I just now read this thread and am glad to hear as a parent and player that we're on the right track. My son and I have talked about this many times since the initial recruitment started with the school he eventually signed with. He's a freshman now with just a couple weeks under his belt. But the way he laid out his goals were:
1) Make the team
2) Make the travel squad
3) Earn some playing time
4) Become a starter
5) Keep the starting job
He knew going in that reaching these goals would come one at a time and each of them would be more difficult than the previous one. He was well aware of the mountain he set out to climb.
It's still way too early to know how it's going to turn out but reading the previous posts it's reassuring to see that my (and his) expectations aren't to far apart from y'all that have been through this before.