About College Soccer Scouting
College soccer recruiting is done to award college soccer scholarships. Sports such as football and basketball have their scholarship opportunities highly publicized, but sports such as soccer offer numerous college scholarship opportunities. College soccer scholarships can either be full or partial. Players that are not offered scholarships but that try out and make the team may be offered scholarships after making the team.
Other People Are Reading
-
Function
-
Scholarships are offered to players who are recruited to play for the school and made an official offer to play for the team. Recruiting is restricted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which is the governing body for college athletics. The NCAA sets specific restrictions on how a soccer player can be recruited in terms of a schedule.
According to NCAA.com, coaches can only send brochures and questionnaires to prospective players during their freshman and sophomore high school seasons, no personal contact can be made. During a player's junior year in high school, scholarship information can be sent via the mail in September. After July of their junior year, soccer players may be contacted on the phone once a week. Off-campus contact between a coach and recruit can be made at that time as well. This policy of contact continues during the player's senior year of high school, but expands to include an official campus visit which can be paid for by the college after the first day of classes in their senior year.
Types
-
Scholarships are awarded to players after a school decides their recruiting finds a promising player. There are both full scholarships for college soccer and partial scholarships, both for men and for women. The skill level needed to get a college scholarship to a Division One college is higher than it is for most Division Three schools as the competition is greater for the Division One schools.
-
Considerations
-
The scholarships that can be offered as a result of college soccer recruiting are very limited. According to Athletic-scholarships.net, the number of full scholarships a men's team at a Division One school in the NCAA can offer is 9.9 and the number a women's soccer team can offer is 12. These can be split to assist more players on the team financially. Division Two Schools for the NCAA men's teams can offer 9 scholarships and women's teams are able to over 9.9 scholarships split as either wishes. Scholarships are not awarded to play at Division Three colleges.
Features
-
College soccer recruiters must be aware of the age of the players they are recruiting as this age affects the appeal of a recruit to a college. College soccer scholarships can only be awarded to individuals between the ages of 18 to 24 years of age, as anyone outside this age range is not permitted to play college soccer according to Soccer-Training-Guide.com. Players that are awarded college soccer scholarships should expect to attend five practices per week at their college; this applies for both men and women equally.
Warning
-
Being recruited is not a one way path, as a player you have control over the success of college soccer recruiters that visit you. Do not limit the number of schools--apply to as many as you wish to attend. Keep in mind that with the ability to split scholarships, there is a chance that you may receive different financial offers from different schools. Highly ranked college soccer teams might offer lower scholarship amounts to new players as they have full scholarships dedicated to upper class players and underclassmen that are All Americans on the team. Teams that are not as prestigious might have more money available to spread out evenly among the team if there are no true star players on the team.
-
