@sushiritto There is a kid from my school going to Dartmouth next year who ran a 3:57 in indoor this year, should be able to run similar this track season.
@MYOS1634 I don’t think many selective D3s are going to be interested in 2:04. MIT, Harvey Mudd, Nescac schools, etc., are going to want sub 2 for admissions support. Ivies want mid 1:50s or better. The 3:57 for the Dartmouth recruit is probably a 1500 time and is in line with what most Ivies would want. I’m guessing that kid is one of the best in the state. My use of NH as an example is just to communicate to the OP that he would need to be one of the very best in his very small pond to get interest. It’s fine to set that as a goal, but important to recognize it’ll take a lot of improvement.
ETA: Id look at past years top times for reference as the big meets haven’t happened yet this year.
@politeperson Thanks for the advice. He is an all-american, ranked first in the state for some events, and second in the 5k.
https://www.fosters.com/sports/20190524/d-i-track-exeter-boys-girls-capture-d-i-titles
Well our school just won states for both boys and girls track…
Dang maybe I really should consider track.
Why not?
I can’t believe that members of this forum have just advised a student who has already said he doesn’t like running to try track, as an implied easier path to admissions. There are THOUSANDS of other students with the same grades who love running and are willing to make the time commitment.
squ1rrel by all means try track to see if you like it, and maybe you have some natural ability, but it will not be any easier to gain admission as a track athlete. For guaranteed admission you will need to be a regional level/national level competitor, otherwise it is just a nice EC, and content for your essay. Even if you can attain a high-performance level, there will be little to no athletic money at the schools you are interested in, regardless of your grades. The only thing that makes track easier for recruiting purposes is that coaches do not have to see you perform, they just need to see your time/mark posted on the internet to know if you can succeed.
I strongly recommend you or anyone try T&F as well as other sports for the HS experience, being part of a team, program, friends, your own accomplishments, memories, etc. but do not try a sport for recruiting purposes alone and in this case, be realistic regarding T&F and recruiting. I had a D/S that was a top track recruit at D1 schools and all the top academics including all the Ivies but they were a State Champ and All American at the National Meet plus a very top student with a high GPA & top test scores. To get really recruited for track at a top school that can provide coaches support/slots, you typically need to be able to score points at college meets.
Generally speaking, try to see if you’d enjoy it and don’t choose based on whether it’d make you competitive for whatever. Do something for it own sake - a quality colleges really want.
Hmm so I just found out that there’s this upcoming senior at a nearby high school who has recently committed to Brown. He only started playing club soccer last year, but was an absolute menace in school soccer (21 goals 11 assists as a junior). It goes to show that you don’t have to play club soccer for very long to get recruited.
You cannot teach speed. Speed cures many “ills.” He may be fast and strong, but how can his ball skills be anything but poor, if he hasn’t played soccer until last year, unless he’s a “natural.”
@sushiritto He played soccer for probably most of his life, but never played club soccer. I’ve watched videos of him play; he’s a decent player, and his touches are actually clean. Actually, he’s not very tall and he’s more of a technical player. He plays very calmly. But he doesn’t seem insane or anything special.
We’ve advised that while it is POSSIBLE to play D1 without playing club, it isn’t common. It’s the harder path. There are the gifted natural athletes who pick up a sport late in high school or even in college.
My daughter played on a new lacrosse team and the coach recruited 4 from the soccer team to play on our team. Gifted athletes. Two quit almost immediately, one continued to play both soccer and lacrosse (and she was the goalie on the soccer team) and one quit soccer and just played lacrosse. They were good athletes, and man one was fast, but they never gained the stick skills needed to be truly good at lacrosse. It was a unique situation that they were already at the school, we needed bodies, and they were willing.
I would not recommend that someone who wanted to play lax just get on the soccer team and hope for a break. I would not recommend someone who wants to play D1 soccer to just play hs team soccer and hope to have a breakout year as a junior. It can happen, it’s just not common.
It’s more for curiosity, but if he hasn’t played club soccer and he’s played most of his life, then where did he play, where did he receive his coaching/training and did he have private lessons or did he have a parent who taught him? These are really rhetorical questions, since you may not know his history.
Everyone that I have known over the years, who were recruited by colleges, has played club. But there are always outliers.
I have a different take on this: talent rises to the top. If you’ve got talent, coaches will want you and they won’t care where you played – if you are that good. But that’s a unicorn, maybe a one player in the entire US every 3 years. Incredibly rare. And those kids eat breath and sleep soccer. For example, the Somali refugee kids in Maine. Some of them are probably better than Academy players.
The main thing is, you’ve got to have the talent. How do you get to be that talented? For just about everyone it is through club soccer and structured coaching. For a tiny handful, they acquire the skill through incredibly hard work and drive without the formal "education " of club soccer.
I thought I remembered reading about this kid. So, no he didn’t play club soccer in the US, but he did play club soccer in South Africa’s highest youth league, for a club affiliated with Ajax in the Netherlands. His father is a soccer coach. So, it is not the case that this boy came from no soccer as a kid – he was playing very very high level soccer. And then he moved to the US, where he did not play club soccer.
@sushiritto I only played one actual year of club soccer (although many years of national level futsal); the rest of the time, my dad did heavy analysis on soccer (thousands of bookmarks, watched countless hours of gameplay) and taught me. I don’t think it’s that uncommon.
@cinnamon1212 It’s a different kid, I’m pretty sure. If anyone wants to see the highlights of him, I can send you them on PM.
There was also this I knew who was on my futsal team for three/four years and on my club team for one year. I remember the first time we had the northeast regional ID camp to go to Kansas City for the national ID for futsal, we both attended but he wasn’t asked to go to nationals, but I was. Fast forward a couple of years, he has the biggest growth spurt ever and becomes a god. His parents were both soccer players at Harvard; his sister plays at Duke. He recently became the youngest pro soccer player in USA history at just 15 years old. He relocated to Seattle just because of an offer with the Sounders Academy, and that offer paid off. Puberty does wonders to some kids, and it shows how quickly things can change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Brummett
I’m on the West Coast. It’s uncommon, even unheard of, out here. Honestly, I’ve been around both the male and female recruiting for a long time and I can’t remember anyone being recruited to D1 (or D3) who didn’t play club growing up. Just look at any roster of any college that you’re interested in, the school will give you the resume of every player on the team.
But finding a “unicorn” doesn’t count. 
@squ1rrel I am talking about Charlie Adams, who is publicly committed to the process at Brown. I am pretty certain there isnt another 2020 out there, from New Hampshire, who didn’t play club soccer in high school, who is committed to Brown.
I’m comfortable using his name as there are articles about him, including in the New England Soccer Journal, so it is public knowledge.
@cinnamon1212 oh welp my bad. I couldn’t find anything on him, other than a few articles.
If he’s a Pro, how is he going to play at a college?