Soccerista United’s 2024 Summer Session is Live!

April 12, 2024
By Samantha Cary

It’s been over one year since we launched our NIL-based mentorship program, Soccerista United, and we are ecstatic to announce that our summer session is now open for registration! It will kick off on May 1 and run through the end of July 2024. If you don’t already know, this program allows girl soccer players to grow their game by being mentored by elite college athletes from across the country. The program is specifically tailored for girls ages 9 to 15 and involves bi-weekly individual Zoom meetings with your assigned college squad captain.

SPACE IS LIMITED SO SIGN UP TODAY!

How It Works

This year’s SU follows the same format as last year’s; it’s a virtual program that consists of our Squad Captains (college players) mentoring our Socceristas (girls in the community). Each meeting will consist of a 30-minute 1-on-1 session between the Soccerista and Squad Captain to offer specialized advice on a unique topic not typically covered during soccer practice. Topics include nutrition, the recruiting process, confidence on and off the field, navigating team dynamics, and much more.

This opportunity is available for $90 for the 3-month period of May, June, and July (6 meetings, 2 per month). Buy the program here.

How We Pick Our College Mentors

People ask us, how do you pick your mentors? Our secret sauce for acquiring our mentors is this: we watch a lot of college soccer and get referrals from coaches and teammates. It’s important that our mentors perform not only on the field but also in the classroom and community. Perhaps the most important thing is that each of these young women wants to teach the future generation about aspects of the game not typically covered in practice.

Here are six of our eleven summer mentors! See the rest here: Squad Captains!

How We Pair Our Mentors With Socceristas

We have a form that both the girls and mentors fill out, and we use that to match players with mentors. We also do our best to make the pairings as geographically desirable as possible. Because we don’t have mentors in every city across the country, we do our best to make it logistically desirable. For example, last summer, we had several players go to their mentor’s preseason games or a camp they were working at and meet them! That was totally thrilling for both parties!

We also listen to the needs of the girls and parents as to what they are looking for. If having a goalkeeper as your mentor is the top priority, but the two keepers are across the country, we will work that out.

How We’ve Evolved

This is the fourth edition of Soccerista United. As with any program, we’re always looking to improve the experience. Our Squad Captains are picked from the best of the best, and past ones have gone on to become NCAA national champions (Christina Roque, FSU), NWSL draftees (2024 #1 Overall Pick—Ally Sentnor, UNC), and overseas professional soccer players (Program director—Sam Cary, University of Iowa, now playing pro in Sweden).

This year, we have eleven Squad Captains with amazing knowledge and experience, including all of them playing in the 2023 Division I NCAA tournament. The current Squad Captains’ experience ranges from US youth national teams to NCAA all-Americans and everything in between.

Another update is that we’ve extended the duration from two months to three, going from May through July. This allows enough time for meaningful relationships to be formed and many topics to be discussed.

The college athletes chosen attend schools across the country, from UCLA to Florida State University, the reigning NCAA DI National Champions. Other schools include elite programs like BYU, St. Louis University, Wisconsin, and the University of North Carolina. There is representation from the Pac-12, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, and WCC.

Soccerista United is an exciting opportunity for youth players to grow their game and learn from the best, and we are so excited to launch this program again for the 4th straight year.

Purchase Soccerista United here!