Reply to College Commitments

Forum Index » Volleyball

Reply to "College Commitments "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks for the thoughtful detailed reply and info. You have been around the block. Appreciate you creating this thread and keeping it up.

If a player is on a (desired) path to play in college, what do you think are the keys to success starting at u15? Club selection, workouts, privates, etc. What does that schedule and life look like for that athlete?[/quote]

Here's what we heard during our recruiting journey:
1) Fundamentals: The most most important thing is fundamentals. If you can't do the fundamentals consistently the college coach will move on to other options.  There are exceptions for outlier athletes (tall, great jump), but for Setter/DS positions and most hitters you won't get much interest unless you meet a minimum standard of ability. Said another way, college coaches don't want to teach you how to pass, they want to teach you how to pass [i]better[/i].

2) Commitment: At U15 a player interested in college should be willing to (and want to) do extra work outside of their team practices.  Lifting/Strength/Agility workouts. Small group/Private lessons. Banging a ball against the wall of the house until their parents yell at them. If they are going to play in college, regardless of level, they have to love the game enough to work on it when they aren't doing the fun things like playing in matches or practicing with their team.

Our DD life through U15-U18 was pretty consistent: during club season practice 3x week, play in ~60-80 matches a season, strength/agility work in the weight room 2-3x a week (sometimes before or after practices) and a private lesson every couple of weeks.  During HS season practice 5x week, weight room 2x a week, lesson or clinic every week starting in October (getting noticed for club season takes extra work in Oct).  Off season was mostly downtime for recovery, but continue lifting and do some camps/clinics to keep the rust from forming.  FYI: This was for a good D3 prospect, D1 prospects have a bit more.  Lower D3 prospects and some D2 prospects might be able to do less.

In terms of club selection, see the prior list of college commits for 2025 - 10 clubs placed 3+ players from their U18 teams, and not coincidentally all 10 were in CHRVA bid regionals/competing at open levels locally. There's a strong correlation between playing for one of those clubs and your likelihood of playing in college. I'd love to see a "club tree" that shows how many players in that 88 came through specific clubs from U12-U15, but my guess is that 5 or 6 of them make up the bulk of that list.

So if you are aiming for college, consider focusing on the 1s team at one of those 10 clubs. That would give you the best combination of training/development and future options at U16 -- which is a really critical recruiting year for both D1 and high D3.

At U15 roster size matters a lot. 10-12 players is fine, more than that and we saw significant reductions in touches in practice, ability of coaches to directly coach your DD and clear impacts on playing time.  We did a 14 player roster one year and it was not good, reducing touches/coach focus/development time by something like 20%+.  We had to supplement with more private lessons to keep development moving.

Other notes on club selection at U15:
* Play for a coach who has a track record of developing college players. Make sure that coach's track record matches your DD current state.  Some coaches are better at taking top talent and making them even better.  Others take good talent and develop them into college players. Very few are good at both.
* Be careful about burning out your DD. At U15 club starts to feel like a job, and the pressure of college greatly increases this feeling. Think hard about the environment she'll be in for the next 9 months and find the one that builds her love of the game. Some players find the high intensity of the top 2-3 clubs good for them, but as shown in some other threads, more don't. 
* We asked every club how many of your U15 players typically keep playing through U18?. How many of your U18 players played more than 2 years for your club before the U18 year?  We chose to focus U15 on clubs that combined proven development for players with proven ability to keep players playing at older ages (both for them or for other programs in the top 10).

Hope this helps.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics