Cork soccer players are in demand from College Scholarship USA group

DAVID Stanbra, a recruitment specialist for College Scholarships USA, has admitted he would love his company to form a collaboration with Cork City after recently helping two members of the women’s side secure a move to America.

With the assistance of Stanbra and CSUSA, striker Lauren Egbuloniu and goalkeeper Leah Hayes Coen have committed to scholarships at Louisiana Tech University and High Point University in North Carolina respectively.

They will follow in the footsteps of Maria O’Sullivan and Éabha O’Mahony, who secured their moves Stateside on their own accord, with Egbuloniu making the move this summer while Hayes Coen will depart in January 2022.

“We are not currently collaborated with Cork City but we’d love to be,” Stanbra told The Echo.

“Cork is a great breeding ground for talent, we can’t really approach Cork about it because it’s really their decision.

“It’s their players, they’ve produced and worked with every day, every week so we can’t say ‘ok, yeah they need to come to us’ but we would love to collaborate with Cork if we could, absolutely.

“What we don’t do is ever say this is the correct route, we say this is a really good route for you to progress as a professional player and get an education, that’s a massive part of it.” 

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Since 2007, CSUSA has been helping young athletes from numerous countries and across numerous other sports to continue their career and their education in America.

Egbuloniu and Hayes Coen made contact with the recruiters to help secure a move to a University specific to their own ambitions and both matched the athletic and academic standards required to be selected for a scholarship following an evaluation.

“They are going to do really good things in America, I have no doubt about it,” enthused Stanbra.

“They had everything they need both as an athlete - the level they are playing at - and also their academics.

The evaluation process we go through is very thorough. I think that is where the people we don’t talk to fall down, you have to be academically adept enough to go and these two were.

“We only get to the point where we talk to someone about doing it if they are eligible to go.

“These two girls are obviously very talented and we believe we have found them two really good deals that suit them perfectly.

“The coach needs them, they need the school, they have the right courses they want to study so it just fits very well.

“Their whole tuition, room, board, everything is paid for which is really good and both the schools they are going to are of the highest standard that you can get in America.

“It’s a really enjoyable thing to do when you have girls that are determined to do it and both these two were.”