The Recruiting Pyramid Part IV: Crunch Time for Effie

You may remember our dear friend Effie.  Over the course of three posts, we’ve taken 25 top D3 soccer schools and narrowed them down to four that make sense academically and socially for Effie.  Those four are: 6. Rochester (N.Y.), 7. Case Western Reserve (Ohio), 11. Johns Hopkins (Md.), and 13. Puget Sound. (The numbers represent where these teams stood in the rankings a few weeks ago.).

What I think is so interesting and compelling about this approach, is that we haven’t looked at their soccer profiles yet.  Instead, we’ve honed in on the colleges that makes sense for Effie as a student.  Whether you start with the top 25, or just a random sampling of schools, if you use this approach, you will be left with a handful of colleges that meet your academic and social needs.  The great thing is, there will probably also be enough college soccer teams that 1, 2, or 5 will be a good match with your soccer needs.

It turns out in this ridiculous, protracted, and hypothetical case, that Effie had an absolutely wonderful visit at the University of Puget Sound.  Not to take anything away from the other schools, but the time he spent with the team and the coach at Puget Sound really set it apart. He loved the facilities, and the way the team played.  He also really enjoyed his experience at Case Western.  So he’s decided to focus his recruiting efforts on those two schools.

And that’s how you can start with a huge pool of colleges, and narrow it down to focus your recruiting efforts.

The Best Fan in College Soccer

There are some fans who clap politely, some who yell at the ref, others who print out the Facebook profiles of the opposing players so they can heckle them about their girlfriends and the fact that their favorite movie is “Beauty and the Beast.”

Then there’s University of Chicago superfan Tyjuan — aka Top 50 — the most prolific, impassioned, hilarious fan in the history of college soccer.

Tyjuan has been known to travel with the teams. He’s come out to support the players at practice along with the 300-strong media contingent that follows the UChicago Maroons wherever they go. (Okay, maybe not that last part.) Then there was the game where the referee wouldn’t let play resume until Tyjuan was escorted off the premises. As he left, the several hundred UChicago fans in attendance saluted him with a standing ovation.

Tyjuan’s Trademarked War Cries:

“Welcome to the JUNGLE!”

“We must protect this house!”

“Get that ball!”

The College Selection Pyramid: Part 3

Back to my hypothetical friend Effie and the college selection process. He’s been studying hard over the last week to retake the SAT while I’ve been prattling on about Cobi Jones and Greg Ryan.

If you recall, Effie is a high school junior and a good student (B+, 29 ACT, 2040 SAT.) In Part II, we took that week’s DIII Top 25 and narrowed it down to seven schools, based on academics. The seven colleges still standing are:

1. Trinity (Texas), 6. Rochester (N.Y.), 7. Case Western Reserve (Ohio), 10. Centre (Ky.), 11. Johns Hopkins (Md.), 13. Puget Sound (Wash.), 19. Washington (Mo.)

The next step in the college selection pyramid is to further winnow the pool based on “social” characteristics: social life, political tendencies, location, etc.

Here’s what Effie wants: he’s location agnostic, though he wants to be in a relatively urban setting. He’s renowned at school for his break-dancing, but doesn’t want to go to a school where the social life is dominated by fraternities. He sings in an a capella group and wants to continue that in college (he likes the arts in general.) And he wants a school where there is lively political discourse.

[An aside: Effie may seem a little precocious. You may be asking yourself, "How many 17-year olds are break-dancing, arts-loving, politically curious man-children like this figment of Avi's imagination?" It's easy to default into an "all I want in college is soccer" shell, but you really have to challenge yourself to push it to the next level and determine what else matters to you. Maybe it's something as simple as proximity to the beach, distance from your parents (close? far? really, really far?!) or weather. No matter what it is, make a list of the things that matter to you, and use that list to evaluate each remaining college.]

Based on Effie’s social preferences, four colleges remain: 6. Rochester (N.Y.), 7. Case Western Reserve (Ohio), 11. Johns Hopkins (Md.), and 13. Puget Sound.

[A disclaimer: I did just a quick review of the seven schools above to get to this list of the Chosen Four. And I confess, I didn't find "insane break dancing scene" in any of the four remaining schools' literature. In the real world, you'd probably want to look at them a little more comprehensively. Talk to college counselors, check out websites, talk to students.]

Notice that we still haven’t talked about soccer. But that’s okay, we still have four very good teams in the running. We’ll get to that in the next go around.

The Pyramid that Stands: An Exercise in Picking the Right Soccer College, Part I

Over the last few weeks I’ve traded a few emails with a dynamic young player who is a junior in high school. She also happens to be a very good student. She is intent on playing for a top tier Division I program, so we’ve talked about how she can play at a high level without sacrificing her academics.

I’ve seen this happen time and again. Players become preoccupied with the prestige of a program to the point where they are willing to compromise on all the other things that make college so awesome. This is the “upside down pyramid,” that which topples over and ends up in transfers and general unhappiness. How to avoid such an outcome? Use the right side up pyramid approach, of course:

1. Base - Start by finding colleges that are a good academic fit: “Is this the kind of college I would apply to if I wasn’t interested in soccer?”

2. Midsection – Narrow the field by discarding those that aren’t a good social fit: “Is this the right social environment for me? Are the politics too extreme, the Greek life too dominant, the arts too subdued, etc?”

3. Pinnacle – Finally, narrow the field so it only includes the teams that are right for you: “Do I get along with the players and coach, do they play at the right level, is the commitment level right, etc?”

There is a huge number of colleges (4,000ish) out there. The thought that you have to find one college team out of that mass can be a bit daunting. But if you narrow the field by casting aside all the schools that aren’t right for you academically and then socially, then you’ll be down to a more manageable group. An academic “filter” should get you down to 100ish schools (admittedly still a large number.) A social filter will probably then winnow that down to 20. Then the final soccer filter will get you down to 5-10 schools.

The result: an easy to manage group of schools that are right for you academically, socially, and as a player. You can play college soccer for a great team without compromising your academic and social needs.

Setting Foot on Campus

The single decisive moment for me in the recruiting process was when I arrived on campus at Wesleyan. Up to that point, I had wavered back and forth as to where I would go to college.

It was a gorgeous day when I got there. Everyone was out on the quad sunning themselves, throwing frisbees, and pretending to do their reading. In short order I knew that this was the place for me.

It wasn’t “the place” just for the soccer, but because the academic and social environment was right for me. There was only one way to figure this out: by visiting campus. No guidebook, college advisor, or website could have conveyed to me what three days on campus did.

These days, every time I go to a recruiting event, much ado is made about official visits vs. unofficial visits. But there’s so much more to a visit than its official status. Here are five things I encourage young players to do when they visit campus:

1. Ditch your parents – College life is about self-sufficiency. Your parents may be utterly jubilant to be there, but you need to spend some time on campus without them. This is how you’ll get a clear sense of what it would be like to actually go to school there.

2. Stay on campus overnight - Arrange an overnight stay through the team or the admissions department. Find out what it’s like to live in the dorms, what the social life is like, and what the kids at the school are really about.

3. Meet with the coach - Arrange to meet with the coach. It’s fine if your parents sit in, but you should also try to find some time to speak with the coach 1-on-1. Try to figure out if your personalities mesh.

4. Talk to students - Ask students and players the golden question: “If you had to go through the recruiting and application process again, would you make the same decision? Why or why not?”

5. Watch a practice - You should certainly time your visit to coincide with a college game. However, seeing a practice is just as important. You get to observe how the coach interacts with his players, how the practice is organized, and you get to talk to the players during water breaks and get a sense of their enthusiasm for the game and overall experience.

The bottom line: go to a college where you’re going to be happy and develop socially and academically. Don’t go to a school just because you have the opportunity to play soccer. If you go to a school only for soccer, you’ll be cheating yourself out of the real college experience. A visit to campus can make the difference in figuring out if a college is right for you.