As the world of youth soccer continues to grow, so has the industry of ID camp companies that are not formally representing college soccer programs or professional clubs.
As we wrote about here at SoccerWire recently, nothing compares to being one of 30-40 recruits invited to a specific college ID camp that is run exclusively by that college program’s staff for the sole purposes of actually screening 3-8 players to further pursue as a real recruit.
Without saying all college ID camps that aren’t run by the actual college you want to play for are inherently bad, the fast growing industry has rapidly become a ‘Buyer Beware’ situation.
Just because a company is great at marketing, doesn’t mean they have any actual ability to turn a player into a legitimate college recruit. The vast majority of these for-profit ID camp instructors aren’t actually college coaches or professional academy directors with direct responsibility for offering scholarships or contracts.
Here are five ways to avoid wasting money on the wrong college ID camp.
1) REVIEW THE EMAIL ADDRESS OF THE SENDER ON YOUR “INVITATION”
Most marketing efforts from college ID camps start with an email, usually after your team has attended a showcase event that shares players’ email addresses. So, the first sign of whether the email is actually an interested college program is to check the domain of the “from” email address that landed in your inbox. If it did NOT come directly from the EMAIL ADDRESS OF THE COLLEGE HAVING THE ID CAMP (almost always ending in .edu), that’s almost a sure thing it’s a marketing company and not an actual college program inviting you for a closer look.
(+READ: Best Practices for Youth Soccer Players Attending College ID Camps)
2) ALWAYS CONFIRM IF ATTENDANCE WILL BE CAPPED
You never really want to be at an ID event of any kind with more than about 50 other players, and the fewer the better. And that’s ALL players (If you’re a goalkeeper, don’t attend one that has more than 5 total goalkeepers). Any camp that won’t commit to a cap, or avoids answering this question definitively, is not “in it” to help you as much as they are to maximize the revenue they can get.
3) LEARN TO SNIFF OUT THE SPAM – ESPECIALLY D1 RECRUITS
ID camp companies trying to maximize attendance have become very ‘sophisticated’ in terms of email software, which can make GENERIC EMAILS that go out to thousands of recruits look ‘individual and personal’ by simply filling in a few ‘variable fields’ (name, club, position, etc). If your son or daughter receives one of these ID camp invites that appears to be a ‘personal invite’, check again to make sure it was sent from from the D1 college program that is having the ID camp. If not, and they are a legit D1 recruit you should probably ignore it. D2 and D3 programs might have legitimate reasons to partner with a marketing company however, so keep reading if that’s you.
4) BEWARE THE MULTI SCHOOL ID CAMP SALES PITCH
Non-D1 programs are actually pretty likely to hire or partner with a camp company to help them drive attendance. It’s expensive to do out-bound recruiting, and can actually be profitable to simply get the recruits to come to the school. The same message goes however as above to confirm if it’s a school-specific camp and to make sure there’s an attendance cap. But for all recruits, avoiding the “MULTI SCHOOL ID CAMP” email invite from an email address that is NOT directly from the universities attending themselves, is the best advice to avoid the money-grabbing camps.
5) JUST ASK YOUR TEAMMATES
If you still are unsure if an ID camp email invite is personal, one of the easiest ways to find out is to ask a couple teammates if they received the same one. If so, share the emails with each other to see if they were personally written, or simply a form email. While not impossible, the odds of multiple players on the same team being recruited to the same program and invited to the same ID camp is very low.
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