Reply to Advice for a U15 girl who aspires to play college?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. These are all great responses. Thank you. As for the high school question, unfortunately she goes to a small school that doesn’t have a team, so we don’t have that as a barometer. Of the kids who go to bigger high schools and are on her team (so a decent control case for comparison) a couple made varsity as freshmen at their schools, and more made JV squads. (And since it’s a U15 team, some of them are still in 8th grade.)

And two followup questions - for ID camps, what age is the best for doing those? And beyond focusing on D3 schools rather than D1, what’s the best way to gauge which squads might be realistic to shoot for? [/quote]

There are lots of approaches here so you might get some varied opinions on this.

It's most efficient to target schools she likes and go directly to their id camps, but most freshmen do not have enough clarity on their academic goals to focus that narrowly. I would recommend you locate some D3 schools in the area she wants to attend school, and first have a look at their playing record and the bios of the girls on their rosters. This will give you an idea of the level they play at within their conference and how accomplished their players are. I would also consider finding one of the group id camps which gather together a modest number of coaches for a day camp. There are camps ranging from single school 1 day camps to things like the fortune 500 multi-day overnight camps with 75 coaches. To start, you might try to find something like a one day camp with a dozen schools. I would do that first, and use that to get familiar with the process, and allow her to measure herself against the other campers.
Generally you do not get direct feedback from coaches at these things which can be maddening so DD has to gauge her performance herself to some extent. You will also know by whether coaches are responding to her emails etc. Keep at it, at first it seems hard to get traction, but it will come. Once you both get a little experience like this, you'll both be better equipped to determine next steps. But generally I'd say start a little broader at first, then narrow down. I would do this now, in her freshman year before the stakes start to rise. Sophomore and junior years are prime years for recruiting so that's when you will want to hit it harder and cut down on the experiments. It can get expensive.  You'll want her to get smart on how to email and followup with coaches too.[/quote]

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