The College Soccer Guy breaks down how many ID camps to attend by grade: two per year in 8th grade, 2-4 in freshman and sophomore years, 5-8 in junior year. He walks through a player who hit seven Duke camps and got recruited, stressing that ID camps beat showcases because coaches are there specifically to scout.
How many college ID camps should I go to? I'm the College Soccer Guy. I help you play college soccer. Let's do it. So I'm going to give you the black and white answer, and then I'm going to give you the colored, more gray answer. If you're in 8th grade and you're a good soccer player, so you're playing ECNL or MLS Next or even NPL, E-64, and you're a good soccer player and you could be going to D1 or maybe D3 or D2 camps, you should be going about 2 a year. 3 if you want to be like extra special. Freshman year, you should go to about 2 to 4, depending on what schools have shown genuine interest in you. Yes, I expect them to be showing genuine interest to you as a freshman, especially the D3s. Then sophomore year, you would go to another 2 to 4. And then junior year, you're gonna go to 5 to 6, maybe 7, 8. Now, all of this actually depends on the amount of genuine interest you receive from the school, what your budget is, of course, and also how badly you wanna go to a program. We had one student who went to 7 Duke ID camps. To the point where the coach was like, you don't need to come anymore. And this kid still went again, and then he got recruited by Duke. Now, he was also a very good soccer player, and we sent lots of video and email. There was a lot of things in between that, but there is no debating, he went to 7 Duke ID camps starting in 7th, 8th grade. So if you really want to go to those schools, you should be going to their camps. It's the only way you can guarantee being seen to some degree. Of course, not every camp they watch you perfectly, but but you can guarantee being seen in front of those coaches. Showcases and league games, now everything's up in the air. They might show up, they might not show up. ID camps are the best way to get actually properly potentially seen. And in that way, it's a numbers game, meaning if you go to enough ID camps of enough realistic schools and you are a good enough player, plus you do the emails and the video, then you will very likely play college soccer if you do the system correctly and you know how to communicate and all those things. If you want to play college soccer and you want help, give me a call. Links in the bio. Bye.
