating opportunities! |
Anonymous
| question- my kid is a jumper on track & field, usually makes it to states, doesn’t win states or anything, not sure if they want to jump in college, but wouldn’t mind if a coach reached out. Is there a way to sort of sign up somewhere to indicate that you’re open to the idea, instead of actively filling out recruitment forms on the website of every college in the country? |
Anonymous
Those recruiting forms on the college teams sites are pretty critical for track, IMO. But before you start filling out forms you might try finding out where you kid is recruitable. One way to do that is to visit tfrrs.org and look at the conference meet results for some schools you are interested in. Rule of thumb is your child will need to be able to score points (but not necessarily win) for their event. My oldest could easily score in DIII meets, could likely score at lesser DI conferences (Ivy, patriot) and could not score at P5 conferences. Really helped to know what was even possible. |
Anonymous
OP here, is it not realistic to want strong soccer, strong academics, and also have some choice for other things, like specific majors or urban/rural, or size of school? Or do we just make the list really long, since a lot can change after 9th grade? |
Anonymous
There are definitely schools that are strong in soccer and academics that are likely to meet general criteria re major or urban/rural. We can be more helpful with recommendations if you are more specific about your kids interests, level, and gender—for some reason I assumed you were talking about a DS, but I see now you were not specific. For example, does “strong academics” mean top 10 schools whether D1 or DIII, or top 50ish? Does “strong soccer” mean could potentially win a national championship, or could potentially win the Ivy League, or something else? For majors, that’s another area where checking the current roster can be helpful. If you see that there are starters who are majoring in engineering, computer science, etc. you can be reasonably confident that the coach and school are giving athletes the flexibility they need to be serious about academics, though your kid will want to talk to kids on the team about that before committing anywhere. In any case, the list is going to be long unless your kid is one of the top recruits in the country, because many of the schools that are a good fit for your kid won’t have interest in recruiting them. |
Anonymous
My son is playing is playing soccer in the Ivy League beginning this Fall. While there may be different paths / approaches to getting there, I'm happy to share his experience. High level, by the time my son hit 9th grade, he was playing in the US Soccer Development Academy (DA) league followed by the MLS Next academy system (when the DA went away). So, from a soccer standpoint, he playing against what is generally regarded as top competition from a pretty early age. The DA was fantastic because, 2x a year, there was a college showcase that attracted 100+ coaches from all of the top soccer programs, including top D3 academic schools and all Ivy schools. This is the first year of MLSNext, but I understand the showcase in June will be similar. If you were a starter with your team at this level, you're going to get a lot of eyes on you just through league play and the showcases. All matches are videotaped and my son developed highlight videos that he began sharing with coaches his sophomore year just to get noticed (he did so by sending them emails with video links). In his email communications, my son would also send the coaches his soccer schedule, including for showcases. I also think playing for the right club is important. His club is highly reputable among top soccer programs and, consequently, certain coaches are respected and pretty well-connected. From an academic standpoint, my son never took his foot off the gas in the classroom despite his desire to play at the college level. His grades and test scores made him a very competitive applicant at the best schools in the country. I only say this because there are a number of very talented soccer players out there that don't invest enough time in their studies and they didn't get recruited as a result. So, hitting the books and being the best one can be in the classroom is equally important to excelling on the field, particularly for top academic schools...who, by their own admission, are generally looking for scholar-athletes. As with anything, there may be exceptions (e.g., your son or daughter plays at the US National team level). If you get noticed by a coach, and there's strong interest there, they will generally contact you beginning your junior year and, generally, ask your son / daughter to make a recruiting visit. My son made four or five visits before COVID hit and had several offers by Spring of his junior year. Generally, schools will preclear you academically / with admissions before making an offer. However, until your son and daughter formally goes through the admissions process in the Fall of your senior year, I personally wouldn't get too comfortable with a commitment received prior to that. But, that's just me given how conservative I am. My son is wired the same way, which was good because it played into staying focused in and out of the classroom. My only other piece of advice here is to be patient with the process and be eyes wide open to how competitive it actually is. There may stops and starts with various coaches, though I think you can ultimately determine who may be stringing you along vs. who is not. Also, college soccer ID camps are generally regarded as a waste of time and $ as nearly all recruiting gets done by coaches coming to games and showcases. My son attended only ID camps but they didn't amount to anything for him; all of his offers came from programs that watched him play at his matches. Hope this helps and best of luck. |
Anonymous
OP here, I have a boy. I didn't mean to intentionally leave that out, not that it probably matters at this stage. I'm definitely not making a list now. I just kind of want to know what might be ahead. I guess what I'm saying is that if you'd asked me to make a college list for myself in 9th grade, the school I went to, which was a great fit for me, wouldn't have made the list. I think at 14, I would have found it too big. I also had this idea that i wanted a rural school, until I moved away from a big city in 10th grade and realized how much I missed it. In addition, I think that it's just not possible to know in 9th where the academics will go. I feel like until he's in high school and managing a high school workload, it's premature to speculate. And of course, soccer is the same. So, if I am making a list in 9th, do I just cover all the bases? Have him reach out to a ton of schools? |
Anonymous
PP w/ the GK kid here- A lot can change after the 9th grade. Keeper performance is somewhat subjective, and you're dependent on your defenders, luck, etc. A new keeper can join your team and become the starter, even keeping you on the bench at important matches. Even in more objective metrics like GPA, it's much harder to get those straight A's in 11th than in 9th, especially when carrying a rigorous course load of APs and missing school for out-of-state tournaments and "official visits". One generalization for recruiting is, high academic D1s demand higher athletic skills than top D3s while being more relaxed on academic performance. D1s recruit earlier (often Soph year when good grades are still relatively easy) than D3s (late Jr or rising Sr). Once verbally committed, these soph D1 recruits (HYPS) are guaranteed admission if a given GPA is maintained and a test score achieved, numbers which are typically much much lower than avg for unhooked admits. On the other end of the scale, top D3s like MIT allows minimal academic variance and admits less than 50% of fully supported recruits. It's good advice to make a long list when doing research. You can always trim it later. You don't want DC to be without a chair when the music stops. |