What are the benefits of playing in ECRL?
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Anonymous
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DD is currently in U11, and our club has just lost its pathway to ECNL/GA. The only options now are ECRL and Rec. What are the benefits of playing in ECRL versus Rec?
Should I have her try out for a club that still has a pathway? Would it be better to move her now at U12 or wait until U13? |
Anonymous
| depends on how seriously she wants to take soccer. But earlier is better. |
Anonymous
| There's literally no comparison between ECRL and a rec league, and please don't let anybody tell you differently. She can play very competitive soccer on an ECRL team and eventually move to an ECNL team if she's good enough. |
Anonymous
| There is a pretty big difference between Rec and ECRL. Does your club have teams in-between that play in NCSL? I would say most kids who are still playing rec at U11 likely aren’t sufficiently prepared to play ECRL. |
Anonymous
| ECRL and Rec is a huge disparity, but your question doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're worried they won't make the ECRL team, then definitely tryout somewhere else. There are multiple tiers in between. |
Anonymous
| Lol, i love how we all answered this in unison |
Anonymous
| The main difference is between travel and rec and which is better depends on what your daughter is looking for. Travel is more commitment, more practices, more games, with more expectations that you are going to attend most of them. Rec has less expectations and commitments. Does your daughter have other sports or activities she wants to pursue, or is soccer the main thing? Does she enjoy practicing soccer or just games? |
Anonymous
| Also if you're trying to troll, you have your answer |
Anonymous
| What club lost their pathway |
Anonymous
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ECRL is a couple steps down from ECNL, but rec soccer is about 10 steps down from ECRL.
If your goal is to have your kid play ECNL or GA starting in 2026, putting them in rec right now would be the worst idea possible. My advice would be to stick it out in pre-ECNL for another year and then make the switch to a club with GA or ECNL in the spring of 2026. There is usually a ton of player movement between U12 and U13, so if your daughter is good enough she’ll find a team at the top of the soccer food pyramid. |
Anonymous
Valor with NVA is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. And as we all know, that wasn’t much of a pathway for Valor kids to begin with. |
Anonymous
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Your club had dual pathway to either GA or ECNL? You may be confused. Clubs either have one pathway or another, typically.
Regardless, ECNL RL is a very high level compared to rec. I would try to get onto the ECNL RL team at least. That should offer a fairly serious level of play with practices 3 times per week. However, ECNL RL has a wide variety of clubs in this area... some teams are easy to get on and don't compete very well in ECNL RL and some teams are very hard to get on. If you get on a team and you are excelling, you can try out at a ECNL or GA club later. If your DD is U11 now, it would be hard to try to go to a club with a Pre-GA team or Pre-ECNL team. Those teams are stacked and they might only add as few as 3 kids to the U12 rosters next year. And most of this kids will probably come from the 2nd teams. But if that is what you want to do, you could tryout for one of those clubs this spring and see what level of team she gets. |
Anonymous
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Op here, DD loves soccer, but she was just promoted from Rec to Travel this year, and it seems like she needs to catch up with the other kids in her league. Have you ever known a kid in ECRL to make it to ECNL in later years?
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Anonymous
Definitely |
Anonymous
Sure, but let's be realistic here. These are very big jumps consecutively. |