Elite Academy players typically land at Division III schools like Pomona-Pitzer and Tufts. To get recruited, you need to email coaches, attend showcases, and film matches against top competition. Division I spots are rare unless your team makes playoffs or sits near a D1 campus.
What about Elite Academy? Where does it stand in the college soccer recruiting process? Unless you're going to the playoffs or you're a high-level Elite Academy team, you're still going to have difficulty in some ways playing Division I. Now this does depend. If your Elite Academy team is local to an area next to a D1 school, of course then the coaches could hear about you, they could know each other, it's local. But on a grand scale, Elite Academy is really good for Division III top academic or high-level DIII schools and really good for Division II We have 4 students this year who from Elite Academy went on to play college soccer. 2 of them are at Pomona-Pitzer, the other one is at Tufts. And if you look at the rosters of Tufts and Pomona-Pitzer, most of those kids are playing MLSX or ECNL. And so you can see that there's still a lot of room to grow as an Elite Academy player, but there's definitely still the level for sure. So you can totally play college soccer as an Elite Academy, but you do have to be proactive. You have to go to camps, you have to make sure you email the coaches, and you have to understand that you might have to go to a couple extra camps because the coaches are not going to be able to come to your league games. Maybe they can come to your showcase if you if your club is going to certain showcases. And then make sure you get video if you are playing against MLS Next Pro SNL teams because it allows the coaches to go, hey, this is kind of where I think their level is and therefore I might want to recruit them. If you want more help, come and call and we can schedule a call with you and your parents.
