Scholarships can be a bit complicated to understand. The world of scholarships is fiercely competitive and the money you can receive doesn’t usually cover everything.
Don’t just rely on your skills
Your soccer skills on their own aren’t enough to get one of the soccer scholarships, you must get great results in your subjects as well. If your results are good you can also be eligible for other scholarships in addition to soccer or athletics.
Keep a backup subject so that you have more chances, just relying on soccer won’t be enough as there just aren’t enough spaces available.
Promote yourself
By creating videos of your skills and promoting them so schools and coaches, you stand much more chance of getting noticed and being able to attend your first choice of school. Get someone to record all of your games so that you can put together a highlight reel that can be shown to the right people. Try to play in big tournaments so that you can really show them what you’re made of.
What happens at college?
With soccer you’ll usually practice at least five times every week. Your coach will do everything they can to increase the team and individual performance. You should be prepared for a lot of physical work and always be training outside of practice.
Put together your list of favourite colleges
Don’t just look at what is best for your soccer career, but check out which ones would be good for you based on location, academic programs, social environment and academic prowess.
You must be able to do well at the University, not just at the soccer part. The soccer team will be just a part of the whole experience and it will be hard to stay motivated if you really don’t like where you are.
Reach out to the colleges on your list
Send out your profile to each of the colleges and create a video showing your best plays and highlights. Ideally you should also create a personal website that is aimed specifically at recruiting.
You need to send the highlight video to every coach on your school list. If you really are as good as you think you are you might get offers just from the video you sent.
Assuming you get offers, spend time evaluating them
If you do get some offers look at how much it will actually cost to go there. Once you’ve graduated how much are you likely to get paid when you get a job? If you don’t get offers there are always other options such as playing for the club soccer team. You need to pick a college that is good for all areas and potential careers because if you don’t succeed at soccer you’ll need to take an alternative path. What if you get an injury and are unable to play? You will need another way to support yourself.
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