A coach tells a parent of a 13-year-old soccer player that at this age you can predict if they'll reach a top-25 Division I program. Three moves now: attend D1 camps for exposure, make a one-minute highlight video, and review game footage to improve.
If I was 13 years old and I wanted to play Division 1 college soccer, here are 3 things I would do. So I just got off the phone with a parent whose athlete is going into 7th grade. Now the first thing I do in this scenario is I look at their video, and if I think they're, you know, a beginner player just having fun, then they're not the right person to work with us. And I say, look, go get good at soccer and you can revisit this later. However, there are consequences to that. There are other kids who are at a higher level at that age, so that means this athlete probably won't play Division 1 soccer, or They still could, but they're going to have to do a lot more later. And they probably won't be going to the top 25 schools. By 13 years old, you would know if you are going to go and have the passion and certainly the technical ability to go on to play at a collegiate level of Division I. As crazy as that sounds, we have an idea. Now, like me, I didn't play— I didn't get recruited to play Division I soccer until I was a junior and I was playing JV soccer. But I never made it to Stanford or UCLA. I was not the level. I went to a small D1 school. Had somebody told my parents at 12, 13, here's where you needed to be, I would've made different life choices. But my parents didn't know, my dad's a surfer, my mother's a dancer, and we just didn't know, so here I am telling you. So the first thing is, if you have been established as a good player, you should go to middle school camps. And you can just look up any Division I school in your area will have a middle school camp 'cause that's how they make money. Go to the camp 'cause you're gonna be one of the best kids there, especially if you are a good soccer player. Two, I want you to make a 1-minute video. This 1-minute video allows you to duplicate yourself. You can send it to club teams. You can also send it to professional teams if you so wanted to, but you got to make a video, otherwise you don't exist. And number 3, you got to do game video review. You have to improve as a player. Of course, these are all things that we help with if you want our help, but you can do it with anybody if you find the right village and team. If you want more help, give us a call. Links in the bio. Talk soon. Goodbye.
