Playing for elite academies like BlackRock or IMG gives you exposure to college scouts, but they won't handle recruiting for you. You need to make your own highlight videos, email coaches, and generate interest first. Once schools are actually interested, the academy will help close the deal.
If I play for BlackRock Residency Program, can I play Division 1 college soccer? So if you're playing at BlackRock, you have a phenomenal chance to play at a very high level. We have a couple students have gone through BlackRock. You're going to be at places of exposure. You might even have the opportunity to play USL 2, which is like college level as you get older. The only thing you want to be mindful of is unlike a traditional MLS NEXT team where you basically are guaranteed to go to MLS NEXT Fest and Flex, Blackrock or academies like it typically do also go to these events, but they also play against other top academies, and those other top academies also get exposure from top academic schools because of their awesome reputation. So you might have the opportunity to get exposure twice over. However, the Blackrocks of the world, IMG Academy is kind of in that category, they don't typically edit your videos for you. They don't typically send the emails for you. They will help you in the recruiting process, but remember, their job is to help everybody equally. My job, on the other hand, is I don't care about everybody equally. I only care about the kids I work with. So one of the things that I would strongly recommend is even if you're in one of those organizations, you must take control. If you get interest by yourself without their help, then later in the process, when you ask for their help and you can explain to them, I've already been talked to by Chicago or Middlebury or Maryland or Stanford, and they go, oh my gosh, like, of course we know you're good enough, then they'll happily jump in and help you because they don't have to stick out their neck for you because every coach has their own subjective opinion about a player. But if the BlackRock staff or IMG staff already have evidence that you're getting interest from schools, then they want to help you very quickly. Now they want to help you regardless because they're incredible organizations. But you have to be mindful of the fact there's a lot of kids that are in those organizations and they cannot help everybody equally. They will not call Stanford for every single one of those kids. So if you want to get recruited to a Stanford-like level, which you could be capable of playing of, you must do a lot of the heavy lifting on your own to begin with. Then they will be ready to jump in and help you. And if BlackRock or IMG are listening and I've got this wrong, please let me know. The only reason I say this is because lots of your students at those academies come to me and we fix their video and we help them follow up. And because of the detailed orientation of the emails that I want the kids to do, it's important that you have somebody doing the minute of how you ask a question, how you follow up. And typically the BlackRocks and IMGs are so busy doing other amazing things, nutrition, physical training every day. They've given you a bunch of other platforms, but what's so important is the email aspect. So if you want more help, comment the word call and we can schedule a call with you and your parents.
