What does your Club do to assist in college recruiting

[beentheredonethat]

Now to my soap box.

One of the things that pisses me off about soccer clubs is few of them seem willing to give parents that honest assessment I wrote about above. They feed their families full of Kool-aid and string them along for years, when honestly, any coach worth a dime can give a pretty good educated guess how far a kid is likely to go with soccer even at really early ages. It’s nowhere near a science but having been a coach myself, I know that a good coach can usually tell pretty accurately which kids have a shot and which ones don’t and yet you seldom hear about coaches being frank with parents. When it comes to this issue about helping out in the college process, I believe that most coaches realize that once they telling families where they think their player can play that they are bound to lose a portion of their team so they don’t offer that information. Instead they let the families flounder around on their own spending tens of thousands of dollars with no real sense of where they can hope to go with it all. I’m sorry I think that is just wrong.

The second soapbox item is about the kids. I speak from experience here. Parent’s, if you find yourself doing all of the recruiting work yourself (ie ghosting emails etc), sky rockets should start going off inside your head telling you that your kid is not ready for the college decision. You really can’t and shouldn’t force them into something they are not ready for and honestly you really might want to take a step back and think about how important soccer really is in the equation. Trust me, I’ve been there with one of mine. Your instinct is probably to keep pushing forward hoping that something will click in time for them to capitalize on one of the opportunities that will undoubtedly materialize but you really need to stop and ask yourself what is driving the process, the soccer rat race or your kid’s desire to play in college. I think if you are really honest with yourself you may come to realize that its really the soccer rat race in many such cases. You and your kid may not be on the same sheet of music and if that is the case it will be virtually impossible to find the right fit. That is what you really want, a good fit. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of people (myself included but sort of in the opposite direction) let soccer dictate the choices and that just causes problems down the road. The bottom line advice I offer is if your kid is not ready, don’t push it, even if it means them not playing soccer in college. You’ll both end up happier in the long run.

[Unregistered]

Now to my soap box.

.................................................. .................

The second soapbox item is about the kids. I speak from experience here. Parent’s, if you find yourself doing all of the recruiting work yourself (ie ghosting emails etc), sky rockets should start going off inside your head telling you that your kid is not ready for the college decision. You really can’t and shouldn’t force them into something they are not ready for and honestly you really might want to take a step back and think about how important soccer really is in the equation. Trust me, I’ve been there with one of mine. Your instinct is probably to keep pushing forward hoping that something will click in time for them to capitalize on one of the opportunities that will undoubtedly materialize but you really need to stop and ask yourself what is driving the process, the soccer rat race or your kid’s desire to play in college. I think if you are really honest with yourself you may come to realize that its really the soccer rat race in many such cases. You and your kid may not be on the same sheet of music and if that is the case it will be virtually impossible to find the right fit. That is what you really want, a good fit. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of people (myself included but sort of in the opposite direction) let soccer dictate the choices and that just causes problems down the road. The bottom line advice I offer is if your kid is not ready, don’t push it, even if it means them not playing soccer in college. You’ll both end up happier in the long run.

I rarely agree with much this poster has to say. However, the above rings true to me.

NH

[Unregistered]

thank you btdt. a few years back i was in exactly the situation you described, stopped pushing my kid, and although the other parent rats tried to pull us back into the race, allowed my child to take their time. all ended well, on a very late placement, and the college and soccer experience has been overall positive. my next kids it was much easier as i learned from the first.

[Unregistered]

Hmmm.....look who just happened to show up....with a ton to get off his chest (again).

[Unregistered]

Now to my soap box.

One of the things that pisses me off about soccer clubs is few of them seem willing to give parents that honest assessment I wrote about above. They feed their families full of Kool-aid and string them along for years, when honestly, any coach worth a dime can give a pretty good educated guess how far a kid is likely to go with soccer even at really early ages. It’s nowhere near a science but having been a coach myself, I know that a good coach can usually tell pretty accurately which kids have a shot and which ones don’t and yet you seldom hear about coaches being frank with parents. When it comes to this issue about helping out in the college process, I believe that most coaches realize that once they telling families where they think their player can play that they are bound to lose a portion of their team so they don’t offer that information. Instead they let the families flounder around on their own spending tens of thousands of dollars with no real sense of where they can hope to go with it all. I’m sorry I think that is just wrong.

The second soapbox item is about the kids. I speak from experience here. Parent’s, if you find yourself doing all of the recruiting work yourself (ie ghosting emails etc), sky rockets should start going off inside your head telling you that your kid is not ready for the college decision. You really can’t and shouldn’t force them into something they are not ready for and honestly you really might want to take a step back and think about how important soccer really is in the equation. Trust me, I’ve been there with one of mine. Your instinct is probably to keep pushing forward hoping that something will click in time for them to capitalize on one of the opportunities that will undoubtedly materialize but you really need to stop and ask yourself what is driving the process, the soccer rat race or your kid’s desire to play in college. I think if you are really honest with yourself you may come to realize that its really the soccer rat race in many such cases. You and your kid may not be on the same sheet of music and if that is the case it will be virtually impossible to find the right fit. That is what you really want, a good fit. Unfortunately I have seen a lot of people (myself included but sort of in the opposite direction) let soccer dictate the choices and that just causes problems down the road. The bottom line advice I offer is if your kid is not ready, don’t push it, even if it means them not playing soccer in college. You’ll both end up happier in the long run.

While I mostly agree with the above (which I can't believe myself) in some cases, particularly with girls, they are being recruited at younger and younger ages. What does a 9th grader know about colleges and what they want for soccer/school when they're one semester into high school? Not that parents need to completely run the show, but they may need to do a bit more hand holding than if the player were a junior.

[Unregistered]

Hmmm.....look who just happened to show up....with a ton to get off his chest (again).

1) what was either inaccurate or snarky about what he wrote?

2) was there anything in there that was aimed at his usual target(s)?

3) can we really disagree with his point that it's not in the clubs' best interests to tell the unvarnished truth about players' college prospects? Let's face it, as soon as parents hear that their kid is not a real D1 prospect they'll stop paying for the showcase travel and high club fees and put their $ in a 529 or something.

As much as I like to attack BTDT for his treatment of Breakers, Stars, other players, and the club business in general over the years, he's pretty much on target on this thread. Perhaps you might try to be less of a psycho, sometimes?

[Unregistered]

1) what was either inaccurate or snarky about what he wrote?

2) was there anything in there that was aimed at his usual target(s)?

3) can we really disagree with his point that it's not in the clubs' best interests to tell the unvarnished truth about players' college prospects? Let's face it, as soon as parents hear that their kid is not a real D1 prospect they'll stop paying for the showcase travel and high club fees and put their $ in a 529 or something.

As much as I like to attack BTDT for his treatment of Breakers, Stars, other players, and the club business in general over the years, he's pretty much on target on this thread. Perhaps you might try to be less of a psycho, sometimes?

Good, so you should be done now, no? Or will you just just even more threads and keep pounding the same drums?

[Unregistered]

Good, so you should be done now, no? Or will you just just even more threads and keep pounding the same drums?

Not who you think I am. I'm usually on your side, strangely enough. Just not today.

You know, you don't have to hunt the great white whale every single day. You could take a day off, every now and then.

[Unregistered]

1) Telling 8th and 9th graders to drive the bus, make decisions about what level they are (athletically and academically), choose their colleges, and do all the contacts and emails with coaches is just ludicrous on the face of it.

2) Clubs will tell you how your kid is trending, especially if you ask, and this should be more than obvious in at least ballpark terms to any intelligent parent. If you're kid is on a #2 or #3 team you aren't going D1. If you're at the bottom 3rd of a #1 team you probably aren't going to the D1 school of your dreams. Most people know how rare it is to get big money at a very top D1 school. Hardly anyone would expect that unless someone (and more than one person) tells you your kid is that special. No one presumes that unless they are insane. At the first ODP tryout we ever went to the very first thing Mike Singleton said to all of the parents is that if any where there because of an interest in scholarship money they should leave immediately.

3) Which goes to my biggest point about how distorted the posts above are. The are written through a prism that presumes everyone or most participate because they all are wanting and/or expecting the same thing. They aren't. Far from it. And there is no club claiming that if you play with them you'll get a full scholarship to the D1 of your dreams. Far from it. The retort is going to be "well, then, why would you waste all that money if that isn't your goal?" That's an entirely different issue and one that we can choose to disagree about, in terms of what is worth what, and what college is worth what, or what being a better high school is worth, etc, etc.

4) Where I agree is that parents should get a sense of how their kid is trending, understand what they want out of it, work towards a fit based on athletic and academic profiles as best one can, work towards a manageable list, and enlist the help of your coaches if needed.

5) The problem of parents pushing too much or not listening to what a kid is saying (or what his/her behavior is saying) is NOT a soccer-specific problem. That's a problem that permeates our entire society. That said, what kids think they may want in 8th or 9th grade may be totally different than what they want (or qualify for) in 11th or 12 grade.

[Unregistered]

Not who you think I am. I'm usually on your side, strangely enough. Just not today.

You know, you don't have to hunt the great white whale every single day. You could take a day off, every now and then.

Thanks, BTNT. I actually took 6 days off. I don't post in response to you or even remotely about you when you aren't posting.

[beentheredonethat]

As far as the question about how much a club coach should be expected to do in terms of setting players up for a college deal the answer is it is variable. A lot depends upon the coach, their connections, and the expectations of the family. I’ve seen the amount of assistance offered be all over the map. My personal experience with players at both ends of the spectrum has been that the club coaches will do a fair amount for you if your expectations are reasonable and you aren’t a pain in the butt. The key is you need to be the one telling them who you want them to talk to. It really doesn’t happen the other way around.

I would like to embellish on what I wrote here because for many this is the crux of the issue. How does the contact with college coaches work and how much should the parent expect their club coach to do for them?

To answer the first part, what generally happens when a college coach either sees a player they are interested in at some exposure event or they become aware of a player through other means who interest them is they contact the club coach to discuss them. This is more the case now with early recruitment. The initial stage literally has to go through a “cut out” in order to keep things above board with the NCAA. How the club coach handles that contact is really the vital issue. In many respects it’s no different than an employer getting a reference call. The coach can screw up a potential deal without the player and family even being aware that contact was made. That’s just the reality of the situation so you had better have a good relationship with the coach and really trust them to do the right thing on your kid’s behalf. After that contact the coach typically tells the family and solicits their interest in the program, which they then communicate to the college coach. From that point the coach usually bows out substantially and the communication is more direct between the family and the college coach. At this point the game is about your kid building a relationship with that college coach. It’s sort of like a mating dance. The key point to understand is that the coach really can’t be in the middle of it.

One of the issues that most families run into to one degree or another is when the communication coming back from the college coach is really stilted. The amount of anxiety that causes is immeasurable because of the way the process works you are not sure whether the coach is even receiving your kid’s emails or their calls or whether they are just blowing them off. You need to know that most college coaches are not the least bit delicate and generally don’t care if your kid is having a meltdown trying to reach them. If they are not interested, they just move on to the next prospect. Now, you also need to realize that there may also be a perfectly reasonable explanation why a coach is not responding. One such reason might be they are not working on your kid’s recruiting class yet. I’ve seen quite a few families over the years get completely side tracked waiting for a response that is never coming. This is where it is appropriate for you to ask your club coach for help. What you need them to do is contact the college coach and get an interest read from them. There is absolutely no sense to hoping and praying. If the college coach is not interested you are better moving on to the next program. You need to realize though that your club coach’s help is only as good as their relationship with that specific college coach because you are asking the college coach to essentially tip their hand with you and typically that is not something the college coaches really want to do.

The bottom line is outside of these rather specific instances you really shouldn’t expect the club coach to do much for you since it is not really their place to speak for your kid and make decisions for them. The reality is if nothing is happening on the recruiting front for your kid, it means that either you targeted your schools badly or you are not doing something right. The key thing to understand is the failure is on the family’s side not the club coach’s. That said, the roles that the club coach does play in the process really should underscore the need for you to be able to trust that your coach is working on your kid’s behalf and that they actually have the ability to break through the log jams that everyone (including national team members) run into. Good luck everyone.

[beentheredonethat]

Thanks, BTNT. I actually took 6 days off. I don't post in response to you or even remotely about you when you aren't posting.

Unbeknownst to your apparently, I almost never respond to you because I think you are insane. FYI this is just my 4th post in this thread.

[Unregistered]

Unbeknownst to your apparently, I almost never respond to you because I think you are insane. FYI this is just my 4th post in this thread.

Sure, BTNT. You're here posting. Enough said. Tell us some more about how you are only trying to "pay it forward." Good one.

[Unregistered]

I would like to embellish on what I wrote here because for many this is the crux of the issue. How does the contact with college coaches work and how much should the parent expect their club coach to do for them?

To answer the first part, what generally happens when a college coach either sees a player they are interested in at some exposure event or they become aware of a player through other means who interest them is they contact the club coach to discuss them. This is more the case now with early recruitment. The initial stage literally has to go through a “cut out” in order to keep things above board with the NCAA. How the club coach handles that contact is really the vital issue. In many respects it’s no different than an employer getting a reference call. The coach can screw up a potential deal without the player and family even being aware that contact was made. That’s just the reality of the situation so you had better have a good relationship with the coach and really trust them to do the right thing on your kid’s behalf. After that contact the coach typically tells the family and solicits their interest in the program, which they then communicate to the college coach. From that point the coach usually bows out substantially and the communication is more direct between the family and the college coach. At this point the game is about your kid building a relationship with that college coach. It’s sort of like a mating dance. The key point to understand is that the coach really can’t be in the middle of it.

One of the issues that most families run into to one degree or another is when the communication coming back from the college coach is really stilted. The amount of anxiety that causes is immeasurable because of the way the process works you are not sure whether the coach is even receiving your kid’s emails or their calls or whether they are just blowing them off. You need to know that most college coaches are not the least bit delicate and generally don’t care if your kid is having a meltdown trying to reach them. If they are not interested, they just move on to the next prospect. Now, you also need to realize that there may also be a perfectly reasonable explanation why a coach is not responding. One such reason might be they are not working on your kid’s recruiting class yet. I’ve seen quite a few families over the years get completely side tracked waiting for a response that is never coming. This is where it is appropriate for you to ask your club coach for help. What you need them to do is contact the college coach and get an interest read from them. There is absolutely no sense to hoping and praying. If the college coach is not interested you are better moving on to the next program. You need to realize though that your club coach’s help is only as good as their relationship with that specific college coach because you are asking the college coach to essentially tip their hand with you and typically that is not something the college coaches really want to do.

The bottom line is outside of these rather specific instances you really shouldn’t expect the club coach to do much for you since it is not really their place to speak for your kid and make decisions for them. The reality is if nothing is happening on the recruiting front for your kid, it means that either you targeted your schools badly or you are not doing something right. The key thing to understand is the failure is on the family’s side not the club coach’s. That said, the roles that the club coach does play in the process really should underscore the need for you to be able to trust that your coach is working on your kid’s behalf and that they actually have the ability to break through the log jams that everyone (including national team members) run into. Good luck everyone.

OK, thanks. That should be a wrap and presumably we won't need to see any new threads on this anytime soon.

[beentheredonethat]

1) Telling 8th and 9th graders to drive the bus, make decisions about what level they are (athletically and academically), choose their colleges, and do all the contacts and emails with coaches is just ludicrous on the face of it.

2) Clubs will tell you how your kid is trending, especially if you ask, and this should be more than obvious in at least ballpark terms to any intelligent parent. If you're kid is on a #2 or #3 team you aren't going D1. If you're at the bottom 3rd of a #1 team you probably aren't going to the D1 school of your dreams. Most people know how rare it is to get big money at a very top D1 school. Hardly anyone would expect that unless someone (and more than one person) tells you your kid is that special. No one presumes that unless they are insane. At the first ODP tryout we ever went to the very first thing Mike Singleton said to all of the parents is that if any where there because of an interest in scholarship money they should leave immediately.

3) Which goes to my biggest point about how distorted the posts above are. The are written through a prism that presumes everyone or most participate because they all are wanting and/or expecting the same thing. They aren't. Far from it. And there is no club claiming that if you play with them you'll get a full scholarship to the D1 of your dreams. Far from it. The retort is going to be "well, then, why would you waste all that money if that isn't your goal?" That's an entirely different issue and one that we can choose to disagree about, in terms of what is worth what, and what college is worth what, or what being a better high school is worth, etc, etc.

4) Where I agree is that parents should get a sense of how their kid is trending, understand what they want out of it, work towards a fit based on athletic and academic profiles as best one can, work towards a manageable list, and enlist the help of your coaches if needed.

5) The problem of parents pushing too much or not listening to what a kid is saying (or what his/her behavior is saying) is NOT a soccer-specific problem. That's a problem that permeates our entire society. That said, what kids think they may want in 8th or 9th grade may be totally different than what they want (or qualify for) in 11th or 12 grade.

You show little insight into what is happening these days or what money is available. The fact is if you believe your child might want to play in college the process really starts in early middle school by preparing them to think about college years before their peers have to do it. It is insane but it is the reality of the moment.

The money IS much better on the girls side than you appear to think. The average scholarship is probably around 50%. It becomes more when you move backwards and away from the highest level your child could possibly play at. That actually becomes a major factor in all of this for many people. Do you take the money or the prestige? It's really a individual family value type of decision.