SoccerProse.com Introduction: For most young competitive soccer players in the United States the highest level of play will be in college. The MLS and A-League provide a chance for an elite few to go on to professional careers, but the college game reaches out to thousands of young players who want to keep playing organized competitive soccer beyond high school. Soccerprose.com thought it would be interesting to follow the path a teenager takes to go from their club and high school game and find a roster spot in college. We’ll find out what it takes to get noticed by recruiters and how does a player choose between their ultimate college soccer experience and selecting a school that gives him or her the education they need for their professional career after college.
If you’re going through the same situation as Mason and have ideas to help him or any player like him please post your thoughts. It helps to know that you’re not alone out there.
Without further adieu SoccerProse.com introduces Mason. He’s a great soccer player from central Missouri and wants to play in college – which is two years away. So, how does a kid from the Midwest get noticed by college recruiters? Follow Mason’s blog and see.
My name is Mason Morawitz and I am a sophomore at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri. I have played soccer ever since I was about 5 years old and I have always loved the sport. Ever since I was little I’ve wanted to be a professional soccer player. Now being a sophomore and 16 years old, my sights are set on playing soccer in college. I have played competitive soccer for about 7 years now and my family and some of my friends believe I can make it at the next level. Hopefully I will prove them right.
For the Hickman High School soccer team I play at center-mid where I am constantly with the ball at my feet. As a young player I was always faster than everyone and usually played forward, but now that has everyone has grown much taller than me and grown faster, I have to use my skill to beat them. I am about 5 foot 6, 130 lbs, so I am almost always one of the smallest guys on the field. Although small, I have been told I play with a lot of tenacity and I don’t back down to taller opponents. I am hoping that my aggressive style of play will be enough to make up for my lack of size at the next level. This year was the 2006-2007 season for soccer and we did fairly well. I was the only sophomore that started with a bunch of juniors and seniors so I was proud to be able to start. I scored 5 goals and had about 8 assists this season.
The team I am hoping to get noticed the most with would be my competitive team called SYSMEX. It is coached by Drew Hamilton and Tim Dillon. These guys have coached me all of my life and I really enjoy playing under them. Especially Drew Hamilton, he’s a guy that has been a role model for me. He also played at Hickman and won the MVP of the team his senior season. As far as the people on my SYSMEX team goes, they are mostly from our cross-town rival, Rock Bridge, but I have played with most of them my whole life so we get along fine. We have a pretty good team this year and I expect big things. In the past we have been ranked up to 3rd in the state so we’ve been known to be pretty good. Our first tournament was this past weekend which was the Border Battle in Jefferson City. We played all right for our first couple games. We won one game and lost two. We played St Louis Soccer club (Busch) who is a good club and beat them, then we lost to Avalon, a game we should have won, and then got beaten pretty handily to KCFC out of Lenexa, Kansas. The KCFC team has won state in Kansas 3 years in a row so they’re a good team. I am hoping that we will continue to play all of this good competition so that it will make me and my team better.
I have also been looking at soccer camps to go to try and get noticed by college scouts. I think that I will be going to the Missouri State soccer camp this summer with a guy on my team named Adam Ross. There is a bunch of coaches out of the Midwest that are going to be going there such as the coach of SLU, Creighton, Arizona (maybe), and then of course Missouri State. The college I am really looking at is SLU. They are one of the best teams in the nation every year and it would really be an honor to attend that university. In order to do that, however, I will have to get a lot better than I am right now because I don’t think anyone out of Columbia has gone to a big school like that for soccer. I am hoping that if I continue to work hard and get better that one day I’ll make it in college soccer.
