A goalkeeper from a small town asks how to reach Division I soccer. Start recruiting in middle school or 9th grade, attend ID camps for exposure, target Division III first to build leverage, then approach D1 coaches by sophomore year. Genuine outreach matters more than fake demand.
Any tips to help me go D1? I'm a freshman goalie and I'm in from a really small town playing West Region ODP. Okay, first of all, you want to play Division 1 soccer and you're thinking about it as a freshman. I would have liked if you started as an 8th grader, but I'm really happy you're starting anyways. And you're definitely like, we can still get a lot done with the recruiting process because you're starting it right now as a 9th grader. You live in a small town, so first of all, you're gonna have to get opportunities within your small town first, meaning you have to go to travel far for ID camps and You need to get the interest of college coaches within your region first. Playing ODP is very good, but you're gonna have to consider Division III schools first. If you can get Division III schools' interest before June 15th of your sophomore year, then what you can do is once that time hits and you say it's June 15th of your sophomore year because you've gotten interest from DIIIs, when you send the email out to Division I schools, you would say to them, "Dear coach, my name is so-and-so, I play at so-and-so level, and I've already had 5 phone calls with Division III schools." If you're not playing at a high level of club soccer, the other way to gain college coaches' attention is if you have attention from other college coaches. And I don't mean attention like they sent me an email. I mean like phone calls, visits, real proper genuine conversations via email or maybe via text, which texting does happen, or even via Instagram DM messages. Now when it comes to leveraging, you have to be careful because you can piss a coach off because sometimes they don't want you to use leverage and other times you can use a school's leverage but the school you're reaching out to doesn't really care that you spoke to that other school. So that's what I say, if you're going to use the magic of leveraging, you should call me because it gets a little bit complicated. Good job. The main thing is great video. You need to go to local schools, and then you need to travel far for your ID camp so you can get recruited by colleges. That's what you need to do. If you want more help, call me.
