DD Preparing for College Recruitment

I’m curious as to everyone’s opinions on when you plan on really stepping things up/ focusing on preparing for college recruitment. Cue the smartass answers of “at 2 1/2 years old”. I have an 06 that is very serious about playing in college and willing to put in the extra work to get there.

How are you balancing burn out vs beneficial for your DD? I know recruitment is starting at a ridiculous age now compared to when I played. Would love to know how other parents have/or are currently balancing the two things.

Oh good grief. Must play for Solar. Yes your 6th grader is on the cusp of being recruited.

Doesn't this forum suck? People looking for advise and suggestions but get smart ass comments.

NSZ sounds like a bitter parent who’s daughter is the all star forward for the Shooting Stars. Jesus dude, take a deep breathe. How dare someone come on here thinking they’d getting anything other than a 250 pound IT nerd sitting behind a computer acting all big and bad. Let me guess....you’re an FCD parent. Most likely a KW believer.

MurderWasTheCase wrote:Doesn't this forum suck?  People looking for advise and suggestions but get smart ass comments.  

lol

I knew I was going get a reply like this LOL

Funny

DDdadof1 wrote:I’m curious as to everyone’s opinions on when you plan on really stepping things up/ focusing on preparing for college recruitment. Cue the smartass answers of “at 2 1/2 years old”. I have an 06 that is very serious about playing in college and willing to put in the extra work to get there.

How are you balancing burn out vs beneficial for your DD? I know recruitment is starting at a ridiculous age now compared to when I played. Would love to know how other parents have/or are currently balancing the two things.

In your situation pump the breaks, you have at least three more years of growth before anyone will even begin to look at her.

NCAA D1 put some new rules in effect this past August that significantly restrict the amount of contact allowed between college coaches and prospective student athletes prior to Sept 1 of their Junior year of HS.  It used to be, as long as you were on the college campus under your own dime, Coaches had free reign to talk to you about recruiting and could make verbal offers, whether it was at a camp, unofficial visit (any visit to the campus where you are paying for it, not the school), etc.  That was were all of the verbal offers and early commits for 8th, 9th, 10th graders were coming from.

Now, coaches can not talk to you about recruiting you at on-campus camp, and aren't allowed ANY contact with you while you are on campus for an unofficial visit, if either is prior to Sept. 1 of Junior year.  A kid can still call a coach on the phone at any time, and if the coach answers, they can talk.  However, prior to Sept. 1 Junior year, a coach can never call or text a kid.

The expectation is that this will greatly reduce verbal offers being made prior to Junior year.  I'm not convinced it will absolutely eliminate verbal offers prior to Junior year, as I still think there are some loopholes, but I think any coach making a verbal offer to someone younger than a Junior is going to get some serious scrutiny under the new rules.

With that said, this does NOT mean that "recruiting" doesn't start much earlier.  If your kid projects to have the goods to play at a Power 5 conference type of school (if your kid's club coach or DOC has a track record of placing multiple kids at these types of schools, they can give you a reasonable idea if your '06 kid fits that mold), then your kid will want to be getting on those coaches' radar screens by 8th or 9th grade.  This is done through phone calls and emails to the college coach, having your club coach reach out, attending prospect/ID camps.  If your kid is good enough to be playing on a top DA or ECNL team, you may even start seeing college coaches show up at U13/U14 league matches/showcases.

Now, if your kid doesn't project out as Power 5 conference "stud", and is looking more at the lesser conference D1, D2, or D3 level, then your kid should just focus on getting better, and realistically doesn't need to focus too much about getting their name out there or getting seen until their Sophomore year of HS, and then get really hot-n-heavy starting summer before their Junior year.

My 2 cents (and probably not worth much more than that).

Zizou wrote:

DDdadof1 wrote:I’m curious as to everyone’s opinions on when you plan on really stepping things up/ focusing on preparing for college recruitment. Cue the smartass answers of “at 2 1/2 years old”. I have an 06 that is very serious about playing in college and willing to put in the extra work to get there.

How are you balancing burn out vs beneficial for your DD? I know recruitment is starting at a ridiculous age now compared to when I played. Would love to know how other parents have/or are currently balancing the two things.

In your situation pump the breaks, you have at least three more years of growth before anyone will even begin to look at her.

Agree.

A lot can change physically in the next 3 years which will have an impact.

We also noticed that a couple things seemed to drive how early the serious interest starts:
. Is the player going to be a true difference maker for a program? The more the answer is yes the earlier it starts.
. At what level of competition will the player be a difference maker? D3 or D1 Power 5? The higher level the earlier it starts.

Plus all this leads to nowhere in the end

MurderWasTheCase wrote:Plus all this leads to nowhere in the end

You mean spending a huge amount of her time on something she currently enjoys, vs balancing & allocating her time to things she currently enjoys and other things that may set her up for success later in life?

Lefty wrote:

MurderWasTheCase wrote:Plus all this leads to nowhere in the end

You mean spending a huge amount of her time on something she currently enjoys, vs balancing & allocating her time to things she currently enjoys and things that may set her up for success later in life?

No, that's the present. I reference the end.

I like this thread lots of good old BS...carry on.

Do not think just power 5. That applies to football, but there are plenty of good D-1 programs outside the power 5, especially if she is willing to look northeast.

smugrr wrote:Do not think just power 5. That applies to football, but there are plenty of good D-1 programs outside the power 5, especially if she is willing to look northeast.

Which is why my post said "Power 5 conference type of school", not "Power 5 conference school".  If you want to substitute D1 top XX RPI where XX is 50 or 75 or 100, whatever you think the cutoff is, go ahead.  The general point being made is that if your kid a top player on a top DA or ECNL team at U13 or U14, there's a certain group of schools out there that are likely to send a coach to a practice or game, and will find a way to make it known to certain players that they have their eyes on them, even under the new rules.  It's also to the advantage of such a player, to be reaching out on their own to certain colleges, even at such a young age.  The contact may not be as often, or as overt, as in recent years before the rule change, but it will happen.

However, you will reach a point with certain conferences and certain schools in D1 (the Southland Conference and SunBelt Conference are a couple regional ones to TX that come to mind), where those schools typically haven't been and typically won't be, verbally committing to kids until they are at least Juniors in HS, and generally won't even start paying attention to kids until they are Sophomores.  Then D2 and D3 schools typically lag another 6-12 months behind the lower tier D1's, focusing most of their recruiting on Juniors and Seniors - and this won't change because the recruiting rules didn't change for D2 or D3, they only changed for D1.

Thanks. And there certainly are a number of schools who are technically D-1 but may not have the full complement of scholarships (still 11 rides?) and who do not try to compete against the power schools. Then, of course, you have D-1 schools who use only need based aid (Ivy League and perhaps others).

smugrr wrote:Thanks. And there certainly are a number of schools who are technically D-1 but may not have the full complement of scholarships (still 11 rides?) and who do not try to compete against the power schools. Then, of course, you have D-1 schools who use only need based aid (Ivy League and perhaps others).

Fully funded D1 Women's Soccer is 14
Fully funded D2 Women's Soccer is 9.9

My daughter plays U14 or 05's for DA and she has a teammate that has a sister that is on the 03 DA team and they talked to OSU who said they have no more scholarship money for the 03 recruiting class. That's what a shophomore in high school? I don't know if things are changing and people haven't caught up but I'm thinking emailing coaches in 7th and 8th grade isn't that bad of an idea.

OkieEnergyDad wrote:My daughter plays U14 or 05's for DA and she has a teammate that has a sister that is on the 03 DA team and they talked to OSU who said they have no more scholarship money for the 03 recruiting class.  That's what a shophomore in high school?  I don't know if things are changing and people haven't caught up but I'm thinking emailing coaches in 7th and 8th grade isn't that bad of an idea.  

Yup.  OSU is a top 25 program, and before the rules change went into place this past August, it was not out of the ordinary for top 25 programs to have completely locked in their verbal commits for a recruiting class by the time that class were Sophomores in HS.  Colleges had free reign to do that up until August 1st of this year.  The funny thing is, there's a bunch of Freshman and Sophomores who had been talking to coaches, got verbal offers, and verbally committed before August 1st, that now can't really talk to the coach they committed to (unless they call the coach and he/she answers), until Sept. 1st of their Junior Year.

Again, under the new rules that went into effect on August 1st, the expectation is that going forward, schools like OSU will NOT be out of money by the time a recruiting class hits their Sophomore year of HS, because they won't have the avenues to communicate with the recruits and extend verbal offers before their Junior year of HS.  However, as I've gone on record here saying before, there is some "I'll believe it when I see it" to that, as I still think there are some loopholes in the rules that some, shall we say, more aggressive coaches will figure out how to exploit.

It's not in anybody's best interest - coach/program's or player's - to be "committed" at such a young age. Way too many things can happen on both sides to make it a bad fit by the time they actually go to college. I hope the NCAA will strictly enforce the new rules, because the former approach is very flawed.

ProDallas wrote:It's not in anybody's best interest - coach/program's or player's - to be "committed" at such a young age. Way too many things can happen on both sides to make it a bad fit by the time they actually go to college. I hope the NCAA will strictly enforce the new rules, because the former approach is very flawed.

Agree 100% with you PD. However, all it's going to take is 1 or 2 coaches to figure out how to navigate around any loopholes in the rules to land a top recruit, and the arms race will be back on again. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out. My guess is that coaches are still going to find a way to commit early to the "transcendental" type players like a Mallory Pugh, or, to bring it closer to home, AM & TB from Solar, but the next tier down - the players that have been committing as Sophomores and maybe some Freshman, will be pushed back into their Junior years.

On a secondary note, it will be interesting to see what happens to U17 & U18 DA & ECNL schedules for the month of September in the coming years, because teams are going to be decimated by their players that are HS Juniors, loading up on official visits on home soccer/football weekends.

I have a 06's DD in 7th grade, and also wondering when should we start to contact potential schools?

I have a friend who has a 8th grader in California where they already started recruiting process and will attend college camps this winter.

PowerKick wrote:I have a 06's DD in 7th grade, and also wondering when should we start to contact potential schools?

I have a friend who has a 8th grader in California where they already started recruiting process and will attend college camps this winter.

Go read the last 2 paragraphs in my original post in this thread.

PowerKick wrote:I have a 06's DD in 7th grade, and also wondering when should we start to contact potential schools?

I have a friend who has a 8th grader in California where they already started recruiting process and will attend college camps this winter.

Missing Sense will get your dd recruited... lol

If you have survived puberty injury and still playing serious ball by your junior year then it might be something to consider.