Many high-school soccer players have the skill for UCLA, Clemson, Notre Dame, or Stanford but don't get recruited because they lack exposure. A Duke recruit who emailed coaches and sent highlight videos got in by marketing himself. If you think you belong at the top level, increase your visibility.
How many players are capable of playing Division 1 soccer but never make it to Division 1 soccer? Or even better yet, how many players are capable of playing for the top 10 to 15 schools— UCLA, Clemson, Notre Dame, Stanford— but don't actually end up there, but they are good enough? So let's back up for a minute and go, well, if a player was recruited to UCLA but maybe not recruited to Notre Dame, you could assume that that player is probably good enough for Notre Dame, but it does depend on position. Style of play, coaches' preferences. But if you try and make this objective and you just zoom out and go, are they the level? Like, how good are they? You know, there's a bunch of players on Northridge, UCSB, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo that did not get recruited to UCLA. Then they play against UCLA and they beat them. Fullerton, for example, beat UCLA this year. You don't think there's some players on Fullerton that could have played and done really well at UCLA? Obviously. There are so many good players who are good enough to play at UCLA, Stanford, etc. but don't ever end up actually playing there. And there's a lot of reasons for this. Proximity, club level, highlight video, emails, every-touch video, how many ID camps you go to. We have a student at Duke who is a phenomenal player, but they were really proactive towards Duke and other schools. And I would argue that's a big reason the player's at Duke. Now, are there other players that are also good enough to play at Duke that are not going to play at Duke? Abso-freaking-lutely. So the question is, what level are you? If you think you are the level to play at the highest level schools, and you think they're just gonna come after you, that's gonna make your life really difficult because there's a lot of kids who are good enough. The difference tends to be who do they see the most, and to be seen the most, emails, ID camps, highlight video, et cetera. If you want more help, give me a call. Link's in the bio.
