I have played soccer my entire life, it was the sport I grew up playing and will continue to play throughout my senior year. I have played club soccer since a young age and have devoted myself to soccer. I am a junior at a 6A (highest classification) high school in Texas, am starting on my varsity soccer team, and will likely be the captain as a senior.
I see plenty of people on here with EC’s that list out 4 years of varsity this sport, 2 years of this on varsity, 2 years of another sport on varsity. At a big school in Texas, if you’re playing that many sports you will never be on varsity because you wouldn’t have built relationships with the coaches. Also, at my school, if you have been on varsity for 3 or 4 years on a major sport you will most likely end up as a recruited student athlete. It is simply impossible to build up resumes with multiple sports for multiple years at the varsity level at an large, powerhouse high school.
This leads me to my question – how will my 2 years of varsity soccer (with one as captain) and 4 years of competitive club soccer (D1, State Classic League with 2 years as captain) stack up to the multisport multiyear resumes? Do colleges recognize the difficulty or do they even care about sport ECs?
Please remember: many of the college admissions officers have been at their jobs since well before you were born.
Yes, they understand how tough it is to make a Varsity sport at a large school. They have the statistics in front of them. The odds are very good that you’re not the first athlete from your school to apply there, and there have certainly been Varsity athletes from other powerhouse schools whose applications have passed through their desks before.
If you are an awesome soccer player and are applying to a school, then most likely you are wanting to play for that college and they take that into consideration.
Difficulty in terms of what? Unless you are planning to play for the college, it’s just a nice EC. I’m sure you reported the time you put into it on your application. What is it you want them to recognize?
If I were to pursue college soccer then I would likely end up playing at a mid to low D2 college based on the coaches that have contacted me. There are not many colleges at the D2 level that I could see myself fitting into so I am not interested in playing college soccer. I am by no means an awesome player I just love the game.
I FEEL YOU. I played Club soccer for a really long time. I will be playing Varsity Soccer for 3 years. My school is huge and the number one sport around my area (MD-DC-VA) is soccer. It’s extremely competitive. I’m truly in love with soccer, but I do no not plan on playing soccer as a career. A lot of people are ignorant to the reason why some of us play sports. Not everything is about going big. I play because soccer is part of who I am.
However, adcoms know that varsity at big schools is hard. I know this because I was talking to a college counselor (who used to be an admission officer at the UCs) and told her that I play varsity at a big school. She was really suprised and said that was really impressive.
They definitely understand the time commitment to play a Varsity and Club sport. Since you are not planning to play college soccer than colleges will consider your sports as an EC. They like to see passion and commitment to one or two EC’s and this will look good on your applications. Don’t worry!