College Soccer Complete Guide
This college soccer guide is broken down into eight topics:
1) Being Recruited
2) Job (School) Searching
3) Parent Interference
4) Reasons To Play College Soccer
5) Finding The Right School
6) Timeframe
7) Highlight Video
8) Recruitment Assistance
1) Being Recruited
One of the early common misperceptions of college recruitment is perfectly shown in the movie ‘The Blind Side’. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll recall the scenes where a steady stream of top college football coaches are showing up at Michael’s house in an effort to persuade him to their school.
If you are in the U.S. Soccer National Pool, some college coaches might eventually show up at your door but for almost everyone, it doesn’t work like that. You need to put in the time and effort to get recruited; it won’t just happen.
For more detailed info on recruiting rules, click here.
2) Job (School) Searching
It will help you to drop the expectation of coaches relentlessly chasing you for their college team. The best analogy for getting a college soccer position is to think of it as a job search. And like a job search, it takes lots of work to get the right match. You must define your target companies (in this case, colleges), research them, get the attention of the hiring person (coach or assistant coach), impress that person with a limited initial audition (highlight video and ID camps), be persistent in following up and not get discouraged with failure and knock-backs.
You should see this process as a great opportunity to learn a valuable skill; how to search for a job.
3) Parent Interference
The comparison of pursuing a college position to a job search raises a question. As a parent, when your son or daughter graduates from college, are you going to be the lead in their job search? Will you call or email potential employers and meet with them?
Parents should operate in the background during the search process and take a more active role only near the end of the process. Too much parental involvement can be an obstacle to a successful search. Parents, the coach is interested in your son or daughter, not you. Appear to be a pain-in-the-butt and they’ll walk away from any interest without even giving a reason.
Support your son or daughter by all means but let them take the lead and handle communication with coaches. It is an opportunity for them to learn vital communication skills.
4) Reasons To Play College Soccer
Every soccer player will have different reasons for wanting to play in college. Typically, there are four main ones:
- Scholarship
- Gain admission
- Compete at highest level
- Love of the game
Start writing down the reasons why you want to play soccer in college as it will help narrow down your search.
5) Finding The Right School
There are four things to consider when seeking the right fit for you:
- College Characteristics
- Coach
- Academic Level
- Athletic/Soccer Ability
College Characteristics
If your initial list of schools includes large public D1 universities, small D3 liberal arts colleges, some in major cities, others in remote rural locations, you likely have no idea what kind of school you want to attend (or you and your parents have very different views).
The amount of potential schools can be a bit overwhelming at first but determining what kind of college you’re interested in can quickly get you to a manageable target list. Answering just a few of these questions will help:
- Do you want to be in a certain area of the country (or are there some places you don’t want to be)? This goes along with how far from home would you like to be? And do you want your parents to attend your home games?
- Do you want a small school that is less than 2,500 students for example, or something bigger with 10,000 plus students?
- Do you have a preference of being in or near an urban location?
- Do you have a specific major that you want to pursue? Engineering, for example.
You should keep a folder or file on your computer so that you can organize your college search; this will make a world of difference as you begin contacting coaches and getting interest. Below is an example of the kind of information you might put in a document that you can update as you go along.
Coach
Assuming that the coach doesn’t leave, you’re going to spend lots of time with this person over multiple years. Obviously coaches are going to be at their best during the recruiting process so you need to research the coach and their style of play to ensure that you fit. Watch some of their games, either online or in-person, to get a good feel for the philosophy of the program.
Academic Level
Soccer can help get you into a college that you would not otherwise get into. However, there are limits. Having a strong SAT score and a good GPA will give you access to more schools.
It will also help with the amount of scholarship money given to you. For example:
Sophia was in her senior year at high school in Oregon and she had a GPA of 3.3 going into her last semester. The cost to attend the college she wanted was $32,000 and she was offered an academic scholarship of $9,000 plus an athletic scholarship of $7,500. The coach and admission department worked together and told Sophia that if her GPA rose to 3.5, she would qualify for another $9000 in academic money. She was able to afford to go to the college she had her heart set on because of the work she did off the soccer field!
For more information and facts on scholarships, see the two links below:
Scholarship Stats – Detailed Soccer Info
Athletic/Soccer Ability & Expectations
This is the trickiest one, with the hardest part of the search being a realistic, honest assessment of your soccer level.
Pursuing the right level is actually a difficult issue since it includes both your ability to make a team, your expectations of playing time and overriding goals (e.g., do you want to play at the highest soccer level possible or use soccer to get to the highest possible academic level school?)
It also introduces the questions of D1, D2, D3, NAIA. There’s a common perception that the level of play is highest at D1 schools, next highest at D2 schools, and lowest at D3 schools. In reality, each of these divisions has a very wide range of play and overlap. The best college soccer is at the top D1 programs; however, the best of the D3/NAIA schools would be competitive against many D1 programs.
It is helpful to let the ‘division’ take a back seat in your search; in other words, get the right school (academic and athletic fit), determine your desired balance of academics and athletics (D1 generally requires a bigger time commitment than D3/NAIA), and then play at whatever division in which that school happens to fall.
This also leads to a very important question: What playing expectations do you have and what role do you expect to fill? Generally speaking, players fall into three categories:
- Impact players
- Core players
- Depth players
Where you fall in these categories is dependent on (a) your natural athletic ability, work ethic and acquired soccer skills/game intelligence and (b) how competitive the program is.
The diagram below illustrates the typical make-up of a college roster, with 20% of the players being impact, 60% core, and the remaining 20% depth.
Where you fall on this chart is a combination of your ability and the level of the program, as illustrated by the following diagram:
6) Timeframe
Below is what you should be focusing on during your four years at high school in relation to recruitment:
Freshman/Sophomore Year
- Define your priorities (for example, play D1 on a top 10 team, get a scholarship, get in an Ivy League school, start as a freshman, be in a major city).
- Start your list of 5-10 schools (this will continue to evolve over time).
- Create a soccer resume (this will also evolve over time).
- Go to the Admissions website and register as a prospect for the school (this is a different registration from the athletic recruiting site).
- Maintain good grades! (hugely important)
- Attend ID Camps at schools you are interested in or where coaches will be present from the schools you are interested in. Make sure to ASK COACHES DIRECTLY whether they think you are a potential fit for their program. Don’t hesitate or be afraid of the answer; it’s better to know the truth.
- D1/D2 coaches can contact you after June 15 of sophomore year. D3 coaches can communicate with you at any point.
- Realistically, recruitment doesn’t really move along until after your sophomore year so you should use your freshman and sophomore years at high school to develop as much as possible while updating and maintaining an impressive highlight reel and sending this to coaches.
NOTE: Coaches generally do not come to tournament games to identify prospects from random games. Coaches attend to watch players who have contacted them prior to the tournament. Before any tournament, find the list of college coaches attending and send them your schedule. Remember to update the coach should your schedule change. After the tournament, follow-up with an email or phone call.
Junior Year
- If possible, watch your target schools play during their season, either in-person or online. Make sure the coaches know you watched their teams and understand their style of play.
- Try to get coaches to watch you play in games at tournaments.
- Continue to attend ID Camps at schools you are interested in or where coaches will be present from the schools you are interested in. It is important that they see you play in-person. Again, even more importantly now as a junior, ASK COACHES DIRECTLY whether they think you are a potential fit for their program. It is crucial to get an answer and not waste your time.
- Determine which schools are truly interested. If you are being actively recruited, you will likely know it; if you are unsure if a coach is interested, they probably aren’t. But there is no reason to guess; ask direct questions.
- Based on coach feedback, further narrow your list. Decide if you are aiming too high academically or athletically; if you are (i.e., none of the coaches on your list are actively recruiting you) then adjust your list and get noticed by different coaches.
- Take the SAT or ACT.
- Register with the NCAA Eligibility Center and download the NCAA Guide for the College Bound Student Athlete (this link takes you to the website where you can download the PDF version for free).
Senior Year
- If you haven’t been recruited by your senior year, don’t panic. There are still opportunities available but you may have to compromise on your list of potential schools.
- Most D1 and D2 programs will have made their decisions by the start of your senior year. Some D1 and D2 programs will have openings if one of their candidates changes their mind. The more competitive D3 programs will also likely have finished their recruiting by September 1.
- Lower level D1 and D2 programs could still be trying to fill their roster, especially if they found that most of their top prospects took other offers. Many D3/NAIA programs will be trying to complete their recruiting at this time.
7) Highlight Reel (the most important part!)
Ensuring you have an impressive highlight reel is one of the key elements of starting a successful recruiting process. This will act as your audition tape. While it’s possible that some coaches may see you play in-person at the start of the process, a highlight video will be the main tool that will get you noticed by the coaches of schools you are interested in.
Your video should be a collection of different game situations. For example, it should include all the positives during a game that show off your skill-set. Complete passes, shots on goal, goals, crosses, tackles, headers etc. Your initial highlight video should only include different plays that were successful. Failed passes, shots off target etc should not be included. Once you have the attention of a coach after seeing your highlight reel, they will then want to see full game footage. This is where they will see the mistakes made in a game.
A good highlight video should use this structure:
- Basic details at the start (height, weight, dominant foot, academic score)
- Between 2-3 minutes in length
- No images or background music
- No slow-motion or sped up film (film from elevated positions if possible)
- Most impressive clips in first 30 seconds of the highlight reel
- Highlight the things you are good at (dribbling, goalscoring, tackling, overlapping runs etc)
- For goalkeepers it’s the same process but focused on the skills required for a keeper in the modern game
- You need to be clearly seen in the video so highlight yourself with a red circle or arrow before each play (you can use iMovie or any basic software for this)
You will want to have several highlight videos over the span of your club/high school seasons so any college coach can see your progression as you mature and grow as a soccer player.
Check out this video for How To Build A Highlight Reel.
8) Recruitment Assistance
The information in this guide (along with a very good highlight reel) will help you find the right fit in terms of college soccer but some students/parents want or need additional help. This is where recruiting companies come in.
There are lots of companies out there offering ‘expert’ help and advice but two of the most well-known are listed below:
Sports Recruiting USA (Soccer Only)
Sports Recruits (Multi-Sport)
If you need additional recruiting help, check out their websites.