Capital University ( 11/8 FT)
Elmhurst University (11/7 FT)

Quote from: SierraFD3soccer on September 19, 2023, 03:42:54 PM

Quote from: Soccer BTN on September 19, 2023, 02:01:09 PM

Quote from: GenerallyInterested on September 19, 2023, 08:45:57 AM

From there, it's up to the kid to make the most of their opportunity. But it is difficult to watch so many kids consume these used-car salesmen pitches and end their only college experience with a bitter taste and expensive student loan bill.

Awesome post especially the last paragraph.  While every kid would love to play (start or get minutes) for a program out there, there seem to be many programs that stockpile players whether they have a reserve/JV teams or not. 


Without even asking the coaches, you can look at the rosters and see how many go from freshman year to sophomore year and so on. Then look at the other years. The ones that don't continue their association with the team look at their minutes. Many have bottom heavy rosters (more freshman and/or sophomores than seniors). That might indicate that the program sheds players whether voluntary or through cuts. You can also do some research on their sites under the "statistics" and see "games played" or "minutes."  There you will see how coaches are substituting all year.

Also the reserve/JV structure is not like high school where, in most cases, the HS seniors and juniors get all the minutes.  Often college coaches expect freshman to be ready to play or at least be ready for some serious minutes when they arrive. Some coaches will fall in love with that freshman and he'll get more minutes his freshman year than he'll get the rest of his college career.  If they aren't getting serious min. by their sophomore year, chances are they are not going to get many their junior and senior year.

Ultimately and what GenerallyInterested point to, is that you and your kid need to focus on the academics and does that school meet that kid's needs.  People have said this before on this board, but bares repeating, if a player gets hurt, a coaching change takes place or he never/rarely sees the field, is that player in the best place as a student that will help him get to where he wants post college.  Only so many years to play and s/he has the rest of their lives to be set up for.  Way, way, way to expensive to send a kid to just play soccer.

One coach who I very much liked and my son loved, pitched his program with the statement, what he does here will affect him for the next 40 years. He obviously meant this positively.  For this school, that may have been so in many/some ways for many/some kids.

However, if my son was very good math or wanted a career in engineering, that school, which is often a top ten D3 program is/was not the right school for him.  I can go into way more detail.  The downsides for my son would have been, though he would have played for 4 years (coach told him that), barring injury, and advanced far in the NCAAs, he would have been in a math program that was not nearly close to other colleges and he/we would have been 4 or 5 times in debt compared to what he is now after he graduated last year. In our case, the 40 year promise would most likely have been negative as he would have had to chase jobs he might not want because of the salary (assuming he could get that) to pay the debt plus having to at least put his life on hold or at least seriously curtail things he is doing now.

Very good stuff.  My son is currently a sophomore at a school where he loves the school and the academic program he is in.  However, he has seen his playing time decrease from 38 minutes a game to 15 minutes a game in his second season.  It's a tough situation and he is probably going to end up calling it a career at the end of this fall campaign. 
The coach is loyal to a 5th year guy who came back one week into fall camp at the winger spot my son would have stepped up at. 
The advice on going to a school for the academics and not the soccer is very sound advice.

Quote from: ToddFather on May 02, 2023, 02:56:59 PM
Hi All,

Quick update.  My son has started reaching out to coaches and getting a decent amount of responses. 

While he has been sending his highlight video, most have responded thanking him and saying the best way for them to evaluate him is to come to one of their ID camps in person.  I know it's probably hard to evaluate a player purely on video...but on the flip side, it's also hard for us to assess how much of this is genuine interest vs. just "come to our camp" and we'll see.  I recognize the importance of being seen live, but being on the west coast and time/cost restrictions, it's probably not feasible for us to travel to so many camps...especially ones in the northeast.

So, I'm curious if you all have any advice on how to handle this/manage this with coaches?  Are there any questions he can ask (via email) that will help to better assess how much interest there truly is?  Is it appropriate to ask if they will also be on the West Coast at any point (a few have asked for his tournament/showcase schedules)?  Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

In my experience with my son's recruitment, you can weed out who is interested and who is not by who keeps in contact via phone calls and text messages.  My son got tons of emails inviting him to ID camps.  He would follow up asking the coaches if they could personally evaluate the videos that he sent.  Also asking how many recruits will be at the camp, and how many recruits were offered roster spots in past years from ID camps.  I would only attend the ID camps for the schools you are most interested in attending.
If the coach doesn't respond with a personal message, email, or phone call, I would take that as them not being interested.
We sent out probably 50 emails with highlight videos to D3 coaches around Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.  Got legitimate personal responses from around 20 coaches and offers for roster spots from 8.