Youth soccer players in the National Elite League can target Division I if they're freshmen, or Division III and II if older. Build a highlight reel and several every-touch videos, attend twice as many exposure camps as MLS Next players, watch target college games and reference specific players when emailing coaches, and always ask a clear question in outreach emails.
If I play NEL, can I play Division I college soccer if I have a 3.7 or 3.8 GPA? The short answer is if you are a freshman, 7th, 8th, or 9th grader with NEL, the answer is yes, you could potentially play Division I. If you're a sophomore, I would say you should look at Division III, Division II. If you're a junior, Division III, Division II. And a senior, Division III, maybe Division II, but the problem with Division II is they don't have the best academics, so you're probably really considering DIII because they're top academic. And you could still play for some very high-level DIII schools, but No, you're probably not going to go to Chicago or NYU because they typically recruit from MLS Next or ECNL unless you're a local kid to that school, then we might be the exception. But if you want to play Division 1 college soccer and you are playing NEL, here are things I think you should do. Saving the best one for last, of course, just to annoy you and help with the algorithm. Number 1 is I want to make sure that you have a highlight video and 3 to 4 every-touch videos. That's number 1. Number 2, if I say to an MLS Next kid, you have to go to 5 camps, You need to go to 8. You know, that is depends, we customize it for every kid, but you have to go to twice as many almost as an MLS Next kid, 'cause you will get less exposure. And number 3 is during the fall season, you need to compliment them on their season. So if you wanna go to NYU, you need to go watch an NYU game, even if you just watch some of it, and say, hey coach, I watched player X, he plays the same position as me, I learned the following, and I'm coming to your camp on so-and-so, or are you looking for my position for the class of X? Which brings me to the final suggestion, is every email you send needs to have a question. It's very rare that we send emails without a question. Sometimes we'll send a follow-up because we're just keeping them updated, but other than the update email, almost every other one has a question. Should I come to one of your games? Should I come on a visit? Should we get on a phone call? Should I text you? Da da da da da. And we have to ask those questions before you sometimes do it, or vice versa. Sometimes we just do it and then we ask, not for forgiveness, but then we later on will adjust our plan. Remember, you're competing with a lot of very, very good players. If you want more help in this recruiting process and you'd like to know which camps you should go to, comment the word quiz and I'll send you a quiz of which camps might be best for you. If you want my help, comment the word call and we can get on a call with you and your parents.
