Recruiting Sites

TDS and our local coaches.

 

Additional question: at what age should a parent create a TDS profile for the player? Or does TDS create the profile based on some kind of scouting?

 

TDS is completely useless. No reasonable coaches pay attention to it. Your daughter's coach should be a good resource.

 

They have decent recruiting materials. You must be talking about the rankings. Those are not very accurate...at all. But as for guidelines and to do's, they have good materials.

 

I would only do it if your kid is in an article or regional odp player. Otherwise, they struggle to rate them. They tend to focus on ECNL, DA, ODP or Best XI from EPL or NL events. (just my opinion)

Not sure if coaches pay attention, but its fun for the girls/boys by comparison. The regional ranking though are usually off. Top 150 is pretty accurate.

 

I could write a book. Several have been actually. Write me privately if you want some recommendations.
Generally speaking, recruiting services are useless in soccer. You don't need to pay for anything to get recruited and the vast majority of college coaches (95% in one survey) prefer to hear directly from the prospect in the recruiting process. It's fine to supervise your recruit and even access their recruiting emails but let them do all the writing from a gmail account you create for recruiting. For example, SallyJones2019@gmail.com Have that email auto-forward to yours if you really want to see it all. It's the player that will spend 4 years there, not the parent or some recruiting consultant. NCSA and TDS have good articles to read now and then but do not use a recruiting service email to contact coaches or have them do it for the player. ID camps have become a necessary evil in the recruiting game now too but you should be selective about them as well.
Below is a link to a great long summary a D1 soccer dad put on a website and its still there. Great perspective and it sounds like he did about everything possible. I think this was posted on the forum once. It's a little dated maybe now but a good starting point.
Good luck!
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com...91234-college-recruiting-tips-for-soccer.html

 

Thanks. She is a regional ODP player but still young. She is just starting ECNL. I noticed they have their own player page; not sure if TDS would be a good addition to this.

 

I read it. Thanks for posting.

 

Just do the free profiles on those sites. Most D1 programs don't really recruit off those sites. The above referenced post is very good summary. Most D1 coaches will normally want a video, a "soccer" resume/bio, and will want to see your player play in person a couple times (showcases, ID camps, ODP, etc.). They normally should start emailing (and calling) the coaches for the schools they are interested in by their freshman or sophomore year (junior/senior more for D2 or D3) -- if they are on a good team there will be college coaches showing up on the sidelines around that time.

 

I have a question about transfers and don't want to start a new thread. My question sort of fits "recruiting" and "sites," so I'll post it here. Hopefully, someone knows the answer:

Suppose I'm a current college player. I have excellent credentials. I'm not happy where I am. I want to transfer to another school where I can play soccer. Is there a website, or some other vehicle, to let it be known I'm in the market for a transfer? How do I get the word out to schools I'm interested in?

 

Purely conjecture on my part, but I think it would be through friends/former teammates from club, ODP, youth national teams, etc. that play at other schools or former club coaches that have relationships with college coaches.

 

Easy choice -
1- be sneaky and get the word out through the grapevine (and have everyone know your business and risk getting burned by the current coach) OR
2-sit down with the current coach and ask for a release. With that release attachment for emails, you can contact just about any coach you want. Some d1s won't let you talk with other conf schools but otherwise, you can ask around directly with coaches. This keeps other parents and club folks out of it.

Big Point is - as soon as 'word' gets out, you should expect it to get back to your current coach so might as well go in and get that tough conversation over with. Always assume coaches are talking to each other all the time. Also, timing is crucial, its possible to lose your money right then or certainly that semester. So if you ask for your release in Dec, could lose your Spring semester money and locker room, and training room, weight room, laundry, etc. So, literally be ready to go when you have that talk with the coach. As in, during exam week when you are packed and ready to leave town!

 

The key to recruiting for a parent/kid is to circumvent the middleman (club coach, distant showcases like Disney, all the CaptainU' websites, pro vids, etc...). The most that's going to come out of any of that are id camp invites. Sooo, just pick the schools you want to try and throw your funds directly at their id camps. Why pay for invites? Schools aren't doing a thing unless they evaluate you on their terms and their turf. Showcases may be exciting with all the black sweatsuits and folding chairs but what's tourny fees, hotel costs and ditching school get ya beyond....camp invites? Pick your own school(s), go to the id camp(s). Simple. Avoid the costly residential camps as they'll sequester players they're watching close and if you're good, you waste a day fighting your way out of the mob before getting id'd and sent to the secret field. Go to 1 or 2 day ID where you can lay waste to their top recruits. Regional multi-day id camps with several schools and capped number of players are also real good. But that entire middle-tier in the first parenthesis is basically a syphon on your own recruiting process. What do you think there, Eduardo?

 

Holmes12, I think you missed the post above that started the current conversation. It's about current college players who are looking to transfer.

 

I hope my advices aren't too late for soccermom, cp.

 

Got it.

 

Holmes, I have a kid in the process now. I believe that your opinion on the manner in which a player should pursue her college career may be accurate for lower level players, but I can tell you is definitely not true for players seen as higher level recruits.

My child has found the showcase type tournaments to be very helpful in her recruiting efforts. It seems that a lot of this information is closely held. Why I am not sure. I think others' experiences would have been hugely helpful to us as we were beginning the process. I will share our family's experience as it may be helpful to a reader with a similar child.

Our child was also a regional ODP player. However, she was also a physical late bloomer. As such her club coach thought it best to keep her quietly developing and not draw much attention until she grew. As such she did not send any "come see me play" emails out to colleges prior to regional ODP events or major showcases. Yet she go much more than "camp invitations" in response to her participation. You are mistaken when you submit that only camp invitations come of these events. In fact letters come through the club coaches commenting on the player's abilities and how they might fit in with their programs. These letters include the coach's (often associate or assistant but sometimes the head) cell number and asks that the player call the coach to discuss the school and her plans further if there is mutual interest. Since the communication is "filtered" through the club coach it is NCAA compliant. She was often invited to come for an unofficial visit after these initial calls.

One note on these unofficial visit invitations. If they require a significant investment in time off or flights for your family, I would only agree to a visit if the school was ready to make an offer. After an expensive flight etc, she was told by the head coach, we need to see you play again at such and such event (they did ultimately extend an offer, but it left a bad taste...). Subsequently, during these calls, she flat out asked if they would be extending an offer at the visit before she agreed to travel.

This is the manner in which all of my child's unofficial visits, and finally offers, have come to pass. She received somewhere on the order of 50-75 such pass-through communications though some were simple texts to the club coaches or even phone calls. She called about 12 and visited 10 of those. She is in her final decision making right now.

That said, she has attended 4 ID camps. However, these she chose to attend because she wanted to get a closer feel for the coach's style and personality; we combined these with a visit (after assurance that they had "seen her enough")to kill 2 birds with one stone. Since many visits required a flight, this ID/visit combination proved to be an efficient use of our time and money. I can also tell you that these camps might be totally wasted money for some players. It was clear that the kids were separated into pre conceived groupings. Some camps even had committed players attend. There usually was only really 1 ID field other kids on the other fields were not getting evaluated for possible offers. At some they even had lower level coaches monitoring these peripheral fields. At one storied program, the non ID kids even had to play on intramural poor quality fields without a coach from the school ever seeing them actually play.

If your child is considering attending an ID camp, you should first ensure that her coach and she reaches out to the school. Otherwise she might be ostracized to a rec field with a D3 coach. Make sure she will get a real look before you waste time and money.

Having said this, my child only entertained power 5 schools, but that's the level most early regional players are probably looking toward.

Regarding TDS and IMG top 150, my child is ranked fairly highly. She has several accolades, but its clear that there are significant mistakes in these rankings. Unfortunately I think some coaches use the "top 10 recruiting" classes to justify their efforts to their ADs. They do see some value in them. This site is therefore probably worthwhile to register your kid if you think she will make the top 150 (most early ODP regional kids do) . Just don't get too worked up on whether a kid ranked above her is "really" a better player or not.

Hope someone finds this story helpful, because our experience is not consistent with Holmes'

 

Regarding the transfer question. One of the players my child always looked up to recently transferred. What we know is that there was basically a mutual agreement between her and her coach prior to her reaching out to coaches that had previously recruited her. She transferred to a school which had made her an offer when she was in high school. There was no real drama over it as far as my kid could tell.

 

This topic makes a very good point. The recruiting process is night and day different for the players of differing abilities and differing clubs, teams, states, club trainer, exposure. Olelaliga and Holmes can both be exactly right depending on the player involved. Our experience for both of my daughters was closer to Holmes, but still somewhere in the middle.

 

You have to separate the girls in three groups. Blue chips, recognized and unrecognized (could be diamond in rough) girls. They need completely different strategies. Not all the coaches want to spend time on unrecognized players. AD from UNC is famous for discovering previously unknown girls. So you have to know what is the coach philosophy. Showcases are good, but it depends on your team. If your team is good and plays with strong teams, your daughter plays well it could help. Coaches tend to attend to good games or she might get attention even the coach came to watch somebody else.

 

ole, thanks for sharing that. Did the unofficial visits include bringing any soccer gear for "pick-up" or were they tours? I will say, to go along with your shared experience, that I was surprised with the level of merit P5 coaches put in both "level of competition" and selected travel coaches input. I see why they do it as it's economics. But yeah, I'm talking more from the prospective of the non-national ECNL showcased 99%'ers. I've seen numerous players realize they were better off bypassing travel showcases like Disney or CASL (where P5's won't bother to attend the non-ECNL games based on pereived bracket competition...so basically, it's low-level D1 , service academies and 2,3 in the chairs yielding invites) and go straight to power clinics. Occassionally, the D2, 3 coaches were farmed out by P5 to identify hidden nugs on outlier fields and to call them in for their own look. Again, this yields an invite. I think AD at UNC came to realize this is about economics both ways. If the parents aren't millionaires, if I were profiling the typical ECNL-showcased player, she is either the only child or the youngest sibling. The parents have the flexibility to go "all in". On the other hand, if a player has school-aged siblings, it's a painful "Peter-Paul" decision to make. I'm not judging as I experienced both but personaly felt that it was a lot of only/last child at the ECNL level. I think coaches like AD have come to realize this, why he lamented early recruiting to the NYT and why he takes his ID clinics seriously. All player finally gets the "level of competition" whihc may not be feasible due to curcumstance. He knows if he id's a good player, the difference is coachable stuff. Bottom line, non-ECNL showcased players, as somebody said, realize (physical) potential...then pick schools, go to ID, avoid showcases and "recruiting aids". I would also recommend high school soccer or track, an All-whatever or speed accomplishments are attention getters, as much as high school soccer is dismissed by the soccer industry.

 

I'd like to reiterate something mentioned earlier. Somebody mentioned the trainer not wanting a player to send emails Because he thought she still had some growth coming. Many coaches don't have the time and resources to duplicate scouting. I believe once they put an X on a kid, they move on no matter what changes. One of mine came back from surgery the week before a big showcase. She was 100% physically, but not mentally or conditioning. 2 of her highest rated schools were coming to her games. Though the trainer warned them of the situation, they couldn't get past that weekend and never expressed interest again. She ended up at a school that regularly beats the other two but he did not watch that weekend. Hindsight, I shouldn't have let her play at all that weekend and definitely not invite coaches to come watch. My other daughter attended a 1 day ID camp in which the school had expressed some preliminary interest. She was fighting a foot issue and could play fine, but her speed and excelleration was not 100%. Her and the coach talked the week after and he told her she just wasn't fast enough to play at that level. Lol. She could out run 75%+ of his team. She's beat them 2 out of her 3 years. I say this because I believe it's better to be patient in certain situations and never underestimate the importance of the first impression on these coaches.

 

My kid has indoor soccer shoes as her preferred casual foot wear and also almost always has a ball with her. You should see the looks the old ladies give her as she is juggling and doing tricks in airports. So she is pretty much always ready for a game. However, there are NCAA rules against training with the team and no one asked her to a park pick up game. That said the "unofficial visits" are only unofficial in name. In all but one (the second highest ranked school she visited) there was a printed itinerary including meeting with the academic adviser, weight training coach, lunch (which we had to pay for to be NCAA compliant) campus tours, and meetings with the coaches. Some lasting as long as three hours but usually around an hour and a half in length. If they made an offer at the visit that's when it was delivered. 4 times, she combined the visit one day with an ID camp either the day before or the day after- never the same day as the visit. Honestly, by that time, she was shopping them as much or likely more than they her. She had an offer already extended at 2 before she even attended the camps.

2-timer: I definitely think that her coach did her a service by preferring she didn't reach out until she either got unsolicited interest or became closer to her finished product at least physically. His opinion was do not direct the sights to her until she is really ready to be seen. She is still growing after adding 4 inches last year so he was right on many counts. She has gone from the clear smallest to one of the tallest in two years. He saw what you did: first impressions can never be recreated. He wanted the coach's impressions to be positive. He directed us excellently. I agree with your caution; if your kid is not 100% for whatever reason don't risk making a poor first impression.