But about 200 teenagers from the Football South catchment area were under the watchful eye of NSR scouts at Logan Park last night, starting a process which could find them at an American university or college in the coming years.
NSR, a company started by former professional footballer Marco Maisano in 2006, has established a partnership with New Zealand Football this year to give footballers the chance to eventually find themselves in the American system.
NSR US college consultant Jillian Levi said more than 700 student athletes from across Australia and New Zealand were at American universities and colleges this year as a result of NSR's scouting and promotion in the nine sports it works in.
Footballers from year 9 to the first year of university in the Football South area received a letter inviting them to trial last night if they had not opted out of third-party communication, Levi said.
‘‘From the very start, you have to want to go to the US and not everyone does.''
Levi pointed out the Ivy League schools and top colleges were just a handful of the 4000 universities and colleges in the United States. About 2500 of those schools have football [soccer] programmes.
‘‘With that, it's all different levels. You've got your Harvards, then you've got your small schools that you've never heard of,'' she said.
‘‘We promote students to the best of what they give us to work with.''
Last night's trials, featuring ‘‘small-sided games'', would give the NSR staff a good insight into not just the physical skills but mental skills.
‘‘We tend to find small-sided games are really good at displaying what people have to offer, and a lot of showing us not only their abilities, but personalities and teamwork,'' she said.
After the trials, NSR would contact the footballers who made their mark and ‘‘not everyone is invited back to interviews''.
‘‘The interview section is where we look at the rest - school reports, personalities, family dynamics, does someone's dreams and goals match with this kind of thing?
‘‘Because we want to make sure this is the right kind of programme for them. It's not just the soccer aspect - because they are going over for university as a student athlete, not an athlete student.''
NSR is realistic with the prospective athletes about worst-case scenarios in terms of costs, but Levi said scholarships actually assist the majority of their placed athletes in some way.
‘‘The difference is that a scholarship in the US does not mean 100% [of the costs],'' she said.
‘‘Scholarship could mean $500 or $70,000. It can be any range. Generally, the first year of our athletes going over, we'll find about 80% of them are on a scholarship of some form. And then once they're over there, about 97% will have it in some form in their four years.
‘‘You can earn [a scholarship] while you're over there as the system doesn't believe you're going to go over and stay stagnant.''
