Athletes want straight answers from college coaches at ID camps, not vague feedback. One coach told a player he'd never play D1; that player turned pro. A thank-you email asking for clarity can help cut through the uncertainty.
When a coach gives you an eval from a college ID camp, it seems like it'd be a really helpful thing, but— and, and there's truth that it can be helpful in terms, especially if you're a freshman or a sophomore, because you have time to improve that, that skill that they're talking to you about. But let me ask you this: would you rather know if you're going to be on the team or what to improve on? If I'm going to be on the team. Exactly. That's why we go to ID camps. So to me, if I was running a camp, it's, you know, very frustrating to me that, you know, there's a couple of kids where I would want to be able to say to them, look, I don't know yet, I need more time. Another set of kids, we go, you are not coming on my team. That's the deal. Tough life. Move on. And you would rather get an answer correct than them say we're not sure yet, would you? Even if the answer was no, would you agree? Yeah, exactly. So I'm sorry, this is just how ID camps work. I wish, I wish honestly coaches were just like, a little bit more forthright. Now, in fairness to the coaches, some of them don't know. Like, they're not sure themselves. Like, I like you, but I need— but it'd be great then if they could just tell us that and say, look, I'll get back to you in 3 weeks' time, you know. But that's not how the process works. So the point is, I know you told me that they're going to give you an eval. Just between you and I, I don't really care. I'm curious, you know, I want to know what they say, but you probably already know. They're going to say you have 5 out of 5 passing, 5 out of 5 athletic ability, but 'But you need to work on your communication skills.' 'Okay, does that mean I'm going to be on your team or not? That's what I need to know.' So the reason we ask the question, 'What level do you think I can play?' is if you said to a coach, 'Am I on your team?' they're not going to give you a straight answer pretty much 99% of the time. They're going to go, 'We're not sure yet. I don't want to say no to you, blah, blah, blah, da, da, da.' They're just not going to give you a straight answer, which is annoying in my opinion. However, if you say to them, 'What level do you think I can play?' they can— they should be able to determine that after 2 days of playing, relatively. Look, soccer is subjective. One coach— look, I've had a coach tell my players, including myself, hey, you're never going to play D1, and I went on to play pro soccer. That's how it works. But I'd rather have an opinion than no opinion. Agreed? Yeah. Okay, so one thing we are going to do is we're going to— we haven't followed up with them yet, correct, with the email? No, we haven't. All right, so we're just going to send a thank you email in the thank you email, we will probably— I'll help you draft it today. We will probably say something along the lines of, hey, let's fix this, let's fix that. Because that's what I want us to do. Okay, so that's that camp. Tell me now about— well, actually, that's just this camp. Tell me more. Is there anything else? 6v6?
