Thoughts from the elderly:
1. There are five types of "D1" situations: full scholarship where you start, full scholarship where you play but don't start, full scholarship where you get there and never play; partial scholarship; walk on. In every one of these situations, the player can say that they "played D1 ball". Long, long time ago, I had a full scholarship to Clemson to play basketball, but went to Davidson and walked on and played (never got a scholarship). I "played D1 ball" but in reality didn't play a lot but I got two years of the experience.
2. EVERY young soccer player has a day in their future where their career will slow down dramatically or end. It is not a matter of if, but when. They may be 50, but it will eventually stop.
3. Most importantly, in my personal opinion, is that your daughter remembers that she is a daughter who plays soccer instead of a soccer player who happens to be a daughter. D1, D3, community college - my grandsons could care less what level I played at or what sport. Time is coming where the kind of person you are is much more important than the level you played at or the sport.
4. Best coach/athlete conversation that I have ever heard was between Hershey Strosberg (Clemson) and my daughter Marissa. Hershey watched her very early this year after promising Marissa to wait until she had finished rehab. She could barely run in early February, but he kept his promise. He told her that: (1) she could play D1; (2) with the record in the ACC that last year's Clemson team had, he had to recruit players who were exceptionally better than the current level just to compete in the ACC which I believe is very realistic; (3) she could play at Clemson, but she might not play very much and she might never get on the field if they were able to recruit the kind of kids he hoped to recruit. FLAT HONEST - I loved every word,and Marissa did too. End result - Hershey recruits the ESPN player of the year as a striker (160+ career goals; POY 3 times), and Marissa is going to Clemson as student tickled to death.
If it is that important to a young lady to play in college at some level, I do hope that they make it. My advice would be to let them enjoy every day of this and not push some possibly unreasonable goal on them that an injury or change in their life might make impossible.
They are only kids once.
ROH
