Two coaches explain how sophomore soccer players should start recruiting early by targeting Division III schools before the NCAA's June 15 rule opens up Division I contact. They stress building a list of interested schools and securing multiple offers to create leverage, since offers expire in two weeks. A player used a Creighton offer to push Maryland into committing her to her preferred school.
This is the biggest mistake you're making if you're a sophomore girl who wants to play Division I college soccer. You think that you're a sophomore.
In the college soccer world, you are a junior, and June 15th is coming upon us. And before June 15th, you need to get the interest of many top academic and top-level Division III girls teams. Some girls teams maybe you wouldn't have otherwise thought of—
a Cal Lutheran, for example, a St. Olaf, for example—
which are very high-level programs at the Division III level, who wanna talk to you right now as a sophomore.
Then come June 15th, and the Division I schools are allowed to speak to you, and the Division II schools are allowed to speak to you, and they say to you, who else have you been recruited by? And you say Chicago, and Tufts, and Vassar.
They will be much more keen on hearing out the rest of your story.
And on top of that, if God forbid you get injured, like we had a student tear their ACL, but luckily because they started sophomore year in an aggressive way, they're still gonna get offers despite now missing most of their junior year.
but also because the college coaches talk to each other.
And they will know if you're being recruited by other schools because things spread like wildfire.
But also, it's not only about finding a school for you to play at, it's about finding the coach you love. So whether it's Division I, II, or III, I want you to find a coach you love. And the more interest you get early on, the more opportunity you have to decide. Because once they make an offer, you will have about 2 weeks to make an offer.
Quick story time, we had a girl get an offer from Creighton. and she was super excited over it, but it wasn't her top school.
She really wanted to go to Maryland, but Creighton basically made her an offer and said, if you don't decide in the next 2 weeks, we're going to move on. But Maryland had not gotten back to us, so we went back to Maryland and said, look, you're our top school. I have an offer from another school, top school, but I really am looking from you.
And we didn't hear anything back until kind of the last day in which Maryland finally said, we're very interested and we would like to have you come to our school. This is why you need multiple schools interested in you, especially as a girl, because it's so competitive. And every girl has great grades. And every girl wants to go to the top academic or the same 50 schools. If you want help playing college soccer as a girl, comment call and we schedule a call with you and your parents.
