Podcast: Sports Recruiting USA’s Don Williams on how players find the right fit

Sports Recruiting USA Head of Operations Don Williams joined 'The Goal.' (Courtesy photo)

The latest guest on New England Soccer Journal’s “The Goal” podcast is Head of Operations for Sports Recruiting USA, Don Williams.

Williams coached soccer for over two decades at the college and professional levels. 

At Sports Recruiting USA, he is part of a group of 100-plus former college and pro coaches and players who run a college player pathway management and placement firm. They essentially serve as player agents to assist players from across the country in making decisions during the recruiting process.

Williams, who is based in northern California, joined host Matt Langone to discuss tips for players to keep in mind during their recruitment process and some of the most important elements that make players a good fit at various levels of college soccer.

The full podcast can be accessed below and is available on all major platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review.

Here are some highlights from our discussion with Williams:

On Sports Recruiting USA:

Williams: “Well, the organization started in 2010, the same year that I began at a junior college up in California, in the mountains, in the same town I live in. A town of 5,000 people and a county of 20,000. Two stoplights in the whole county, the middle of nowhere. I was there and there was nothing to recruit. There was no club there, so I had to go worldwide. I had to branch out if I wanted a competitive team, and Sports Recruiting USA was one of the international companies that we recruited from, and they were the people I liked the most. Their kids were more prepared, they were more honest as a company. They were more open to us as a junior college, speaking to even their better players. Other companies would play gatekeeper and say ‘no, you can’t talk to that player.'”

On the Division 1-or-bust mentality that some players have:

Williams: “This all depends on how good you are as a soccer player. It is where it has to start. If we’re talking about playing — everybody says it starts with the academics — but it starts with what you want to do for a living. For some kids, that’s 100% true. For other kids, it’s not. But for me, we’re talking about playing soccer in college. So, it has to begin with how good of a player you are.”

On the importance of players hearing realistic voices:

Williams: “It’s really important to have somebody who has no skin in the game. Coaches, your club coaches, have skin in the game. It’s very important to their livelihood and possibly career moves that they make everybody happy. That they don’t have people walking around going, ‘yeah, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’ As a club coach, it’s hard to go to a kid and go, ‘look, I saw your list of schools, no way you’re playing at any of those schools ever.’ That’s never happening. What’s happening is the worst piece of advice that I’ve ever heard in the history of college coaching advice, and that’s ‘pick the schools that you want to go to, that you are interested in, and then write those schools and then go to their camps.’

On the transfer portal in college soccer:

Williams: “Instead of us teaching kids resiliency. Instead of teaching kids delayed gratification, the art of appreciating delayed gratification, which is probably my No. 1 problem with our current system — youth and college — is this idea and we are eliminating delayed gratification.” 

Matt Langone is the managing editor for New England Soccer Journal. You can email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @MattLangone.