Soccernovice on Sun Jan 01, 2012 11:26 pm
Thanks Soccergrinder. It was exciting experience for the players and there was alot of buzz with college coaches around our style of play and quality. All brackets are usually good teams and it isn't always clear how they place teams in divisions. We were less concerned about the division we played in and more concerned about ensuring our players got excellent visibility with college coaches. That is exactly what occured and it is important for smaller clubs like AYSES to expand their reputation with college coaches.
As you know, the Academy teams get alot of visibility earlier in college recruiting process the club teams later in the process unless they are located in area close to alot of colleges with strong mens soccer programs then the club players can get alot of visibility. The Disney Showcase provides club teams with a chance to be seen be a much broader array of college coaches similar to the Dallas Cup. In terms of Top 21 DI schools we had University of Connecticut, University of South Florida, Indiana University, University of New Mexico, University of North Carolina - Charlotte, University of Louisville, University of Alabama Birmingham, and Old Dominion University at our 2nd game along with 21 other DI college coaches. There were 44 college coaches at that game by itself. Our players are committing later in process then Academy players and I will publish later in process where they have committed. We also had a good number of Top 25 DII and DIII college programs at our games. On a good note we had a portion of these coaches come to multiple games and in some cases watch whole games and multiple whole games for our team. Typically they spend less than 1/2 watch a few players that they are following then head to another game to watch other players. I talked to one DI coach who had a list of 20+ players to look at some at other North Texas programs yet he stayed at our game from the time he arrived middle fo 1st half to end of game. He was interested in 2 of our players. We also had some good looks from DI Ivy league schools and 2nd Tier Ivy league DI schools since we have some excellent students on our team.
Our experience has been that our players commit as late as after the Dallas Cup which was the case for one player who now starts at University of South Florida.
