We are officially in the process, and we are really looking forward to helping you on your journey to the US! The process is unique for each individual student and there will be several people who will work with you.
HERE you can see who works in Keystone Sports to help you to the USA.
There is no set time in how long it will take before we find interest from coaches in the United States. We will use our network to find schools that we think fit your ”profile”. Some coaches recruit early and fast, others take more time and do not decide until late during the recruitment year. Remember that you compete with many athletes to get scholarships and/or a place in a team and at a school. The timing of the process is important when we market you to coaches in the USA. The sooner you complete your onboarding tasks on My Keystone Sports (the information we need to promote you to coches), the faster you can get offers from coaches.
It is very important that you, the athlete, are involved in the process, that you are proactive and complete the tasks assigned to you. It will make the process and your journey to the United States much easier for you to manage. In most cases, you cannot take the next step in the process until you have taken the previous step. We highly encourage the athlete to do as much of the process themselves. It is great practice for being self sufficient when in the US and a good time to practice balancing school, sport practice and life tasks!
If you forget, or do not do things we ask of you, it can have a negative impact on your college process and your time in the US. Remember, this is a collaboration, and we need your help to do the best job possible for you. We are usually quick to respond to emails and WhatsApp messages, so if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
Organisation
The recruitment process contains many elements. Here are some tips for organising yourself early:
- We like to have your parents involved in the process and aware of what is going on. Unless you ask us otherwise, we will include them in all email correspondence.
- We will be sending you a lot of emails, coaches and schools will also communicate via email. It is extremely important that you check your emails daily, including your junk. Day to day, we will most likely communicate via WhatsApp, so if you don’t have this, we recommend you download the app now.
- We will need many scanned documents from you during the process. If you do not have access to a scanner at home, we recommend an app called Genius Scan. It allows you to take a picture of the document and convert it to a PDF file. Image files will in a lot of cases not be accepted, so this is important!
- Genius Scan on the Apple App Store
- Genius Scan on the Google Play Store
- Create a folder on your computer for this process and use this to keep all documents relevant to your process.
- A lot of the websites you will use in the process are not mobile friendly, ensure you have access to a laptop/PC!
As you begin the process, we recommend you ensure your social media contains no content that could potentially be off-putting for a coach. They may check your accounts as part of the scouting process. Think about your @, your profile photo and bio. There is now also social media vetting as part of the visa application process, anything anti-USA, anti-social etc. can result in your visa being denied!
This also applies to things such as your WhatsApp profile picture and status, and your email address.
Finally, we post a lot of interesting content and information about college in the USA on our social media channels. We recommend that you follow us on
Instagram and
LinkedIn. You can also check out our podcast
Pursue Podcast on Spotify YouTube or Apple Podcasts.
FAQs
It's understandable that throughout this process yourselves and your parents will have a lot of questions. We have put a lot of the common questions we get into this
FAQ section. We recommend you take a look and bookmark this page to come back to in the future.
Physical preparation
We cannot stress enough the difference in fitness levels expected in the US from what you experience at home. Many athletes massively underestimate the levels of fitness and stamina required at the college level and almost all athletes say they’ve never been fitter than when they were in college! A good bare minimum benchmark for soccer players would be to run a sub 12 minute 2 mile.
You must work incredibly hard before you depart to be in great physical shape and as prepared as possible for a very tough pre-season. Many teams are training two (sometimes three) times a day during the pre-season and it is very demanding training. Moreover, it can often be hot and humid. Most likely, very different conditions than what you are used to.