Value of club soccer vs multi-season school sports

Athletic Recruits
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My 10th grader has played varsity soccer since 9th grade and club since 6th grade.

I’m posting looking for experience and advice for this situation because I know less than nothing about college athletics, what looks good to AOs, and this is really a question of what is valued and what is not.

Freshman year he was a 3 sport varsity athlete (soccer, swim, sailing). This year he quit swim and sailing to play on a higher level club team. There was no talking him out of this decision. I didn’t feel great about it, so I’m posting here to see if my fears are unfounded. Is it better to be a 3 sport varsity athlete with likely captainship in 2/3, rather than play in a high level club which seems to me to be dime-a-dozen, and a massive time suck, preventing opportunity in other activities through the winter and spring? Has anyone else dealt with this?

I’m very grateful for the voice of experience. And very open to admitting I’m wrong about being a 3 sport school-only athlete.

He has D3 aspirations but a bit too early to know.

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My opinion: if he has D3 soccer aspirations, he should focus on that. Yes, being a 3 sport athlete shows dedication to multiple things, but it’s not like that would move the needle in a huge way with admissions. Athletic recruiting can open a lot of doors.

Also, he is a kid. Let him do what he loves. If it is soccer, let him play as much soccer as he wants. His high school experience shouldn’t always be about crafting the perfect college application.

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This recent thread had a number of thoughtful posts from a variety of different perspectives on the topic: Don't let your kids waste their time on Sports

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I’ll give you my take. Any form of D3 college soccer, particularly at selective schools will almost always require high level club experience. I’d say 90%+ would have played academy or ECNL or similar ball. So, if he has aspirations to play ball at selective schools, he should continue to play club soccer. Yes, it is a huge time and resource suck and if you are in a larger club, they almost always publish senior outcomes. See where kids are going from his team level.

My daughter played on a showcase team but due to health and other issues, decided to quit and just play HS soccer. Best decision ever. Sure some of her club buds got $$ to play in college but those were not selective schools. She was able to devote a lot of time to non-athletic leadership and volunteering opportunities.

I have been out of the circus for a bit but coached classic soccer back in the day. Don’t miss it one bit.

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My son did 3 seasons of varsity sports (soccer captain) and club soccer since age 8, he had no interest playing in college (but is on the club team plus a coed recreational league outside of college). Our kids were allowed to do what they wanted (although we strongly encouraged his brother to give up ice hockey in the 4th grade if he wanted to continue with baseball, soccer, flag football and basketball). He ended up just playing soccer, running track and musical theater in HS.

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If he’s hoping to be recruited – and that’s the only way sports are a hook - it will be very hard to do so without playing club.

If not, it doesn’t really matter which path he chooses. Both require time, commitment, and cooperation. Neither carries extra weight in admissions – it’s just an excellent EC.

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Slight tangent: if he’s in 10th grade it is not too early to start contacting coaches. You might get him a copy of The Athletic Scholarship Playbook, which is the best guide to concisely explaining the recruiting process I found (you don’t need to be trying for a scholarship to find it valuable).

The received wisdom is to let the kid drive the bus when it comes to ECs – and your son is making his wishes clear.

If he’s not recruited there isn’t an appreciable difference between being a 3 sport athlete and playing club soccer.

If he is recruited, playing club soccer becomes, I don’t know, about a hundred times more valuable (in terms of college admissions) than being a 3 sport athlete.

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Thank you to everyone who has commented. I think where I struggle is that we can’t live 2 lives simultaneously, so there’s no way my son can be the 3 sport athlete AND the year round club soccer player at the same time. So in the choosing, I only see the negatives. The 3 sport varsity athlete seems like such a bonus for admissions, as well as leadership opportunities you don’t see with club. Especially if recruiting never happens, I feel the negativity and regret of that very deeply, preemptively!

Thank you to Momofthree for reminding me that at the end of the day, he is lucky to have an opportunity to do what he loves, every day, every weekend. Not every kid can say the same.

Definitely a “road not taken” experience here. Maybe the first big one, certainly not the last!

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You might be selling your son short! How do you know he won’t have the same leadership opportunities playing club?

How do you know recruiting won’t happen? If he really wants it and puts in the time and effort, it is likely to happen! Key is having the drive.

There are a few of us soccer parents on the board and we would be happy to guide you. I’ve PMed with a bunch of parents through their process, and would be happy to share what I know, whether generally, or specifically. My son is going to be a rising senior in college, and so my years as a soccer parent are ending soon. I will miss it so much!!

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I don’t think this is as big a bonus as you think it is. Unless they are a recruitable athlete, varsity athletics is seen as a good EC, but no more impressive than anything else like debate, chess team, scholastic bowl, band, FBLA, robotics club, etc.

If he’s truly interested in playing in college, I agree with cinnamon1212 that now is the time to start building a college list and reaching out to soccer programs. Start with a big list as it will funnel down as the process goes along.

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Echoing what others have said:

He should do what he loves. If that’s focusing on one sport that’s great. 10th grade is by no means too early to specialize in a sport.

I don’t think 3 sports offer much if any admissions advantages for a non-recruit. Whereas if he loves his sport and is talented enough, the admissions advantage of athletic recruiting is orders of magnitude better. (Like, a 95-99%+ chance of admission at schools with admit rates in single digits, where at most perhaps a 3 sport non recruit gets a <1% boost from sports 2&3, if anything).

If he burns out or needs a change there are low barrier to entry sports like Track and XC where he’d probably do great and have fun if he wants to pick them up in 11th or 12th grade.

Having said all that, I do understand your concerns. My kids’ sport is Track/XC (distance) and my kids hit a point a bit earlier than yours where they really did need to focus year round, with appropriate training breaks, if they wanted to reach their goals for the sport.

For us it was a follow the passion and joy decision, not an admissions decision. We knew recruiting was a good possibility but it wasn’t a given. Things worked out great and there were never any regrets. Wouldn’t have regretted even if the sports stopped early and there was no recruiting. But there definitely were opportunity costs. I think there will be no matter what.

I’d take @cinnamon1212 up on the offer of getting soccer recruiting advice here. It’s not my sport but I know enough to know there are posters here with tons of experience and solid advice.

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So I think there are some significant pros to being a three-sport athlete–but college admissions is not one of them.

The pros in my mind are things like: potentially making more friends; cross-training, which is good for general fitness and reduces the chance of injuries; having more recreational options in the future, including college; and developing a generally sustainable vision of the role of athletics and fitness in a well-balanced life.

When it comes to college admissions, I do think the three-sport varsity athlete with a captainship or two is a known type, and it is specifically known that is a big time commitment through the year, which requires good time management skills to balance with academic excellence. So in that sense it is a good answer to the question, “What have you done besides classes?”

But it is only one possible answer. Like, if you replace one of those sports seasons with a debate season, I don’t think that is going to be an issue at all.

OK, but what if you replace not one season with debate, but two seasons with club? And maybe even more than that if you also devote most of your summers to your sport?

Part of the answer is obviously that path may realistically be your only chance to be recruited. I do think if a kid is only doing it to get recruited, that is likely a mistake. But if the kid truly loves the sport, AND would love to continue it in college, AND that means being recruited is possible, then that is fine.

Still, I think it is OK to have questions. Like, is so much focus on one sport a greater injury risk? Is the kid maintaining a healthy and sustainable balance between developing in their sport and other important parts of childhood development–social, intellectual, ethical, and so on? If the kid ends up not recruited, or not by a college they want to attend, or an injury ends their competitive career, or so on, will they still be happy with how they spent their time? With where they went to college?

These are real questions, not rhetorical questions. If a kid can focus on one sport and still answer these questions in a positive way, then I think college admissions will work out fine, because colleges will again know what time commitments were involved, know the time management that was required, value being able to balance all that with academic success, and so on.

But sure, go ahead and ask the questions. And be open to them having satisfactory answers.

But the question I would not ask is, “Would it be better for college admissions if my kid was a three-sport athlete?” I don’t think so, and I also personally think those hypotheticals are not worth asking anyway.

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I was thinking about this thread. Just stepping back, I think you’re wise to be thinking about college in order to make good decisions.

At the same time, outside of course selection, almost every decision should be about who your kid is and what they want. If he really loves soccer, has seen that the year-round kids improve their skills and play, and he wants to go all in, that’s who he is. To be truly competitive at swimming, he’d need to make the same choice, so what this may be saying is “I don’t want to do these things simply to participate – I want to be challenged to be as good as I can.”
That’s not a bad thing!

Do things for you – your enrichment and happiness - not to please an AO. You will always care more about you than they will!

Also, this concept of leadership is imho overplayed. It’s more important to be fully engaged than leading the charge.

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Here’s my perspective as a student. I play competitive club softball and have since 8U, I’m now on an 18U team. I also play competitive club volleyball since 16U for a nationally ranked team. For both of these I travel extensively throughout the northeast. Knowing what that I’ve always wanted anted to major in psychology/neuroscience and go on to grad and doctoral school, I knew in college I would not play DI or even DII for the time commitment…The colleges I applied to are all mostly DI. I guess what I am saying, don’t base your colleges on where you can play the sport, base it on the best academic program that you can get in to. I’ll play for the club team or intramural, or maybe find an adult league in the community.
I will add that I did get some leadership merit awards based on being captain for my club softball team since 14u. I also got a couple personal handwritten notes on my admission letters stating they hope I will continue playing both sports for the club teams. Maybe it helped me get in to those schools, I don’t know.
I love playing and the bonds I have with the girls on my teams and I’m glad my parents were able to financially make it all work so that I could be a part of it for so many years.

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Bit of an aside but I think relevant enough to note.

In the Harvard litigation, one of the many issues that emerged was the role of leadership positions in their evaluation of activities, personal ratings, and overall ratings. On the one hand, Harvard’s mission statement had long referenced things like educating future leaders, so that kinda made sense. On the other, deep dives into the data suggested that was biasing Harvard admissions in various potentially undesirable ways.

Some of those criticisms involved ethnicity, family wealth, and so on. But some were also just founded in the belief that selecting for formal leadership positions was failing to capture how different people with different personality types can help lead in their communities in different ways.

As I understand it, in certain circles this became part of an ongoing broader conversation, and many selective colleges adopted some sort of policy of doing more to identify and select for a wider variety of personality types and ways of leading.

That being said, if you are the type of person who naturally becomes captain of a team, president of a club, or so on, OK, great, that is still good. But I definitely think in recent years, more of these colleges have been making a point of looking for kids who are maybe not doing that, but are in fact still highly-valued contributors to their school and community, and really leaders in their own way.

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2 cents: he needs to talk with his coaches and learn where they have connections and any success getting other grads into similar programs. A good coach can get him meetings at D3 schools, or even help him build his film/story. If he tries to go it alone it is VERY hard. The club should have resources to help him connect with schools/coaches, too.

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One should use their coaches if they are helpful. But, one should never limit their search to the schools where a club coach knows someone.

Not really. This is how most athletes are recruited…they reached out to a coach via email (or Twitter), sent film, built a relationship.

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Just anecdotal, but it feels to me like the common denominator among the successful recruited kids I know about is having at least one parent willing to support them at least at the level of a part-time job, sometimes basically full-time. So much travel and basic administration, and then also educating themselves about the process, helping the kid identify possible college teams that make sense for them, helping the kid initiate and then track coaching relationships, and on and on.

I’m sure kids have done it before with instead similar support from a coach or such. But the ones I know about have that sort of parents.

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I am so happy to hear people are starting to recognize this.

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That is my experience too, and what I did for my kids.

Hence why I went to volunteer at a non-profit focused on supporting student-athletes throughout HS and thru the college recruiting process. Sadly, that non-profit was not able to survive and closed up shop last year.

There are independent counselors who focus on athletic recruiting, but obviously that costs $.

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