New to posting, however have been following these college confidential threads for a few years and the information has been extremely helpful. My son is currently playing soccer at a highly selective D3 University. He did not play academy but did play on a club team that competed at a similar level to academy. In my opinion, if your child is starting and therefore getting a lot of PT on academy then by all means, play on the academy team. Unfortunately, because academy teams generally carry rosters that are much larger than club teams, many kids are subs or are not playing at all. We witnessed many talented kids playing academy who probably would have been better served had they played on a high level club team and in the end, these kids were never recruited. It is also important to recognize that when you enter the recruiting process, college coaches can closely follow stats online like PT on the academy teams, which can impact their opinion of your child. As far as recruiting thru a club team, your child needs to be playing on a high enough caliber club team that will qualify or gets invited to the top tournaments like Surf Cup, Dallas Cup and Disney Cup. With a few exceptions, only the top ranked club teams will be going to these tournaments. For the most part, your child has to be seen playing by the college coach at these events in order to get recruited. Lots of people talk about ID camps which may or may not get you noticed but I think most are a waste of time. Coaches want to see you play in a competitive club game. As an example, my son didn’t go to his current university’s ID camp (but went to many many others), but was recruited at these tournaments.
As for High School soccer, it was my experience that recruiting does not occur via high school soccer regardless of the level or the division. My son played at a D1 soccer school in California and qualified for the state tournament. We never saw one college coach. The kids all got recruited out of their clubs. For my child, it was a lot of fun to play for his high school. Often kids get to play positions they may never play in club, play with and in front of their friends and it offers a much needed break from all of the club soccer travel. But recognize that high school soccer is a very physical game where the older/stronger kids have huge advantage. The high school soccer game bears little resemblance to a high level club game. I often worried about injury but it all worked out for us.
Hope this helps…