What is MatchPlay?
There are over 800,000 U.S. high school athletes who participate on teams or in soccer programs on some level. There are approximately 45,000 college soccer players between Division I, II, III, NAIA, and NJCAA which means only 5% of high school players become college soccer athletes. Based on this statistic, it's an incredibly competitive process and big accomplishment to play college soccer.
MatchPlay's mission is to reduce the ambiguity of the recruiting process by curating expert insights, data, and relevant information to help you become part of that 5%.
A deeply personal reason sparked the idea of MatchPlay. Like most of you who are athletes or have kids who play a sport, my kids began in sports at a young age. My son started in soccer and since I was familiar with the game, I was able to provide a little direction early on and developed contacts and friendships within the sport.
As he got older, my son had more guidance from our friends in soccer when he decided he wanted to pursue playing beyond high school and into college. He had the ability to play at that level, however, without the contacts we established, we would have been lost trying to navigate that process on our own.
MatchPlay provides the guidance most young athletes and their families don't have access to when exploring the option to play at the collegiate level. I've talked to countless families who wish they had more information about the process and insights that you can only get from having conversations with people who actually do the recruiting. Our content fills that knowledge gap and eases the anxiety of making one of the biggest decisions of your life.
Being recruited is an intimidating process. All you want is a chance to show who you are and what you can do to as many coaches as possible but in reality, this often ends up being anyone who will watch. You just want to feel the love, find a place that makes you feel that you belong somewhere, a place to realize your dream of being a college athlete.
A college coach's job is to bring in the most optimal mix of players. This isn't solely based on their athletic ability. Who they are as an individual and what they're made of is equally vital to assembling a team that creates the best chance for success.
MatchPlay helps you learn how put your best foot forward in all these areas so you can showcase your talent, personality, and capabilities in ways that will help you get noticed and make informed decisions.
Relevant and insightful tips, stories and information from a collection of college coaches, current college players, parents and other experienced professionals in the field share their advice for you in our Blog and Podcast!
If you are a current listener of the podcast and find the information valuable, please consider buying me a coffee to help offset the production costs so I can continue offering this service at no cost to my audience.