Two years ago, the University of Texas made waves when it accepted the verbal commitment of Solar Chelsea attacking midfielder Haley Berg. A 2017 and now the No. 27 player in that class, Berg’s story captured the attention of the country when the New York Times ran a profile on her recruitment story.

Texas, like many other programs in the country, didn’t wait until Berg was out of middle school to begin its recruitment. After weighing a number of options amidst the escalating arms race that is women’s college soccer, Berg, then 14, offered her pledge to Texas the summer before entering high school.

As of today, she still has another year in club soccer before she arrives on campus.

Haley is not a once-in-a-generation talent like LeBron James. She just happens to be a very good soccer player, and that is now valuable enough to set off a frenzy among college coaches, even when — or especially when — the athlete in question has not attended a day of high school. For Haley, the process ended last summer, a few weeks before ninth grade began, when she called the coach at Texas to accept her offer of a scholarship four years later. “When I started in seventh grade, I didn’t think they would talk to me that early,” Haley, now 15, said after a tournament late last month in Central Florida, where Texas coaches showed up to watch her juke past defenders, blond ponytail bouncing behind. “Even the coaches told me, ‘Wow, we’re recruiting an eighth grader,’ ” she said.

As of this week, Berg is no longer the youngest commit in program history. Say hello to Alexis Missimo, a rising eighth grader who just committed to the Longhorns five years from the start of her college freshman season. Missimo is also, probably, the youngest college-committed player in the country. Anywhere.

She is a 2021.

I am excited to announce I have verbally committed to play soccer with my sister for coach Kelly @ UT!!!Hook em pic.twitter.com/7N8htPangd — leximissimo (@LMissimo) July 25, 2016

Missimo is hardly an unknown to anyone who runs through the ECNL circuit. She played up with Solar Chelsea’s U14 team – the same Solar Chelsea pipeline Berg plays for – this past season, and in spurts she was a revelation. A naturally diminutive attacking midfielder, Missimo largely slotted into the space between the lines and ran the show as a proper No. 10. It’s hard to find creativity this good anywhere, and if she isn’t in more U14 and U15 U.S. GNT camps in the coming year, it’ll be a surprise. The fact that she already has a blank profile page on U.S. Soccer’s website is no accident.

She first popped onto our radar in February, when she made our Best XI at the Houston ECNL national event. Five months later, she was named to our ECNL Playoffs Best XI at the U14 age range, and if we’d picked an MVP she might’ve won that too. She did all this playing up in age and giving up both size and speed to her counterparts.

And then, less than a month after the ECNL Playoffs, Missimo offered her verbal commitment to the Longhorns. As a 2021. For some level of perspective, we don’t even start grading 2021s for another year. We only just released our first list of top 2020s this month.

Women’s college soccer has become a desultory race that now reaches middle school players and asks them by proxy to choose their college fates before they’ve even stepped foot on a high school campus. In Missimo’s case, she’s now committed to a college program – one that could change wholesale by the time she arrives – before starting eighth grade. The only weighty future decision I could’ve been trusted with in eighth grade was whether LA Lights were still cool or not.

It’s clear Missimo is a special talent. It’s equally clear women’s college soccer is, unfortunately, not backing off its drive to accept the recruitment of younger and younger players. Texas only felt the need to offer Missimo this early because she was likely fielding similar offers from a handful of other big programs, if not dozens. The Longhorns were merely operating in the diseased system. In turn, that applies pressure on the player to commit, and thus the carousel turns.

Every player is different. Perhaps Missimo really is ready, or at least as ready as an eighth grader can be to commit to something a half decade away. But if this opens up pathways to players who aren’t, who is being served here?

It’s hard to imagine women’s college soccer recruiting reaching even younger players, but based on past returns, don’t blink. We may soon see our first sixth grader committing to college soccer.