A coach explains how to email college programs: contact multiple schools you actually want to attend, be honest about other recruitment interest, and expect coaches to ask who else is recruiting you. Castro, a junior-college transfer outside back with a 3.0 GPA, demonstrates how age and transfer status factor into recruiting decisions.
Everybody emails Northwestern, that's not particularly special. So what if you emailed Occidental or Caltech and then you said to Northwestern, I really enjoyed XYZ, I'm being recruited by XYZ, Caltech, whoever. And not to leverage a coach just because you don't like them, like don't email anybody you don't want to go to, but it's important. The coaches will ask you today if they come up to you, who else are you being recruited by? And if you say, uh, I don't know, or nobody, that is a red flag. Does that make sense? Oh, Mr. Castro, you're already in one of my videos. Mr. Castro, you stood up because I want to ask you a question about your recruiting process. I have to admit, I already picked you out before. Why did I pick him out? And I know everybody here because I was all here in all of your shoes. It was circumstance. I walked, turn right, he made a pass. That was it. It wasn't like— none of you are better than— you might be better, but I picked them out because of circumstance. So now I'm curious, when anybody, a coach, asks you questions, that means they like you. They're not asking for for some other reason. They liked it, so I like it. But now I'm curious about it. What's your GPA? Uh, 3.0. 3.0. Uh, what club team do you play for? Um, I'll be honest, what level?
Uh, MLS Next.
MLS Next. And what position do you play? I'm an outside back. What year are you? I'm a 2021 graduate. 2021 grad. So wait, when did you graduate high school?
Okay, I'm a junior college transfer.
Okay, so see, I picked him up for a reason. He's older than all of you, and therefore he's doing it. And this was genius of you to come. Absolutely genius. Because he's older than all of you, I picked him out initially, and he's older, and you—
I go on to say that being older, he looked more mature than the other players. That's why I picked him out. So now you have to compete with transfers. Now I made another video about how, why I don't think transfers actually have an advantage when it comes to the recruiting process, because every single coach is going to ask a transfer, what's wrong with you, right? You're already damaged goods. So you're much better getting off-recruited in high school. However, your ability, your physical ability does change as a transfer. So you're much better if you want to transfer to Division I, go to a 4-year program then transfer to Division I. Junior college is a bad place. He has a 3.0. Automatically, there's like 50, 70% of schools can't have him anymore because his grades aren't good and they're worried if he's gonna like follow the rules, et cetera. So going to junior college immediately equates you with being bad grades or big problem. So because of that aura, until that changes, which maybe it will change in the future with this new rule, but for the next 5 to 10 years, that's not the case, especially in soccer. So junior college makes you look like what's wrong with you. However, if you go to junior college, you can still get recruited, in which case you need to go to ID camps like this kid. I still think high schoolers have the best chance. And but you do need to know as a high schooler, there are kids like that guy who you're competing with who look older and better. So what do you need to do? You have to start in 8th, 9th grade, 10th grade. You need to email more schools. You have to get the coaches to fall in love with you over time because you're competing with a player who mature physically, maybe quote unquote better than you. So now you need the coaches to fall in love with you as a person so they want to develop you so you can play for them. And then of course, depending on where that kid goes, he may have a lack of eligibility. If he goes to D3 or D2, he'll only have 2 years, which is not good. So they'd rather still have high school kids. If you want more help, comment the word email. I'll send you a list of templates you should be sending out.
