I make a living working in an industry that is often considered a money grab and many of the players in the growing college athletic recruiting industry use vagueness or misleading information to make money all the time on FEAR and DREAMS. This is the reason I started this business. I wanted to bring an honest and personal approach to help prospects and their families find the right fit opportunities to play college soccer. As a very successful men’s and women’s college soccer coach for 24 years, I know how things work first hand and can use my connections and experience to really help in recruiting.
Prospects and parents fear that if they don’t attend a camp, play in certain league or hire a service that they won’t be recruited to play college soccer. They worry that if they play for the wrong club or don’t have the right coach, they won’t get recruited. They also hear what others are doing and get caught up in doing the same thing rather than running their own race. Some get bad advice and one of the most common problems is that prospects and their families overshoot the level of play that is best for them and where they might get recruited. They don’t cast a wide enough net, nor are they open-minded to a wide variety of colleges in this process.
Over the next five blog posts, I will discuss how the current system works to use both hope and fear to manipulate the psyche of recruits and their families, all in the name of making money. Sure, can there be payoffs of getting recruited or even more, a scholarship? Yes, but at what cost? It’s important to know what is worth it and what is not.
MONEY GRAB
I. College Showcase Tournaments/Events
II. ID Camps
III. Recruiting Services
IV. College Coaches’ Intentions
V. Fragmented Leagues
VI. DI or Bust
Some of the topics I will discuss can all have some vague or misleading parts to them and cause a lot of questions and money spent that may or may not be worth it. Youth soccer has become a huge business and money is the main driver of it all. This is hard to navigate and to know what is good and what might be misleading in this process. So many folks do all of this in the name of getting an athletic scholarship which are rare and almost always partial in soccer, when in return much of the money they spend going attending camps, showcases and playing in certain leagues could have been used to fund college.