Zach, a freshman soccer player, learns how to get recruited by Division I programs. Attend one or two D1 ID camps early, but also hit academically elite Division III schools like Pomona-Pitzer and Bowdoin to signal you're already wanted. Top coaches start scouting freshman year, and a polished highlight reel matters as much as showing up.
What should you be doing if you are a freshman in high school? Let's find out from a legit club soccer player right now. Tell us your name, big guy.
Hi, um, I'm Zach. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too, Zach. Zach just came up to me, saw me walking at the field. I love when you guys say hi. Zach, right now where are you playing club soccer?
Playing at Santa Monica Surf right now.
Yeah, amazing. Santa Monica Surf and their Elite Academy. And you play as a center mid, is that right?
Yeah.
You have a highlight video. Do I have permission to maybe run some highlights on you on the screen here?
Yeah, I can show you.
Okay, perfect. You had a question for me. What was your question?
My question was, uh, what age group should I start going to like ID camps? Because I'm a freshman.
So when should you go to ID camps as a freshman? Tell me some of the names of the schools that you would like to potentially go to one day to play soccer.
UCLA, Oregon, Arizona, Arizona State, anywhere.
Yeah, amazing. So for schools like that, If you want to play at those schools, you do need to go your freshman year. The reason you need to go your freshman year is for a couple reasons. One, they start the recruiting process earlier than everybody else because they're the top-level schools. So for example, 2024s for UCLA are towards the other end of it. There's always transfers and things like that, but the sooner they know about you, the better. Now, if you said to me, hey, you know what, I don't think I'm at my best ability, and you go to the camp and you're not showing at your best, then you should not go because obviously the point of camp is to get noticed. Now, if you get noticed as a freshman, meaning let's say you play better than the freshmen and seniors that are there, then they're gonna go, wow, you're only a freshman and you're playing better than the sophomores and juniors that are there. I want to know what your name is. So that's why you do— it's a great idea to go as early as you can. Do you need to go to 5 ID camps? No, I'd go to 1 to 2. What's your GPA right now-ish?
All A's.
All A's. So here's your problem, which is a good problem. Your parents and you will not let you go to just any school, especially since you go to a good high school. You're gonna have to go to a top academic school. There's only so many of those. So really what you should do, not that those other schools aren't realistic, but you should go this year to maybe 3 to 4 ID camps of what we call the NESCAC schools, which are the best academic schools in Division III, or Pomona-Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Occidental type of schools in California. And those you should go to right now, and you should go to 2 or 3 of those to increase your chances of properly getting noticed one day by the D1 schools. Eventually the D1 schools are gonna talk to you after a camp at UCLA like this, and they're gonna say, how's the recruiting process going? and you're gonna go, well, I haven't spoken to anybody else, and they're gonna go, that's a problem, I'll talk to you later. Instead, you want to say, well, actually, Middlesbury, Bard, Bucknell, maybe another school like Bowdoin say, hey, I'm interested in you. Now when you tell UCLA that, they're gonna go, oh, you must be pretty good, maybe I missed you. That's what you need. Does that make sense? So the answer is you should be going now. You don't have a highlight video quite yet from what I'm told, but you've got one video where you've pulled your best moments. We call that an every-touch video. That's very helpful. But I would like a highlight, proper highlight video. That would be super helpful. Sound good?
Thank you.
You're welcome, man.
Thank you.
