College Recruiting: The 1st Step of Any Journey...is to Take That Step

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Rule Book is over 420 pages of regulations written primarily for the top revenue-generating college sports.

These rules can intimidate high school student-athletes and their parents. This is unfortunate, for not one rule actually governs the prospective student-athlete or parent. All of the rules are written to govern college coaches and athletic departments.

Each staff member of the Darlington School Soccer Academy has been involved as a coach at one point or another with a college soccer program. This is a huge advantage because we know how to navigate the NCAA rules and augment our players' college exposure.

There are two main rules that we use to help our players be better prepared for college and get that added exposure:
1)  As long as we are a club soccer team—registered with US Club Soccer and having more than one high school represented on our rosters—we can play NCAA Divisions II and III, NAIA or JV college teams.  

2)  Each fall, twelfth-grade teammates are allowed to train/tryout with NCAA Division II teams. Each spring, both high school seniors and juniors can train/tryout with NCAA Division II teams.  

With the second rule, individual players of other sports (outside of their high school season of play) can visit college campuses and train/tryout with teams after notification to and pre-approval from respective coaches and compliance officers.

Here at the Soccer Academy we try and take advantage of these rules during fall break each year. In 2014, we took 10 players to 10 different college campuses and watched three college games at both the Division I and Division II levels.

This year we took four senior boys south through the state of Florida. Included in this 70-hour whirlwind trip was a flight from Atlanta to Orlando and back, nine college campus visits, a Division I game, a Division II game, and two trial/training sessions, all with about 13 hours of sleep over two nights.

A number of our student-athletes are interested in attending schools in Florida. Interestingly, the state has an agreement that public colleges will give in-state tuition to any Caribbean, Central, or South American prospective student. With the Soccer Academy having a number of players from Central and South America, as well as the islands in the Caribbean Sea, Florida shows itself to be a great option for the students in our program.

While in the Sunshine State, our four students visited Eckerd College (St. Petersburg), Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Daytona Beach), Flagler College (St. Augustine), Florida Southern University (Lakeland), Rollins College (Winter Park), Saint Leo University (Saint Leo), Stetson University (DeLand), the University of Central Florida (Orlando), and the University of Tampa.

There they not only connected with coaches and other members of the soccer team staff at each college, but also with fellow Soccer Academy alumni including Jordan Lee ('13) at Eckerd, Juan Angulo Reyes ('15) at Embry-Riddle, Dylan Patel (‘15) at Stetson, and Enrique Bello ('12), Jai Burgess ('14), Hanna Grevelius ('14), and Mitchell Thurston ('14) at UT.

We know it to be very important to make school breaks work for the college search process—and that the first step in college soccer recruitment is all about taking that first step to get out there and explore your options.

Click here to see more photos from the trip.