High school hockey players should start recruiting in sophomore year, not junior year. Division I coaches begin contacting prospects June 15, so reaching out months earlier, attending ID camps, and sending highlight videos gives players a head start on securing offers.
3 reasons to start the recruiting process sophomore year, which is the perfect time to start. First of all, why is sophomore year the right time to start? All of you guys are like, well, Division I schools cannot even talk to me. Why would I start emailing them? On June 15th, the best players in the country are all going to get a phone call. How do you think they get that phone call? Is it just because the college coaches, I don't know, know who they are? How do you think the college coaches get to know who they are? Yes, if you're an elite level player, maybe they come to you. Good job, you're the exception to the rule. If you're an elite level player and they don't know who you are, which is most of you, you must go to them. So what we do with our students, and hence why we have a number of them who've committed junior year early on, is because they've been talking to those D1 schools for months. On top of that, at the ID camps, the Division 1 schools are allowed to talk to you. You're literally at the camp, they're going to say hi, they're going to communicate with you. So you're allowed to talk to Division 1 schools, just there's some limitation via email and phone. But at the ID camp, they're going to say hi, they're going to go, what's your name, who are you, what club team do you play for? If you perform really well at the camp, especially if you're a sophomore, because then you're younger than most of the kids at the camp. So the reason sophomore year is so great is because it gives you usually about 6 to 8 months to gently tell the college coaches, hey, here's the MLS NEXT team I play for, here's a highlight video of me, I will be coming to your camp, I watched your fall game, I can't wait to talk to you. Then leading up to June 15th, you will know if you're going to get a call before June 15th. Almost every player we've ever had get a call on June 15th knew it was coming beforehand. If you start junior year and it's after June 15th and I get on a phone call with you and I say, how many phone calls have you had? And you say zero, which is the most cases what happens, you are already behind other players. Other players will commit to Division I schools on June 15th. The best players will. So if you want to have a chance of going to the best schools, you have to start sophomore year. If you want more help playing college hockey, give me a call, links in the bio, or comment the word camps for a list of camps that you should go to before June 15th.
