<p>Ok in addition to juggling two kids in college, one who is waiting on pins and needles to find out this week where she is going...I have an 8th grade son who is an outstanding athelete. I know nothing about the world of recruited athletes for college and though I know this is a ways off.............how does it work? At what point do we start making connections? He knows he wants to play college lacrosse or soccer, and is outstanding in both.......it seems silly i know thinking about this in 8th grade but as a single mother, who has plenty on my plate I just want to get the lay of the land! Also any good books perhaps that any of you can recommend to get my feet wet? Thanks...........this is such a great site, a true vault of information.</p>
<p>a bit early here, first…will S be playing at the varsity level as a freshmen next year?</p>
<p>is he currently on travelling clubs for his sports?</p>
<p>how are his grades?</p>
<p>I have found out that what clubs you are on (soccer) and what tournaments you go to, go a long way in college recruiting (S friends are soccer players and S has made DVD highlights
for them to assist in the recruiting process.)</p>
<p>There are also many sources of info on the web, and services that will help market your S…and that is what it boils down to (unless he is All-American level…in which case colleges will find him).</p>
<p>I have athletes but not recruitable good. You might start at the special subforum for athletes: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/</a></p>
<p>It seems that for some sports, like soccer, college recruiting is done more through high level club teams that attend college showcase tournaments than through high school teams. So a first step would be to make sure your son is on a competitive club team appropriate to his ability. Secondly, talk to parents of athletes at the high school your son will attend. Find out how the top athletes juggle their team commitments. Find out whether the soccer and lacrosse coaches are good and knowledgeable. At some high schools, it will be impossible to continue with both soccer and lacrosse if he’s trying to play on club teams as well as the high school teams. If so, your son may eventually need to choose one sport to focus on. There’s no rush, but it’s just good to know this stuff in advance. </p>
<p>Make sure he studies hard too. Top grades in challenging classes combined with athletic talent will open a lot of doors for him.</p>
<p>This may sound discouraging, but 8th grade is too soon to know if your son would be a recruitable athlete. That said, there are many levels of college athletics. Only a tiny percentage of high school athletes wind up being recruited by colleges, and an even smaller percentage of those actually get scholarship money. Your son will need to be on select teams and compete at a high state (or even national) level. Also (and unfortunately) he will most likely have to pick one of the two sports in the next year or two. After his sophomore year in high school, you can consider this again and visit some schools and fill out some forms for coaches/teams. The coaches can not contact your son directly until the summer after his junior year of high school.</p>
<p>CC has recently added a board just for athletic recruiting:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/</a></p>
<p>It is just getting started but there are some experienced people hanging out there. </p>
<p>Eighth grade is a little early to worry about recruiting - but a few things to keep in mind at this point:</p>
<p>1) Academics are key. Excellent grades will keep all doors open - good or average grades will result in fewer choices being available to your son. Some schools simply won’t look at your son’s skills if the grades are not there.</p>
<p>2) Attend college games in your area. Let your son get a feel for how the game is played at that level. </p>
<p>3) Don’t get too hung up on D1 vs D2 or D3 - Despite the labels, there are “lower level” teams that will whomp on higher level teams on a regular basis. </p>
<p>4) I don’t know much about lacrosse recruiting but with soccer it is all about the travel teams. High school teams are great for playing with your friends and representing your community - but the college coaches do their scouting at the major travel events and at their summer camps.</p>
<p>Hope this helps</p>
<p>Our high school has an athletic director who has gone through many recruiting seasons. If your high school has one, then he or she would be a good resource. He’ll definitely know all the ins and outs about NCAA rules about recruiting and contact.</p>
<p>Agree with TheGFG (dare I ask what GFG stands for?) that with soccer, it’s through the competitive teams tournaments that a kid often gets noticed by colleges. I don’t know about lacrosse.</p>
<p>One other item I forgot to mention - help him to enjoy the high school years - the odds of playing college are extremely long and I have seen far too many kids focused so heavily on that goal that they forget to enjoy the sport during the HS years.</p>
<p>For what it is worth, the NCAA did a study a few years back on the chances of playing college sports. </p>
<p>For soccer, there were 91,800 high school seniors playing in that year (321,400 total participants in HS soccer). </p>
<p>There were 5,200 college freshman playing HS soccer (both with and without scholarship money). </p>
<p>So, as you can see, the odds are pretty long - about 5.7% of HS seniors go on to play college soccer.</p>
<p>Google “lacrosse recruiting timeline” and you will get many hits with recommendations for how and when to start. Camps and tournaments great sources of lacrosse recruiting opportunities.</p>
<p>Agreed that club teams are the way to go for DI soccer. However, I know lots of kids who play DIII soccer who only played for their HS teams and/or the club rec team once they got in HS. DIII schools don’t offer athletic scholarships per se, but they could have some say in getting merit scholarships and acceptances. I think that’s what I read. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.</p>
<p>I do agree with the pp that I’ve seen kids be susperstars in eighth grade but turns out they were just early bloomers. Others caught up to their skill level in a year or two. Truly gifted kids at that age, in my experience, already have caught recruiters’ eyes and have had a lot of exposure to big-name camps, overseas play, etc. Ds as a seventh-grader played on his school team with two kids who already had had amazing opportunities. One kid in particular obviously was head and shoulders above the others. Not just good, but wicked good.</p>
<p>One thing I have noticed over the years is that most of the kids who end up playing sports at the college level stand out like a sore thumb on their HS teams. To quote youdon’tsay - they are “head and shoulders above the others”. </p>
<p>That skill level does not come for free - They are typically the first at practice, the last to leave, work harder than anyone else in the off season, etc.</p>
<p>one other important thing…if your child does begin to elicit college interest over the next 3-4 years, try and keep expectations low, and as others have stated, grades high.</p>
<p>Elder S was All-State in his sport and was flooded w/ mail from top D1 programs starting sophomore year…but grades weren’t there…so the interest evaporated and he ended up JUCO.</p>
<p>Younger S did not make All-State, but maintained a 4.0 GPA and is headed off to the Ivy League in the fall as a student-athlete.</p>
<p>I wish your S the best, but remember, statistically, it is easier to get into Harvard (if you apply), than it is to compete athletically at the college level.</p>
<p>My son is a lacrosse player at an Ivy. PM me with any specific questions.</p>
<p>I can tell you that generally speaking there’s no full rides in D1 lacrosse – but you can use lacrosse talent as a strong hook to get in to the top schools. And need-based aid is available. </p>
<p>You can get an idea of the level of recruited athletes in lacrosse by going to the rosters of specific schools and reading the profiles of the incoming freshmen. You will see a lot of all state players and all americans. And you will also see specific parts of the country – with Long Island, Baltimore, Fairfield County, plus the usual prep school suspects, producing the most players for the top 10 teams. Coaches will tell you they like to see a two or three sport athlete.</p>
<p>Oh yeah. GRADES and SCORES are really important as far as whether a player is recruitable.</p>
<p>Laxpower.com will also have a lot of info.</p>
<p>cnp55- I hadn’t heard the bit about coaches liking 2-3 sport athletes. Is that mostly lacrosse coaches? D plays several sports, and I got the impression that was a disadvantage. (she would rather play volleyball year round, but there are no club teams here.)</p>
<p>To the original poster- you must have a heckuva an athlete if you believe he will be recruited at the Div. 1 level in 8th grade. </p>
<p>I was a serious Div. 1 competitor - on scholarship. I marginally performed at a level to be recruited in 9th grade - but certainly not 8th grade. And I know of no one, save for a single basketball player I played against (got squished) in a city league, who was a college lock as an 8th grader. That guy’s name was Isiah Thomas, one of the best guards ever to play the game (I did not play hoops in high school, in part because I saw how good the top level guys were). Thomas was a one in ten million athlete, almost near a Tiger Woods in terms of rarity. </p>
<p>So unless your offspring is a veritable superstar, focus on his personal development - friends, grades, taking care of his body, and enjoying his youth. And even if a superstar of mythic proportions, I would give the same advice.</p>
<p>I think I may have mislead some, NO I am not saying he is recruitable NOW, but in looking ahead, just wondering when this starts, what he should do…of course the grades we know are super important and I won’t let anything compromise that…but already I have recieved so many helpful tips and information…thanks. We are just looking ahead, not for anything to happen now, though he has been asked to play JV, which of course was quite exciting for him!
Thanks!</p>
<p>For soccer, definitely club is the way to go; I don’t think much recruiting gets done at all through high school play. The higher-level club ball, the better…they’ll have better chances of playing in the college showcase tournaments. </p>
<p>I would also look into ODP (Olympic Development Program: [usyouthsoccer.org](<a href=“http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/programs/odp/index_E.html]usyouthsoccer.org[/url]”>http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/programs/odp/index_E.html)</a>), although I know that for many older boys (those that play on U16+), the Developmental Academy program ([The</a> Official Site of U.S. Soccer - Development Academy](<a href=“Page Not Found | U.S. Soccer Official Website | USWNT & USMNT”>http://www.ussoccer.com/teams/acad/index.jsp.html)) is becoming a more major mechanism to be “seen.” Academy is a MAJOR time commitment, as the teams will fly around the country to play games.</p>
<p>Just echoing the importance of grades here. </p>
<p>I don’t know what part of the country you live in, but in the western part of the US, its particularly difficult to get recruited for lacrosse. I believe there are only two D1 lacrosse programs west of the Mississippi (Air Force and Denver). In California at least, most of the colleges have only club lacrosse teams. With club lacrosse, no scholarships, no hook for admission to the school, plus the players have to pay all the expenses of playing. So you really need the grades to get into the school on your own.</p>
<p>Multiple sports …</p>
<p>This particular nugget does come from lacrosse coaches. Their philosophy seems to be that at the D1 level you’ll work hard year round and they want to see you working hard year round. Since lacrosse is a spring sport and we aren’t seeing much if any fall club ball, the kids that are playing soccer or football or running cross country, and playing basketball or hockey are working physically year round. If all an athlete is doing is a little fall lax, winter condtioning, spring season lacrosse, and summer league – they just aren’t as fit and ready for the D1 grind. I think the coaches also like the cross training aspects of multiple sports.</p>
<p>As an aside – many lacrosse players played hockey as well (and vice versa). In one D1 program I am aware of, the hockey varsity scrimmages the lacrosse varsity in both sports just to give the guys some playing time against non-team members!</p>
<p>YMMV for football, hockey, basketball etc. My son is a lacrosse player – and growing up, played football, soccer, track, basketball, baseball, hockey, golf, and tennis at one level or another. Also skis, snowboards, and waterskis/wakeboards … and swims too.</p>
<p>From what I know about lacrosse in particular, you actually do get on a coaches radar freshman year. Depending on what part of the country you live, elite teams that travel to team camps over the summer months. All of the kids that I know who have been recruited to DI lacrosse teams started the process the summer before and after sophomore year. However, before you begin any of these things, the most important opinion of your potential is probably your coach. However, just remember that there are no free rides. Grades will always get you the first, second and third looks.</p>