love with the sport. As I mention below, I played basketball growing up and the similarities between
the two sports are amazing. My exposure to soccer was a Saturday clinic put on by several players from Coastal Carolina (which at that time was part of the University of South Carolina system) in 1976.
My memory of that day was "wow this is a lot of running". That was it until my oldest started playimg
YMCA soccer through our elementary school.
I have also developed an opinion about US soccer. I can say it is reflected in this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mXG0QX5CH0&index=35&list=FLXSZpEXjKhRWsdBxXI6R7qQ
So, I don't want the US to be European Soccer, South American Soccer or any other kind.
I want it to be American Soccer. We are behind the curve in terms of time playing the game,
but we are catching up. But we need to find OUR WAY. Not some other way.
With that said, youth soccer in America has the largest participation of any youth sport. Yet, when
these kids grow up and have the chance to move to the next level.... well that is what this is about.
For me that meant, getting my son to play college soccer.
I want to share my experiences about that in a general way. By that I mean, I don't want to focus on the benefits of this club or that club. I don't want to pick on a specific college. I want to develop general ideas that will be useful for parents as they explore and help their child explore playing college soccer.
I will have to be gender specific in my observations as I have a son and my exploration has been on the men's soccer side of the world. I will however reference women's college soccer information. I used it in my inital explorations on line to learn more about playing college soccer. One great web article I found was by Michael McNeish of the Lehigh Valley United FC
http://www.sambasoccer.org/college/mcneish_article_1.htm
I will also be geographically focused on the southeast. I live in South Carolina and our focus on colleges has been within a 300 mile-ish radius of our state.
I was a high school athlete. I lettered in football, basketball, and track. I also played golf one year and played baseball all the way up until high school. But in the late 1970's in rural South Carolina there was not a lot of soccer anywhere. It was Friday night football or Tuesday and Friday night basketball.
Also I was not versed in the ins and outs of getting to play college sports. No one in my high school career (my freshman to senior year -- that I can remember) got a scholarship to any college. So using Michael's article above and other information I gathered on the Internet and panel discussions I had attended I started developing a plan of attack. But first step was to decide what colleges to express interest in....