olldflame wrote: ↑December 4th, 2021, 7:03 pm
47/5-2 wrote: ↑December 4th, 2021, 4:26 pm
cruzan_flame13 wrote: ↑November 30th, 2021, 1:45 pm
By chance, does the soccer program recruit overseas like some if our other programs? Does well for field hockey.
They do. Not as heavily as some programs. Some programs rely almost exclusively on internationals. Lot of advantages to recruiting internationals in the sports that are not able to give everyone athletic money. But there can be some real risks committing your roster fully in that direction imo. Much harder to vet (in both directions... you/them & them/you) and I think it's really important for all programs to know they are getting the right guys for their culture (obviously, very important at Liberty).
For the record, 8 of the 29 players on our current roster are shown as being from somewhere outside the US. This does not necessarily mean they were all "recruited internationally". Many foreign athletes come to the US and play their sport in HS first, in which case they are recruited basically the same way as American recruits.
Eh, for other sports, perhaps. But for men's soccer very few kids are coming here for high school because of soccer. You don't leave the academy systems of England, The Netherlands, Spain, France, Denmark, Norway, Germany, Brazil to come play in the US youth system, and definitely, not high school. The opposite happens.
You may come for educational opportunities or because you have connections, a family that values prestigious education, or a parent that travels to the US a lot for business, etc. There are probably kids at places like The Pennington School, Haverford, Trinity, Georgetown, etc. that happen to be decent soccer players with home addresses still abroad... but most of the internationals you see on Division 1 soccer rosters are just that. Internationals.
The structure in the US is still relatively young. Some of your top clubs have their paws in places like Central America, Columbia, Venezuela, etc. but those kids are being brought in with the anticipation that they will be first team players for those clubs. Schooling is secondary, at best, for most and we can only pluck them from most of those places because the countries themselves are poor, unsafe, etc. My youngest had his hotel set on fire in Columbia a couple months ago. While it will never be proven, it was extremely fishy. Those are places that the US Academies are able to pluck some talent from and be more appealing to a talented player. But again, they are only making that investment if they see first team potential.
The vast majority of kids who are international and end up on college rosters are internationals who were released from academy back home at 17/18 not being offered a professional deal. Some are even much older having gone to college at home and are now taking grad school here. Some have bounced around in semi-pro/lower-level leagues and are just coming to the states to keep playing and get an education.
My oldest has a teammate from Germany who is a 22-year-old freshman. Literally, was working for BMW before being recruited (or seeking opportunity) to come over. Many have agents that place them.
I hosted 3 international players for Thanksgiving, Denmark, Norway, and England. All of them had been released after their amateur contracts expired when they were 17-18. In some ways, they are fortunate. They at least are let go at a time when the idea of taking advantage of their skills and getting a college education is doable.
You ever go to your son's soccer practice and hear several English accents? Often, those are the guys who banged around lower divisions for a bit and got hurt, or just aged out at some point and never took advantage of the American college system. It's not a knock, but they got to their mid-20's and all they had ever known was soccer. So now they are teaching the sport and making their living coaching/training in the US. They can do well doing that... but the guys who got released earlier and took the college route have more career options.
Liberty is a little different then some because you can have missionary kids who buck the mold. But most internationals playing soccer at US Colleges never went to high school here, and often, never set foot on their initial college campuses until they first reported for school.
I did some research a few years ago (I think it was based on 2019 Division 1 Rosters) and a boy had less then 1% of a chance of going to high school and playing soccer in the US and making a Division 1 roster. Forget athletic scholarship money. Simply being on a Division 1 Men's Soccer roster. For reference, baseball was 2.5 times more likely, football was 3.5 times more likely, and lacrosse was 4 times more likely. That's a random sidenote. But I've used that statistic many times with pie in the sky parents here in the States.