<p>S is HS junior and has performed well in soccer at all levels -- Club, ODP, & HS (no USSF Academy in area). </p>
<p>He has a 3.9 at an excellent public high school. No SAT or ACT yet. He got a 171 last year on PSAT. This was up 20 points from freshman year, and he should improve this year since he has actually taken some practice tests to prepare. Low 700s on first SAT II last spring and a 5 on his one AP test to date. </p>
<p>He wants to go Ivy or other nationally ranked university. Would consider liberal arts college, but really wants to play DI soccer and most of liberal arts colleges he would be interested in attending are DIII. </p>
<p>Coach he met through ODP offered him scholarship to a D1 School, but not a school he would consider but for soccer. Two other D1 coaches he met through ODP told him they want him, but neither have made a formal offer. Since neither coach at schools he is interested in attending, he has not pursued opportunities there. Still, it is clear from the interest he is receiving that he is D1 material. </p>
<p>During the summer, he filled out athletic questionnaires on several websites. To date, only one coach has contacted him from those questionnaires. None of the Ivies have done so much as send him an email. By contrast, he regularly receives recruiting emails and other correspondence from good (for soccer) D1 schools in which he has expressed no interest. </p>
<p>So my question is, when do the Ivies start recruiting soccer players, and do they ever do anything with all the information they collect online?</p>
<p>The best thing you can possibly do is have your son get together a cover letter and soccer resume along with some highlight video. Send this out to a large selection of schools, 40-50. Choose the schools you are most interested in and schedule a visit. Call the soccer coaches in advance to meet them in person while you are there. You can’t be too early and it would have been good for coaches to see your son over the summer (between sophomore and junior year). If your son is going to be in any winter or spring showcases/tournaments, have him contact the coaches and invite them to come watch him play. You can’t be too proactive.</p>
<p>To add to the above, people think Ivies have a later timeline, but in my experience they do not. We visited an Ivy during my son’s junior year (in the early spring), and they already had a list of recruits they were working with. In fact, they already had two kids verbaled. Filling out the online questionairre is important to give them some general information, but that alone will not get your kid recruited (they probably receive thousands of these). You really have to put yourself out there.</p>
<p>He has done some of that – he has a resume and has sent it to a handful of coaches. He does not have a video. Any evidence that soccer coaches really rely on video? I’m skeptical that films are very helpful in evaluating soccer players. </p>
<p>He will contact some more coaches when we get closer to the Disney Showcase to let them know that he will be playing there. I don’t see him contacting 50 schools, especially since he has some options now and there are not 50 schools he is genuinely interested in attending. </p>
<p>He met Harvard’s coach on campus last spring. That coach (who later left Harvard) told him to take his SATs early, which he is doing (January). He got the impression that Harvard would wait until it knew his numbers were good enough to get admitted before they went out of their way to look at him. </p>
<p>Hopefully he will generate some interest when he plays at Disney and will get a better idea as to options then.</p>
<p>Coaches really want to see you play, but many coaches have requested that my son send video, so yes it does help them to narrow down the field and keep your son on the radar especially if they have not been able too see him play in person. </p>
<p>The 50-school suggestion is based on what my son’s club soccer coach tells the boys to do and also from my experience with my daughter in gymnastics. If your child is not a national team caliber athlete, the coaches are not going to be lining up at the door and you might not necessarily get to choose your school, so it is wise to cast a very wide net and then narrow it down once you start getting interest. There are many top-notch academic institutions with strong D1 soccer programs (Wake Forest, BC, Duke, Notre Dame, etc.), so he might want to include those on his list as well (although the caliber of soccer might be much higher than at the Ivies and thus more difficult to get recruited depending on your son’s ability). Just make sure he contacts coaches well in advance of the showcase and gives his schedule and jersey number.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input. He has played on the ODP Regional team for the last couple of years, but he’s never been invited to a national camp. I’ll try to put together a video. I bought a video camera last spring, but my efforts at filming leave much to be desired.</p>
<p>The filming isn’t bad…we took all our clips with our kodak digital camera. It’s the making of the video that poses a challenge. You can pay a service to do it or you can just send the coach chunks of a game. Several coaches have said a game tape is fine. Some of the tournaments offer tapes of games, actually.</p>
<p>BythePitch – Use a tripod, if you have one. It makes a huge difference in the “bounciness” of the video, even if you think you are steady-handed. Also, try and get up high, if you can. If you have any games in a high school football stadium, for example, those would be good to film. You could also check your area to see if there are any athletics video companies. We have one here in the Austin area that does lots of highlight and full-game videos for mostly football players, but they will also do other sports. Prices were very reasonable. Good luck.</p>