A coach tells ECNL RL sophomores how to get recruited to Division I soccer. Build a highlight reel plus three to four every-touch videos, test yourself with Division III outreach, and attend one Mass ID camp. If Division III schools aren't interested by June 15 of sophomore year, reassess your Division I goals.
If I'm playing ECNL RL and I'm a sophomore, can I play Division I college soccer? The short answer is you absolutely can. We've had a student this year actually go to Utah Tech from ECNL RL. The questions you have to ask yourself are, how many videos do you have? You should have 1 highlight video and as a sophomore, 3 to 4 every-touch videos. Have you sent those out? Have you gotten responses from those? And have you talked to Division III schools? If you are getting responses from Division III schools, that is a very telling sign that you are on the right track. Think about it like fishing. If you can catch the smaller fish, then you can catch the bigger fish. If you can't even catch the smaller fish, then the idea that you're going to go play Division I soccer is frankly a little bit unrealistic. If you can't get interest from certain Division III schools first, then you might be wasting your time emailing Division Is. And remember, soccer is subjective. So if you say to yourself, well, I'm Division I level, and then all of a sudden you get to June 15th and you have no phone calls and you go later after June 15th of your sophomore year and you still don't have any phone calls, all you've done is you're missing opportunities to get recruited. Recruited because Division III schools could have been recruiting you for the last 2 years. So in addition to making sure you're emailing Division III schools, in the summertime you should be going to 1 Mass ID camp, 2 genuine invites from Division IIIs, and 1 dream school. Now there's debate, you could probably do 1 or 2 of those just to be okay depending on your budget and your travel arrangements, but that's what you should expect to do as a sophomore. Once you hit junior year, I almost never recommend Mass ID camps. There can always be exceptions depending on how good you are, but So that's what I would say if you want to play Division 1 soccer and you're playing ECNRL. If you want to know every camp in your state, comment the initials of your state, for example, CA camp, and I will send you a camp in the state that you're living in. If you want to know every club in your area, comment the initials of your state as well as the word club, CA club, for example. You can only comment one. And if you want to call with me, comment the word call, and I'll send you a link to schedule with you and your parents.
