When going through the college soccer recruitment process, it’s helpful to compile game tape that highlights your best skills as a soccer player and send it to prospective college coaches. It is important to understand that this highlight video should not be of your entire soccer game. You want to make it easy for a college coach to watch your video and quickly get an idea of the type of soccer player that you are. Highlight videos are also not necessarily limited to your games. It is fine to show yourself in a training session excelling at one of your strengths as a player. However, coaches are interested in seeing how you handle yourself in a real game situation, and therefore it typically helps to stick with film footage from your games.
Here are a few soccer tips on what to include in your highlight video:
Use a quality camera and camera person: College soccer coaches use game highlight videos often for two reasons: to get an initial idea of the type of soccer player you are, or to see you play one more time before making their final decision. In both cases, it is used to replace seeing you actually play in person, and therefore it is important to make sure that your video is high quality. First make sure that the camera you are using is good for capturing sports footage, and that it is able to access editing software. Try to have someone who knows the game of soccer do your filming, as they will know where to focus the camera to get the best video of you playing.
Edit the film to highlight your strengths: College soccer coaches are interested in seeing how you play the game. They want to know whether you are a smart player, what your physical strengths are, and what your skill level is. When choosing what to keep and what to cut from your game tape, try to really capture the type of player you are. If you are a forward, don’t just use the footage of you shooting and scoring a goal, include the build up. If you made a brilliant run to get into a position to give your team a scoring opportunity, sometimes this is more important to a coach than the actual goal. This shows that you are a smart player with good movement off the ball.
Compile footage from multiple games: Try to film yourself over several games, and then sit down and choose the best highlights from each one. Compile this footage into the video you send to college coaches. The more opportunities you give yourself, the better your chances are of finding something that really exemplifies the type of soccer player you are. You should be using a number of different clips, but altogether try to keep the video under 12 minutes.
Since highlight tapes only show bits and pieces of you in a game, it is very important to make sure that you have mastered the skills you are trying to showcase. It may be helpful to work with a private coach to help you develop skills that will take you to the next level before going ahead and sending in your highlight tape. As always, it is better to have a coach see you live rather than on a video. Be sure to check out CoachUp’s soccer resources to learn more about attending college showcases and the college recruitment process.
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