College Selection

Food For Thought

A couple weeks ago, Haverford College Men's Soccer held a "Junior Day" for high school juniors who had been identified as high-interest prospective players for our program.  The boys and their families spent the day hearing from Admission, the coaches and players, touring campus and generally getting a nice feel for the college.  Three points jumped out from that morning's events:

1. Of the 10 men who spoke to the recruits, all of them found their way to Haverford via camps- not one mentioned getting recruited via a tournament.
2. Of the class of 2016, 6 of 7 applied early decision (the eighth first year student was a walk-on, un-recruited with no help from the soccer office in the admission process).  The 6 ED applicants represented a 60% success rate (no one who was accepted ED declined to attend Haverford).  Haverford reported an overall admission rate in 2012 of, drumroll please: 22.9%.
3. Of the high school students in the room, every boy had contacted Haverford first.  3(a): Haverford, like most Division III schools has a recruiting budget of a couple thousand dollars.  As a gentle reminder, from a previous post on the odds of making it to the college level as a soccer player:

There are, roughly, 4 million soccer players registered with the USSF-affiliated programs in this nation.  Divide that number by 13 (ages 5 through 18) and we have 307,000 players per year/age group, or 153,500 per gender.  Those high school seniors who play the game are competing for spots on 598 teams (men's division I & III) and 735 (women's division I & III).  The netherworlds of NCAA division II and NAIA soccer are less-traditional higher education options- comprehensive colleges, small state schools, religiously affiliated, etc. - and virtually none of the top liberal arts or research universities fall into these two categories.  Presuming that most players would rather go to Williams or Stanford than Hastings College or Lindsey Wilson College (2011 NAIA Men's Finalists...) we'll work with those numbers alone. 

That leaves us 255 players per year, per NCAA (DI & DIII) team graduating from high school. Over four years, each of the DI & DIII teams have a pool of about 1,000 players to pick from.

If this space offers nothing else, let it be the perspective of what a massive accomplishment it is to play college soccer.  Period.  But let it also be, just a little bit, a source of reminding anyone who loves the game to ask occasionally why they are involved, and what they hope to gain from that involvement.