Yesung ’25, hopes to spread knowledge and awareness of the college’s recruiting process and build leadership and cooperation skills within the youth in his community.
In Hong Kong, the sports recruiting process for US colleges is almost nonexistent and remains a very vague idea. If not for me attending a US boarding school, I doubt I would’ve known being recruited to a college was even possible. In addition, the number of athletes from Hong Kong playing in a US college is slim, with under 10 soccer players actively playing in the NCAA. Unfortunately, due to the lack of players in the NCAA and general information in Hong Kong, this pathway struggles to surface. It remains an unknown and rare occurrence for an athlete to be scouted to play in a US university. Through these sessions, I hope to spread knowledge and awareness of the college’s recruiting process in my local community and build leadership and cooperation skills in these young players.
Here is an outline of my main goals
- I hope to spread information and awareness about playing soccer in US colleges.
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- I will do this by providing a Q&A for parents and participants in my sessions answering any questions about the pathway and providing them with a simplified collage requiting process infographic.
- I hope that by inspiring a younger generation, they will be prepared and knowledgeable about what to do in the future when their time comes to be recruited. I also hope word spreads and in the future see more Hong Kong-originated athletes participating in college sports.
- I hope to provide the children with an array of effective drills they can practice alone or with friends. This will help them develop in the future, helping them improve to be ready to play at the collegiate level.
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- In addition to running through the drills in my session, I will be giving away 10 cones to each participant for them to practice the drills by themselves.
- I hope to develop leadership and communicative skills in these children. I hope they will be able to take the initiative and help their teammates.
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- I plan to do this by incorporating multiple team games and drills which allows them to work together as a group.
- These skills are not just important in soccer but also in daily life so I hope to develop them in my sessions.
