Soccer GoalKeeper/College Recruitment: Seeking Advice

@bgbg4us The key word is MEET. Student athletes can CALL a coach at any time (the coach has to pick up and can not call back, at least until junior year, or timing per sport specific rules). College coaches can speak with club/high school team coaches any time as well.

Typically what happens is the college coach talks with the student’s coach and says have them “call me at x time on x day” and then a verbal offer is given. Another way a verbal commit happens is at a coach’s camp/clinic–that is not supposed to happen anymore per the new NCAA rules, but it is still a COMMON occurrence.

Verbal commits are easy for either party to break, and many are broken–student gets better offer, coach leaves to go to another school, kid can’t make the grade/test score, on and on. Things aren’t official until an LOI is signed senior year. There are no LOIs in D3.

The new NCAA rules haven’t changed things for most sports IMO…lots of early verbal commits still happening. Some sport governing bodies like women’s softball have made their rules more stringent than those of the NCAA, and that has changed the recruiting practices dramatically. The NCAA site has good info re: recruiting rules by sport.

Agree that the older threads on recruiting are so helpful, and especially for this poster, @KeeperDad’s series of posts on female GK recruiting are just gold. I relied heavily on his posts for my own kid’s D3 Men’s Soccer recruiting process. Although I won’t try to summarize KeeperDad’s wealth of knowledge, some of the points that stick out include: (1) academics matter, keep the grades up and (2) mega tournaments with lots of college coaches are not useful if the coaches from colleges you are interested in don’t come to see your match. My kid did not play major national tournaments since our club options were limited so we had to work harder to connect with schools of interest, researching smaller, multi-school or single school camps, planning visits starting in 10th grade to learn more about a program’s needs etc.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/1291234-college-recruiting-tips-for-soccer-p1.html

@Mwfan1921, the reason that I recommend an early start for the OP is that height could be an issue, and that issue will not change as the student grows older. This allows an early exit to recruiting if coaches are not encouraging. That said, the OP should be aware of coach double speak that encourages an application but not (at least in the coach’s view) recruiting. Phrases like, “you could try out if you get in” is a coach’s way of discouraging a recruit.

I go back to the point that goalkeeping is a bit different than recruiting for field players, and you just don’t know how things are going to shake out. An early visit could establish a relationship that could resulting in recruiting if a coach can’t find another keeper or a recruit commits elsewhere. I do agree that it would be early for the rising sophomore summer for a student to get any sort of “firm” encouragement or commitment at the D3 level, but you might be able to discern a program’s projected need or lack of need.

There are other reasons for an early start. It gets a student thinking about the future (often needed more for boys). An early visit to campus should include a sign-in with admissions that should trigger the “demonstrated interest” category of an application. It allows a student to cross off a school that she just doesn’t like. Athlete or not, traveling around to visit schools is a big lift, and if soccer is a fall sport in high school, it is very tough in the fall of senior year.

If the OP has no appetite for an early start, certainly 1) filling out recruiting questionnaires and 2) sending tapes to coaches is a reasonable start. Be sure to create a spread sheet of each school, the dates you contacted and received a contact from coaches, and the log ins to the questionnaires to allow easy updates as new information comes to light (awards, board scores, etc.). Keeping track of contacts is crucial because silence can mean a lot in recruiting. Coaches rarely say, “I am no longer interested in you.” A sudden stop in or a long absence in communications, however, may mean just that. When sending out tapes, be sure to ask specific questions about what the coach thinks about the performance on the tapes. A lot of coaches will thank you for the tapes and then just put the student on a mailing list for camps.

I did read @KeeperDad older posts before posting initially and found them very helpful.

The fact that she is so short makes this somewhat unlikely but not impossible according to other parents.

I also seem to read this as ideally she would be playing above a basic Club Level but perhaps this is also not entirely impossible.

Someone asked how close to the crossbar she can get so I am going to go check when she returns from her trip.

Different perspective here - based on your opening comments re: prioritizing academics over athletics and that your athlete/family isn’t looking to leverage their sport to get $ (athletic or merit-as-proxy for an athletic scholarship for D3 or D1 Ivies, I’d strongly consider removing the soccer out of the equation altogether at this point.

Don’t get me wrong - D1 programs are absolutely looking at freshmen and sophomores this season for roster spots 2 and 3 years out; but unless your daughter is a DA or ECNL player (possibly NPL), the chances of her being identified as a prospective varsity player for them is remote. NO reflection on your player or any other who isn’t in one of those programs (not every family lives in close proximity to an ECNL club or has the means for the travel, club fees that entails) but the reality is those tournaments are where 80% of D1 recruits are identified. In short - if she’s truly a D1-quality prospect, they will find her.

I was fortunate enough to have a great discussion with a D1 Women’s HC from an ACC program two years ago at an ID camp and he shared some amazing and frank info with the parents there, including:

  • I’m recruiting players for this year besides you for the same position and even if you end up playing for me, the reality is that I’m going to spend every spare moment of the offseason trying to find ten more recruits to take your spot
  • never, ever, ever choose a school on your sport alone. Every year there are injuries and players on this year’s team will be cut. Ask yourself: if you can’t play varsity soccer at this school, will you stay for 4 years? If you just like it with soccer, you may hate it without.

That said - D3 and even D2 recruitment is a different animal. There are some excellent & academically strong D3 programs (notably NESCAC schools) where a strong transcript take at least some preference over pure athletic consideration.

Lastly - don’t overlook the club college option…there are thousands of very good players who didn’t end up playing D1 varsity for various reasons, but want to continue playing a sport they love at a level above intramural in college. These clubs travel and compete within their school’s conferece and in tournaments; continuing to play the sport they love but without the time commitment of varsity.

Ultimately it will come down to how important your daughters sport is in her overall college experience. For our Junior player, she has ultimately decided that she’d rather go to a school she loved (and likely wasn’t good enough to play at)/saw herself at for 4 years vs attending a school she otherwise wouldn’t have ever considered going to simply because they recruited her. Also - and speaking as the father of teenage daughters - what they think they want as a Freshman will almost certainly change by the time it’s time to choose a college.

Good luck to your daughter in her process!

Thank you very much for your thoughts!

Yes—I am assuming she would be D3 (and only if very very lucky).

She is definitely academics and academic fit first and we were wondering if playing D3 would be advantageous for admission to school of her choice.

I am glad to have learned here that the timeline is much later for D3 because her academic interests and her list of schools may evolve.

I don’t know anything about Club in college but would be interested to hear from other players and parents who have experience with this. Was this still an advantage for college admissions (even if much less of an advantage)? Were students pleased with their decision to play Club?

Living in the SF Bay Area, I do get to see a lot of Stanford and Cal soccer, both men’s and women’s. I remembered that a few years ago, I saw this amazing GK, who played for Santa Clara U. Tough as nails. She was amazing and SHORT!

I googled her stats and she’s 5’6" and plays professionally for the Houston Dash now., Bianca Henninger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca_Henninger

No, playing club, or intending to play club in college, is not an advantage for admissions. Her soccer would be considered a very good EC on the application, but that is really about it.

I saw quite a bit of commentary on camps for soccer players and a little on camps good for GKs. We are overseas much of the summer but I would be interested in seeing if there is anything that would be a good fit for her while we are in the US.

The East Coast would be best and this would be just a trial run at ID Camp for her.

I didn’t see any specific ID camps mentioned here for goalkeepers although everyone seemed to know what was being discussed. Perhaps I missed the right post. Could someone share with me suggestions for camps for her? Or is there a thread that names names and somehow I missed it? Perhaps we can’t be specific on this site?

@HappyintheGoal there aren’t separate ID camps for goalkeepers, they would participate in the college’s (only) ID camp. I have a field player so can’t be more helpful.

For women’s soccer camps – I don’t know specifically, since I have a son, but Amherst runs a 3 day camp in July for women, says that coaches from Amherst plus schools like Dickinson, Middlebury etc. have been there in the past. Another one to research might be Collegiate Soccer Academy, has multiple sessions, with coaches attending from a range of programs, and includes 2 written evaluations.

I would say, the coach evaluations would be helpful as they will give you a realistic assessment of where her skills line up and what level of play she might be competitive for.

Warning – soccer camps are expensive!

With some exceptions - college-specific ID camps are primarily a way for the program and their assistant coaches to earn extra money in the offseason. Not to say that players can’t be identified at these camps but this is the exception rather than the rule.

For me - the best ID camp (the one I reference above where we spoke with the ACC coach) is EXACT ID. Google it, do your own research and gauge for yourself as to whether it’s a good opportunity for your daughter but for our family - it was worth every penny. They have 1- and multi-day options and have multiple events throughout the year, featuring coaches from D1, D2 & D3 progams.

Aside from the standard training and games most camps have, there’s a lot of required pre-camp homework. For example - they require the players email coaches who’ll be in attendance prior to camp to give them practice reaching out to coaches. They have each player rehearse an elevator speech and then pitch themselves to every coach in attendance to give them experience and confidence to approach coaches at tournaments they might attend in the future. They’ll also assign a coach to your player who will work with them at various points during the day and provide a written and recorded oral evaluation that our daughter received the day after the camp was held (Assistant coach from a Big 10 program gave the eval for our daughter, so legitimate coaches/not just a Freshman staying at college during the off-season).

Lastly - they have Q&A panel sessions for parents with the coaches re: the recruiting process, what they look for at various divisions, etc

Strong recommend from my perspective. Learned a ton.

PS - agree with @twoinanddone - ability to play a club sport provides no advantage in admissions

I don’t mean to tag onto this post but I am in a similar position so I have found it very valuable. My daughter is a 2023 GK (05) at a top ECNL club. She is going to play HS soccer at a top HS next year but is uncertain if she will continue with HS or fall ball at her club after that. She is currently 5’4 but growth plates aren’t closed yet so 5’6 is her hope as her coaches said that was sort of the benchmark for college GKs. She has strong footwork (especially for a keeper) and her club works a lot of building out of the back. She is not top D1 level talent, but does want to play college. She is a strong student but now we are being slammed with ID camp invites and emails and I am not sure where to go with it all. Her club has a strong history of placing girls at top colleges and colleges with scholarships but it is unique for a keeper. Although she loves being GK and its her primary position, she does play forward on a lower level team at her club but when she states she is a GK it seems that is all that matters and she doesn’t get a chance to show coaches (not at her club) her other skills. So i guess i just would love some insight on first steps - baby steps regarding finding out how to get this process started.

@GKmom23 I can’t shed much light, but my son knows a boy who played GK all through high school and club; his high school (a prep school) played him at striker his senior year, and he ended up being recruited as a striker. Meanwhile he had been in the recruiting pipeline as a goalkeeper at other schools. So it does happen!

Playing a club sport in college offers no recruitment advantage whatsoever. But it does offer a competitive environment for kids who are not D1 quality to compete in the sport they are quite good at and at a school that is a best academic fit. They are offered at many schools from Villanova, to ivy.