The women's soccer team signed five new recruits Feb. 2, marking the culmination of recruiting season.
"It was exciting to have them finally sign their national letter of intent," said Amy Berbary, assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. "It's been a long time coming because we recruit these kids very early."
The new recruits--Jessica Clanton from Mililani, Hawaii; Tatiana Coleman from Boca Raton, Fla.; Chelsea Gandy-Cromer from Norcross, Ga.; Tess Patton from Gainesville, Ga.; Morgan Samples from Avondale, Pa.--represent the team's efforts to recruit a wide variety of players from across the country.
However, finding players in the Southeast is always a top priority because players often want to remain close to home, Berbary said.
Auburn competes against schools like Georgia and Alabama for the top recruits, Berbary said.
Auburn can't pay for an official visit until a player's high school senior year, so players who want to tour the school at an earlier age often come from the Southeast.
"Women's soccer has really become a long process--we start looking at these kids when they're sophomores," said head coach Karen Hoppa. "Unfortunately, it's kind of the nature of our sport right now, but the prospective student-athletes are committing earlier and earlier."
Hoppa said the good thing about soccer is once athletes commit to a school, they usually remain committed.
Hoppa said soccer's recruiting class size varies, but averages between six and eight players.
"I equate our recruiting to men's basketball," Hoppa said. "It is very competitive.
"There are over 320 division one women's soccer programs and there are so many good programs out there."
Another key element of the recruiting process is where coaches find the players they recruit.
"All of the higher level soccer players play on a club team in addition to their high school team, and that's where the majority of our recruiting is done," Hoppa said.
Much of the time spent recruiting involves traveling around the country to major club-level tournaments.
The team also recruits out of the Olympic development program, which forms a youth national team.
Nearly every player on the team is recruited, but the amount of athletic scholarship or aid an individual player receives varies.
"Volleyball and women's basketball--all of those kids are on full scholarship, whereas soccer is broken up because we only have 14 full scholarships to divide among however many people we have on our team, which I think in the fall we'll have 27 members," Berbary said.
She said one of the biggest challenges is convincing players to come on less than a full scholarship.
Katy Goodman, junior in English, said she is excited to see the new soccer recruits in action.
"It definitely has a different energy to it," Goodman said, "and oddly enough, sometimes I think girls' soccer can be a bit more competitive, which is what makes soccer, in general, so great."
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