@liska21 He went to an Ivy camp with one of his club soccer teammates. He did not contact the coaches beforehand, but we knew which coaches would be there. There were coaches from 5 different schools and he is interested in a fe of them. After he got back he sent notes to coaches. He’ll stay in touch with them.
Step 1) find schools your kid is interested in, has what they want to study, and you can afford
step 2) contact coaches via email
step3) go to where the coaches are. Let them know you are coming. Express interest in their program
step4) update coaches on all school stats, tournaments, results etc.
Be patient and more importantly be REALISTIC.
Neither of my kids are superstars but they are decent athletes, good students and good kids who don’t get into any trouble. Coaches love this. That being said, neither of my kids are going to be recruited by the super big Division 1 powerhouses. That is reality. So we’ve not spent any time focusing on that or worrying about it. We’ve just tried to find good schools that they would like to attend and try to figure out the sports part 2nd. They might make some college squads, but they won’t be the superstars. That’s OK.
It’s very very hard to be get recruited by Division 1 schools. I only know a couple of kids that have gone on to play Div 1 team sports, and both of them were super exceptional athletes.
Regarding camps: I think the multi day camps are the best way for the kids to direct exposure, but they are more expensive for sure. Just showing up to random ID camps doesn’t seem as effective. Go to where the coaches from schools that you want to attend are. I think it’s simple as that. If you can have your kids coach email or call the coach before you show up it is a huge help.
Good luck.
^^ and the key here is the kid has to drive it. The kid needs to be making the emails, the follow ups all of it. They don’t want to have the parents drive it.
And for your super selective schools or even not so, for soccer, it’s not too early, most schools will fill their roster (or most of it) by mid year junior year and have verbal commitments from the kids. It can still go south, the kid has to get into the school, the coaching staff could change and not want the kid, but it really starts now.
Unless they are a superstar they have to drive it and it starts now, our friends that play for Ivies/little Ivies knew where they’d be before junior year ended. Then it becomes a matter of holding on to the spot.
@RightCoaster @eandesmom ^^^ Re kid driving it. Re the emailing and talking with coaches and figuring what schools, I’m not worried about S driving that BUT he doesn’t know yet whether he wants to play in college. I’m trying to help him figure out if that is something he’d like to do. He’s is not good enough to be recruited for D1 and I’m almost positive that’s not the experience he’d want. However, the D3 experience sounds more like what he’d like—at least what I’ve heard from parents from our club whose kids have gone on to play D3. About 1/3 to 1/2 the players on our clubs graduating teams go on to play D3 soccer and he’s one of the top players in the club, so I think it is a plausible option for him. Our club doesn’t send players to D1 schools.
Thing is, right now he wants to apply to Stanford and he knows that he’s nowhere near good enough to be recruited there. I think he feels like applying to Stanford rules out getting recruited at another school—since he’d have to commit and committing rules out applying to Stanford. He understands the very, very long odds of admittance, but still wants to apply. I want to convince him to keep a open mind at this stage and to explore a variety of schools and explore the D3 option. He has 2 years until he applies and it’s likely he’ll change his mind 10x. And if he doesn’t have the grades/scores at the end of junior year it won’t make sense to apply to highly-selective schools anyhow.
Playing a varsity sport whether D1 or DIII is a lot of work and a big commitment. There is always the option to play club sports. Those are clubs where teams are made up of students, they pay a fee just like you do now for club sports, and the kids train and travel to mostly local colleges to compete. Much less time/effort needed, still a fun experience. More advanced than intramurals, you have try outs and all that. Usually for better players who didn’t want to play varsity sports or went unrecruited. It’s a great option.
Yes I’ve been researching which schools have club teams also since that seems like a good option too. BTW, I was a D1 varsity athlete for all 4 years at college. I rowed crew, but I walked on so didn’t do the whole recruitment process.
One of the schools my D17 toured was Bates, and that sort of school seemed like it’d be really fun for student-athletes. Our tour guide was varsity track and varsity xc and in his off time did club soccer, and was majoring in neuroscience or something like that. lol. Most of the tour guides were similar, though he was the exception in doing 3 sports in the year.
I completely agree about club. We’ve got friends playing DI, DIII and club at DI schools (which includes my SD). The kids playing club are playing against club teams from other schools, and while it’s more local in some ways until tournament time it’s still against top teams and all of those kids are basically one notch below the recruited kids at their schools or in some cases DI recruitable but didn’t want the pressure of the DI sports interfering with school.
For us it’s a win win. She plays at a very competitive level, isn’t sitting on the bench lost in a roster of 36 and is able to be at the school she wants without it taking away from her studies. It’s still a huge time commitment, definitely tryout based and isn’t free lol. Not any worse, and a bit better than HS club was $$ wise.
Ugh!!! Just got DS19’s schedule and he has the English teacher from He** that he had last year for English 1 H for SAT prep the first semester . Poor kid can’t catch a break. 
@gusmahler Ah, Texas…at least they are allowing her to take the test. Sounds like a more reasonable school than some!
@RightCoaster Go CoasterKid!! Very exciting and a big deal!!
Where did the summer go? DD started Dance Camp on Thursday. 7am - 4pm. Next week I’m signed up to be a “Heat Exhaustion” watch dog for the kids. I’m afraid the person most likely to pass out will be me… @-)
@carolinamom2boys ugh! That’s no fun. We don’t get schedules till 1 week before school starts! Maybe she is better with sophomores? One can hope.
@eandesmom On the positive side , it’s only one semester and it’s not an Honors class so we’re hoping she’s not as demanding. DS19 is actually taking it in stride. I’m the one who’s having the issue secondary to what we experienced last year .
@carolinamom2boys cruddy teachers build character, that’s what I always tell my kids. You are going to meet/work with a lot of cruddy folks in life, might as well start getting used to dealing with them in high school.
@RightCoaster I can deal with all types of personalities. What I had difficulty with was inconsistencies with assignment requirements documented on her portal vs what was on the board ,different due dates and requirements, etc. It is difficult for a student to know which requirements to go by. Those are the types of issues my son is dealing with. He has had a variety of good and bad teachers and always makes the best of it. This woman truly was the worst teacher either of my children have ever had.
^^^
We’ve had a few of those. Just remember, this too shall pass.
@RightCoaster We thought that last year.
Note to self. Don’t try to keep up with the 20 year old college club soccer player on a run when visiting her at school over the summer. She has sped up, H couldn’t keep up either and he’s pretty speedy. Great way to tour campus though. It’s not a fit for S17 but I think S19 would really like it if his major path ends up fitting it. Which it doesn’t at the moment but I don’t expect that to last.
Getting a crummy teacher stinks, though, when another section of the same class has a coveted teacher. If it’s harder to get an A (for any reason) with a particular teacher, that’s rough. We had one teacher who allowed extra credit in her Bio H class and another who did not. Guess which class had more As? Same class on the transcript so colleges don’t know the difference.
I just have to hope that, over four years, every student gets one of these tougher teachers at some point so over time it evens out. Doesn’t feel that way, though, when you only have freshman year under your belt and some kids rocked the Bio class and some struggled to get the B plus.
I have to admit I kind of take the stance that bad teachers, bad bosses, bad co workers and project teammates happen. Kids have to lean how to work around these situations on their own and make the best of it, it is a life skill. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating but there are things that can be learned from it that while they might not show on a transcript, will aid in longer lasting ways.
A semester of pain is far better than a whole year!
It was extremely hard on me last year because DS19 was recommended for English 1 H in 8th grade, but I felt like he needed another year under his belt. Unfortunately , he probably would’ve done better in middle school.
@carolinamom2boys I feel your pain, I do kind of wish I’d let S17 take language in MS but all you can do is what feels right at the time.
Major change in grades this year. Our school system is switching from a 7 point scale to a 10 point scale.