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A coach tells sophomore soccer players to start recruiting now, not junior year. Create a highlight video with a strong first 30 seconds and keep it 2-4 minutes. Email college coaches with your GPA, position, and graduation year in the subject line, then follow up persistently.
Chapters
Talking to a Boys Elite Academy team to see if they could play college soccer. So I just finished training, actually scouting a group of Boys Elite Academy players in Southern California, and I asked everybody, I said, raise your hand if you want to play college soccer, and everybody's hands shoot up, which is great. That's, you know, awesome. You want to play at the highest level. When we think about playing club soccer, what's the whole point of club soccer? So you can play college and of course have fun playing soccer. Now, if you're one of those who are like, look, I really want to play college soccer, That's really good. So then this is the second question I ask them. I said, how many of you are sophomores and how many of you are juniors? Most of them are juniors. There are some sophomores. Many of you are on teams with a mix of both, but you guys' recruiting process is very different. First of all, I've said this 1,000 times, I'll say it 1,000 more. If you're a sophomore, you must start the process. Waiting until your junior year to collect video or to go to ID camps is a bad idea. Now the next question I ask them is, how many of you have had a phone call as of March with a Division III school if you're a sophomore or any school if you're a junior. And out of the whole team, none of their hands went up. Now that is a big problem because those coaches, including for the sophomores, are talking to students. And I know that because the students I have and the students I work with are having phone calls and many of them, and they're texting them and emailing them, etc. Now as it happens, all these kids pretty much have really good grades. And there's so many kids with good grades. I mean, in the whole country, there's hundreds of thousands of kids with 4.0s who also play soccer. There's just not enough positions for the 50 to 75 schools that only your parents will consider for you, because that's how competitive it is. And if you're not playing MLS NEXT or ECNL, it's even more difficult because the coaches are going to see you at the ID camp that they genuinely invited you to, maybe, and then go, great, can we see your schedule? We'd like to see more of you. Then you're going to give them your schedule, and they're not going to be coming to very many of them. Now that's not to say you cannot get recruited, and there's a bunch of you in the comments who say, I played Boys of the Academy, I played college soccer. Great, I know that can happen. I'm glad it can happen. I want it to happen. I just know that in this now era, the present time, the MLS Next is taking over, and you need to be extra proactive if you're not playing in that league. I have parents and coaches telling me all the time to tell their students, look, if you're not playing MLS Next, you're not going to get recruited. That is not always the case, by the way. But you need to be extra proactive. So I told these kids, I said to all of them, I go, what is it are the most important things you guys need to do? Number 1, your video has to be very good. So your highlight video cannot just be your clips put together. You need to ask your coach or you need to ask an expert and go, is this first 30 seconds really good? Like, does it help the coach know who I am as a player? Scoring goals and assists really doesn't tell a coach a lot about you, believe it or not. Shows you can score goals and assists. But if you're a center back, like, I need to see you play out of the back. If you're a striker, I need to see you lay it off. If you're a striker, I need to see you score goals. If you're a winger, I need to see you 1v1. I need to see you 1v1 defend. And you have to really put this all in like a 30-second to 1-minute video. Now, your video is going to be 2 to 4 minutes long, so it'll last longer than that, but it's really important that you have that video be amazing. I strongly recommend a self-interview. Then your template, okay? If your template is more than 12 sentences, it's probably too long. If it's a block paragraph, it's gonna not get noticed. And if your subject line doesn't say the most important things, GPA, position, grad year, club level, then it's also not gonna get recognized. Now let's say you've done all that, okay, that's the easy part. Now the coach responds to you and they wanna have a visit with you or they wanna schedule a time. You don't know when to follow up, you don't know when you should text them. One of the students was gonna go on a visit with NYU and they were asking me, look, I'm really excited, but I haven't heard from them in a couple of weeks. They did tell me to come, but like, I don't know how to follow up with them because like, I haven't heard from them. You need to be able to communicate with them again and again to get their interest. This is all to say that I'm begging you that you don't have to work with me. Work with whoever the hell you want. Please, please start the recruiting process. The sooner you start, the better chance you have. And if you want more help, give me a call. Thanks a lot. Bye.
