A junior high soccer player asks Coach Karl Zogrein how to get recruited to college. Zogrein says recruiting starts before junior year, so the player is already behind. His plan: make a recruiting video, hit ID camps at Division 2 and 3 schools, email coaches at target programs, and be ready to switch clubs if needed. Only about 5% of high school players play in college.
Hey coach, I'm a junior. Like, what should I be doing to play college soccer? I'm like right on time, so I'm sure like it's gonna be really easy from here on out.
Oh boy, Mr. Junior, I've got some bad news. You are not on time. You are late to the recruiting process, and we need to get started like right away if we're gonna have a chance of playing college soccer at a school you really want to go to.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean I'm late? I can't be late. I'm a junior. You know, coaches just were able to start talking to me.
As the college soccer guy, I think what happened is you guys are hearing this information from I don't know what, but other sports, this is true, like track and football, junior year is the time, but that is not how it works for soccer.
Why is it different for soccer, coach? Like, in America, no one even cares about soccer. In fact, we keep calling it the wrong name. It's called football.
Main reason it's so different is soccer is so subjective and has very little to do with statistics. Basketball, football, coaches can make decisions based off a couple videos and statistics. Soccer does not work like that. It is much more, do you fit the team? There's 11 players on the field. Do you fit our system? So because of that, it takes a lot longer to make a decision, which is why you cannot wait until your junior year.
Hey coach, but like, I'm a junior now, so like, what the heck do I do?
If you're just starting as a junior and you don't have a good video, that's number 1. And if you're not sure if you have a good video, then you have a bad video. So you need to make sure that you have a good video. So talk to your coach and make sure, like, say to them, is this a good video? And if they say, yeah, it's fine, then they probably did not look at the video. There is something you need to change about your video, guaranteed. So that's number 1. Number 2 is you need to go to ID camps. You don't have a choice now. As a junior, you've waited so long that some of these coaches maybe don't know who you are. So you're gonna have to go to camps. Now, I don't want you to just go to any camps, but if you wanna play at like a big school like a Michigan or Notre Dame and you're not playing MLS Next or ECNL, going to those camps is frankly a waste of time at this point. So you're gonna have to focus on Division 3 and Division 2 first. You can always go back to aiming for Division 1, but you're gonna have to focus on those first and be open-minded to what schools, 'cause do you have any offers yet?
No, of course I don't have any offers. I just started the recruiting process. What a dumb question.
The reason I'm asking the question is because since you don't have any offers, college soccer is a privilege. 5% of players will play college soccer after high school. That's not very many given there's 800,000 registered high school soccer players. So right now you have to be open-minded if you wanna play college soccer. Now we don't wanna sacrifice your education. Education always comes first. But if you wanna go to a very high academic, top academic D3 school, they're gonna be done recruiting in the next 6 to 7 months. They tend to be done in August, November going into your senior year, which means you've got 8 to 9 months to go to those top academic schools.
Okay, Karl Zogrein, now I'm just getting scared. Like, what do I do? Tell me.
Okay, I mentioned you have to go to ID camps and you gotta fix your video, but the main piece is your emails. You gotta send quite a few emails out to your top schools genuinely. Then you're gonna have to send out a bunch of emails to backup schools, and then once you've done that first email, we gotta figure out exactly the game plan here. So we need to see how the responses go, which teams liked us, didn't like us, which camps we'd wanna go to anyways. I need to know about your showcase schedule, what club team you're playing for, and should we switch club teams. There's a lot.
Okay, ColdSoccer, I'm ready to get started. What do I do?
Comment "call" and we can schedule a call with you and your parents.
