The College Soccer Guy explains the difference between showcases, where club teams register for coach exposure, and tournaments, which focus on competition. Coaches rarely approach players directly, so you must email them before the event, follow up during and after, and send video links.
What is a college soccer showcase? Like, what the heck is it, College Soccer Guy? I'm the College Soccer Guy. I help you play college soccer. Let's do it. So a college soccer showcase— what is a college soccer showcase? Basically what it is is your club teams are going to, depending on what level they are, gonna sign you up for events, what we call showcases. At these showcases are going to be college soccer coaches at the showcase. Now, there's different types of showcases. You have tournaments. Okay, tournaments and showcases are two different things. Tournaments are where you go play a round robin playoff and there's a winner at the end of it, and that's great to brag about, great for video, great for getting better at soccer, but you are not going to be recruited to play college soccer at those events. Then you have showcases. Okay, showcases is where you are being recruited by the college soccer team to play college soccer because college coaches are there. Now, what's fascinating about this is college coaches, when they go to showcases, is that level all that much better than a tournament you may have gone to? Not all the time. Now there's also an extra facet here. An ECNL playoff or an MLS NEXT event are also kind of termed, or yeah, termed as showcases. Basically what showcase ultimately means is college coaches are going to be there. So if you have a tournament that's a tournament, like Surf Cup's a tournament, there's a winner. but there's going to be college coaches there because it's a big tournament. It's known as a showcase. So anywhere where there are college coaches is a showcase in the college soccer world. That's what that means. So what it tells you is for college showcases, you must email the coaches before the event, ideally way before, and then you follow up with them leading up to the event. You must follow up with them afterwards. Much of the time, they will not come up to you during the event and find you and talk to you. They don't want to show their cards to other coaches. They've got another game to go to. Your game's not finished. They watch a few minutes, they go to a new game, they gotta go to the bathroom, they gotta get lunch, they gotta travel, they gotta travel to a new showcase. That's craziness. So you have to follow up with an email and say, I hope you enjoyed the game. I don't know if you saw it. This is what happened. I sent my video, which we've gone over a thousand times over now. So that is really what a college showcase is. And I did that in almost under 2 minutes, which makes me a legend. I'm The College Shark Guy. If you want more help, schedule a call. Links in the bio. Bye.
