A D1 athlete’s perspective on recruiting

[Unregistered]

The vast majority are not super studs, so the comments about starting a little later are completely appropriate.

I still dont see the correlation. thats wht you dont seem to get. If you are one of 100s of players of similar ability , then i would understand why you would wnat to get ahead of the rest by establishing early contact IF your kid was prepared.

Thats why i mention super studs. They are the ones who could start later but the perception that the earlier you commit , the more status attached, leads them to go as fast as they can. That can the impact the rest.

[Unregistered]

Great, well there are 1-3 "superstuds" from this area per class, at most. Sorry to rain on your parade.

Its not my parade, its a comment on recruiting in general. You dont really get the benefit of being so insular unless you are only looking at local niche schools. Your competition is potentially national.

[Unregistered]

May work for you. Dont think I agree with the general sentiment though

I'm not talking about visiting coaches or anything like that. I'm not even talking about taking tours. What I am talking about is SLOWLY building a frame of reference so the kid knows what the whole college thing is even about. When you have other kids this happens naturally as you process one kid's decision. A lot of times the younger siblings get dragged along and over hear the conversations. I found that there was a real benefit to that once it came to the younger siblings time because they had already built some ideas of what they want. I think the key is doing it in such a way that you don't apply any pressure by even talking about the whole recruiting thing. You are just there to let them soak in life on a college campus is like.

[Unregistered]

What part is no really true ?

You seemed to be pushing the idea that early commitment is all about the fear of missing out. I can see some of that but if you are smart enough to put yourself in the drivers seat you still get to a point where a coach wants an answer no matter how much you are driving the process. I was actually surprised by the pressure we got. The pressure to make a decision is real and in our case not nearly the ego driven thing you seem to have experienced. We had originally targeted making the decision 6-8 months later than we actually did and was working on a timeline consistent with that. In our case our club coach started getting phone calls from the programs we were most interested in and basically told us we needed to speed our process up if we wanted to be taken seriously. Fortunately we started at the top of our list and those 6-8 months were really about doing due diligence on schools at the bottom of it. When we took a step back we realized they weren't really serious contenders and were comfortable in just eliminating them. What I realized is sometimes due diligence is just a waste of time if you have the information you need to make a sound decision. I would also agree though that if you don't have that information and get pressured into making a choice that it is a mistake.

[Unregistered]

surely the approach is linked to the ability of the player. The point I was trying to make in the OP is that this mentality

I wouldn't say you have to start in 7th grade unless she's a super stud

is wrong. A super stud is in control of the process. she is coveted by everyone. Thats why i find the perception that the earlier you commit, the better you are as a player so false.

My comment seems to have led to a bunch of this is how we did it replies, but none seem to want to actually touch on the key issue. what type of player are you talking about.

I think you are out of touch with how things are working now. What I experienced was the club started the education process on a team by team level. I think the presence of a few top level kids on a team pushes the start date of that process forward to accommodate their needs. Once that education process starts though it's like firing a starters pistol. Everyone starts thinking about recruiting. This is where I think the lack of objectivity and self awareness in club soccer shows itself the most.

[Unregistered]

You seemed to be pushing the idea that early commitment is all about the fear of missing out. I can see some of that but if you are smart enough to put yourself in the drivers seat you still get to a point where a coach wants an answer no matter how much you are driving the process. I was actually surprised by the pressure we got. The pressure to make a decision is real and in our case not nearly the ego driven thing you seem to have experienced. We had originally targeted making the decision 6-8 months later than we actually did and was working on a timeline consistent with that. In our case our club coach started getting phone calls from the programs we were most interested in and basically told us we needed to speed our process up if we wanted to be taken seriously. Fortunately we started at the top of our list and those 6-8 months were really about doing due diligence on schools at the bottom of it. When we took a step back we realized they weren't really serious contenders and were comfortable in just eliminating them. What I realized is sometimes due diligence is just a waste of time if you have the information you need to make a sound decision. I would also agree though that if you don't have that information and get pressured into making a choice that it is a mistake.

nope. not at all. think you need to read it again. Like i said, unless we know the type of player being discussed its hard to compare. I think the only people in the divers seat per se are the handful of elite talents and yet they often commit very early. I believe they do that more for ego than anything else.

I also think we need to redefine early. sometime between Soph and Jnr seems to be par now. I would call freshman and earlier , early

[Unregistered]

I think you are out of touch with how things are working now. What I experienced was the club started the education process on a team by team level. I think the presence of a few top level kids on a team pushes the start date of that process forward to accommodate their needs. Once that education process starts though it's like firing a starters pistol. Everyone starts thinking about recruiting. This is where I think the lack of objectivity and self awareness in club soccer shows itself the most.

I dont think you can make statements like that. I may be out of touch with how it worked for you. Just the same as you may be out of touch with how it works for players better or worse than yours.

I also think the process is very individual. Doing it team by team is a big mistake at any Club.

[Unregistered]

I dont think you can make statements like that. I may be out of touch with how it worked for you. Just the same as you may be out of touch with how it works for players better or worse than yours.

I also think the process is very individual. Doing it team by team is a big mistake at any Club.

What you think is actually irrelevant because there are clubs out there that are educating their families about the recruiting process and they do it in groups not on an individual basis. That is just the fact. Its not opinion. Flip it around, could you imagine the hue and cry if the club only started educating their top players and left the bottoms of the roster until a later date? No way that would fly.

[Unregistered]

[QUOTE=Unregistered;2283771]No great epiphany here, nor a horror show. Just one athlete’s perspective on being recruited

More of a horror show when you are a D1 athlete. NO FUN! Kid was CAA Freshman player of the year on the team. Then cut the next season. NO FUN

[Unregistered]

[QUOTE=Unregistered;2286100]

No great epiphany here, nor a horror show. Just one athlete’s perspective on being recruited

More of a horror show when you are a D1 athlete. NO FUN! Kid was CAA Freshman player of the year on the team. Then cut the next season. NO FUN

Umm, the article is about a volleyball player from U of Utah who transferred to an Ivy...not a CAA school

[Unregistered]

nope. not at all. think you need to read it again. Like i said, unless we know the type of player being discussed its hard to compare. I think the only people in the divers seat per se are the handful of elite talents and yet they often commit very early. I believe they do that more for ego than anything else.

I also think we need to redefine early. sometime between Soph and Jnr seems to be par now. I would call freshman and earlier , early

I have had multiple players at different places on the talent spectrum. I would agree that the lesser the talent level the more time you have but think you need to accept that everyone basically starts at the same time once the clubs introduce the subject. I think if you are objective about the level of soccer your kid is at the timeline is pretty easy to establish just by tracking the commitments for that level on Topdraw. Use the search feature

https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/sear...ea=commitments

You can reasonably tell what size a schools recruiting classes are and where they are at in their process. For example. Compare Stanford with Sacred Heart or Rhode Island.

[Unregistered]

I have had multiple players at different places on the talent spectrum. I would agree that the lesser the talent level the more time you have but think you need to accept that everyone basically starts at the same time once the clubs introduce the subject. I think if you are objective about the level of soccer your kid is at the timeline is pretty easy to establish just by tracking the commitments for that level on Topdraw. Use the search feature

https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/sear...ea=commitments

You can reasonably tell what size a schools recruiting classes are and where they are at in their process. For example. Compare Stanford with Sacred Heart or Rhode Island.

Thats is where we disagree. i think the lesser the talent, the less time you really have because the school can just move on. I think you have a lot more time the better you are. In my experience ( 2 kids) the schools were happy to wait for one of mine for a relatively long time.

[Unregistered]

What you think is actually irrelevant because there are clubs out there that are educating their families about the recruiting process and they do it in groups not on an individual basis. That is just the fact. Its not opinion. Flip it around, could you imagine the hue and cry if the club only started educating their top players and left the bottoms of the roster until a later date? No way that would fly.

and there are also Clubs not doing it at all or doing it on an individual basis. we all have different experiences. calling any one of them out of touch is part of the problem with TS. Its just different.

many Clubs are not remotely qualified to educate on the process. they dont possess all the required info. the education a YNT star needs is very different to a kid coming of the bench for a lower level GDA team. many of the younger Club coaches dont have kids who have gone thru it, are teaching via anecdotes and have an agenda.

[Unregistered]

Thats is where we disagree. i think the lesser the talent, the less time you really have because the school can just move on. I think you have a lot more time the better you are. In my experience ( 2 kids) the schools were happy to wait for one of mine for a relatively long time.

I meant lead time not decision time. When you look at Stanford they already have commits for 2021 where as schools like URI or Sacred Heart really working on 2019. That tells you that if you are targeting that later level school you have plenty of time to do your research and be still be at the front of the line when their coaches start looking to sign players.

[Unregistered]

and there are also Clubs not doing it at all or doing it on an individual basis. we all have different experiences. calling any one of them out of touch is part of the problem with TS. Its just different.

many Clubs are not remotely qualified to educate on the process. they dont possess all the required info. the education a YNT star needs is very different to a kid coming of the bench for a lower level GDA team. many of the younger Club coaches dont have kids who have gone thru it, are teaching via anecdotes and have an agenda.

All the more reason why the asshats who typically take over these threads and steer them towards D3 thought processes are so damaging. The whole D1/2 “recruiting” process is very nuanced and most of it is usually around talent level and yet it always seems like that crowd objects to that whole line of “talent based” thinking. Personally I think they have contributed more to increasing the hysteria surrounding recruiting because if they were as objective about where they were headed as they like to think they would know that they have plenty of time and have the FOMO discussion wouldn’t exist