How We Evaluate Camps

Where camp data comes from

Every camp listing on this site starts with a primary source: the hosting school’s athletics page, the camp operator’s registration portal, or a verified email/PDF from a coaching staff. We do not fabricate listings, and we do not pull camp dates or prices from aggregator sites without finding the source page first.

Our scrape pipeline checks each source on a rotating schedule (most are revisited weekly), records the URL we extracted from, and stores a content hash so we can tell when a page has actually changed. When dates, costs, or registration links shift, the listing updates automatically and gets re-flagged for review.

What the editorial section on each page is

Every camp page has a written summary above the spec block. That summary is generated from facts already on the page — the camp type, division, gender, age range, format, head-coach attendance, and any review history — and then reviewed for tone and accuracy. It is not scraped from the school’s site, and it is not marketing copy from the camp operator.

We deliberately keep these summaries conservative. If we don’t know how many participants attend or which assistants run a particular session, we say so rather than guess. If a camp’s recruiting value depends on the program tier or who’s on the sideline, we explain why — with the caveat that any single camp is a snapshot, not a guarantee.

Conflicts of interest & how we make money

IDCampFinder does not take payment from camp operators or schools in exchange for placement, ranking position, or a more favorable writeup. There are no “featured” slots that can be purchased. We do not sell leads to college coaches, club teams, or third-party recruiting services.

When you click a registration link or a camp website link, we may attach an affiliate tracking parameter for camps where the operator runs an open affiliate program. The operator pays nothing extra; we get a small kickback if you register. The affiliate relationship has zero effect on whether a camp is listed or how it’s described — we list every camp we can verify whether they participate in any affiliate program or not.

Display advertising on this site is served by Google AdSense and is not coordinated with any specific camp.

How reviews work

Reviews on a camp page come from real attendees and their families. We do not seed reviews, write reviews on behalf of anyone, or trade favorable writeups for free camp slots. Each review captures separate scores for value-for-cost, coach engagement, and organization quality, plus a free-text pros and cons section.

Aggregate ratings are recomputed when a new review is published. We share reviews across recurring instances of the same camp (same school, same gender, same camp type) because a family’s experience at last year’s ID camp is generally relevant to this year’s — and because forcing each occurrence to start at zero reviews would erase useful signal. The series grouping is visible on each camp page and we’ll happily separate any series that’s changed materially (new head coach, new format).

When we get it wrong

We will. Coaching staffs change, schools rename camps mid-cycle, and registration pages get redirected. If you spot a date, price, coach name, or anything else that looks off, the fastest way to fix it is to contact us with the camp slug and what’s wrong. We will fix it, and if the correction came from the camp operator we’ll re-verify the source.

If you are a camp operator and don’t want a particular page on this site, write in. We don’t list camps over operator objections.

What we will not claim

• That attending a specific camp will get a specific recruit an offer.
• That any camp’s coaching staff is “evaluating recruits” unless the operator explicitly says so on their registration page.
• That a camp is “the best” in a category. We’ll describe what kind of recruit a camp seems to fit, and let reviews and the program tier speak for themselves.
• That an absent fact is a present one. If the operator doesn’t list a price, we don’t make one up.

Who writes this site

IDCampFinder is run by John Hull, a parent in Central Texas whose daughter went through the college soccer recruiting process in 2025. Editorial content on camp pages is generated from structured data and reviewed by John before publication. There is no separate editorial team at this point in the project — you can read more on the about page.