There are 2 primary reasons why Future 500 ID Camps don’t offer soccer camp evaluations. First, they are rarely accurate enough. Second, most top college coaches do not trust them.

Soccer Camp Evaluations Are Not Accurate/Detailed Enough

It is difficult if not impossible to capture all the nuances (social, emotional, psychological, technical, tactical, athletic) that a quality evaluation should capture in a camp environment.  

While a college coach will be able to determine if a player is someone they want to recruit after watching them in 1 or 2 matches, it takes a college coach a great deal more time to learn all aspects of a player’s game, personality and other intangibles. College coaches are well aware of this and as a result, don’t value/utilize camp evaluations.

College Coaches Don’t Trust Soccer Camp Evaluations

College coaches know that most camp owners/directors tell coaches only to write positive evaluations to avoid having to deal with parents who are unhappy because their son or daughter received an average or negative evaluation.  College coaches are well aware of this and rarely trust the evaluations — they know they are overinflated.

As a result, when we advise families on the college search and recruiting process, we have begun to advise families NOT to send CAMP evaluations to college coaches.  It is fine to send an evaluation from your club soccer coach as they have been with the player for a much longer period of time — but it is not helpful to send an evaluation from a camp because they are not accurate – college coaches know it — and thus they have no credibility.

Send a soccer highlight video instead!

Instead of sending soccer camp evaluations, players should send short edited videos (approximately 4-6 minutes in length) so the college coach can make their own assessment.  Adidas Future 500 ID Camps have a company at each camp  that takes video of all 11 v 11 matches at camp and makes it available for purchase after camp (or see our blog on how to make your own recruiting video).

We can not emphasize strongly enough the value of high-quality edited video as an effective means to help players get recruited by colleges. While it takes some time to acquire and edit video, we believe it is well worth the time and effort.