My College Soccer Career

Why you should start your soccer career with College soccer
Soccer is increasingly becoming the most popular sports for many college students in the US. The popularity of the game is evident in the neighborhood fields where high school pick-up games are a common sight. One of the greatest incentives of pursuing soccer in college is obtaining soccer scholarship. Indeed, if you are a good soccer player attending a US college, you can easily obtain a degree on by banking on your skills since virtually every college has a soccer scholarship program for boys and girls. Recruitment begins in high school during where the talent can be identified and nurtured at the hire college level. According to College Scholarship organization, the majority of college soccer scholarships are regulated by 3 primary associations, NJCAA, NCAA and NAIA.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was established over 100 years ago to safeguard the interest of students who participate in various sporting activities and streamlining all aspects of competitive sports at the college level. The organization manages sporting activities under three divisions, NCAA 1, NCAA II and NCAA III. The
National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) is a relatively smaller organization that offers scholarship opportunities to students who want to pursuing education and sports. The National Junior College Athletics Association (NJCAA) on the other hand, is charged with overseeing athletics events in all junior and community colleges in the US. In terms of statistics, over 130,000 athletics scholarships are awarded for Division I and II while the average scholarship amounts stands at about $10,000 for an academic year.

If your motivation to play soccer is to become a professional soccer player, you can combine the college playtime that runs from August to November with additional play and training in an armature soccer side. Obtaining a soccer scholarship will also open the doors for you to pursue various sporting careers such as coaching, journalism, sporting events coordinator and sports medicine among other opportunities. Although several sentiments have been raised, castigating college games for impeding the development of US soccer and the MLS in the long term. The truth of the matter revels this is a huge misconception. According to an opinion piece by Robert Kehoe on Americasoccernow.com, the composition of the 2014 US World Cup team shows a staggering 11 players played college soccer.

The players include Brad Guzan, Alejandro Bedoya, Brad Davis and DeAndre Yedlin who played for South Carolina, Boston College, Saint Louis and Akron universities respectively.
Besides the composition, the US team managed to advance from the group of death into the knockout rounds. The success of players such as Yedlin, Besler and Gonzalez are already on the radar of some major European clubs looking to bolster their playing unit over the coming seasons. The report also indicates that unlike many international soccer players playing in major professional leagues around the world, US soccer player’s posses college degrees. MLS is also in the process of propping the game by introducing European style growth and adoption program which will see young lads pursuing football at a competitive
level.