Any word from Arlington?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ECNL is not selecting teams based on whats good for the kids. They are not picking teams based on how much travel you as parents have to do. Nor are they concerned about High School rivalries. Lets be honest, its a business and they sit atop the pecking order now. They will make decisions in their own best interest as anyone or any business would do.

Stop it already with suggesting all this nonsense in the interest of the kids or competition or...

+1

[Anonymous]

ECNL headquarters are in Va. I am sure they are sensitive to fairly local issues. Arlington should have filed for both girls and boys at once and not waited. Hopefully this will be resolved. Also ECNl should be looking at travel issues because we may not have normal travel for an entire year. We may open up a bit for summer but expect shut downs for fall and may have issues even next spring. All travel sports will be impacted moving forward. We may have finally hit the travel sport bubble where parents will finally have sports
within a day travel and only have to travel for national showcases and the odd important tournament. This is a good thing esp for families with many kids in sports. Some
Families have to drop elite teams because they just cannot do it anymore.

[Anonymous]

Arlington should get ECNL and round off MA conference with 14 teams on girls side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Arlington should get ECNL and round off MA conference with 14 teams on girls side.

It would be a step down for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope they get in on ECNL girl’s side. One less out of town travel for my kid’s team. Same with FCV and MU. Bring ‘em all in and reduce travel times. Then it’d look like this:
BRYC, McLean, Loudoun, VDA, MU, Arlington, FCV, Richmond, NCFC, NC Fusion, NC Courage. Furthest game is 5 hrs with most games within 30-45 minutes. Only two league road trips per year. Everyone would play HS in the spring putting a much better HS product in the field and drumming up natural rivalries. Lot of fun for the kids.

Its pretty hard to argue against that from a parents travel perspective. I suspect though that the ecnl is thinking longer term and values competitiveness over travel distance. As conferences go, ma is already pretty tightly grouped so I dont expect them to focus on it.

Again, are we doing this for the benefit of the ECNL or clubs? Or for the kids and the families? Ecnl could overexpand for the short term and then relegate poorly runs clubs in two years to ERNL

ECNL (and all elite leagues) are built to support clubs. ECNL clubs are businesses whose product is getting kids into college soccer. The preferences of kids and families are way down the list.

With regard to relegation, ECNL doesn't seem to be headed that way even though they have the RL levels now. Relegation only really works well for younger kids where there are fewer financial implications. For U14 and up, being relegated is a death knell for clubs in a crowded environment like ours because the best players will just go next door to a tier 1 team/club. Clubs hate pro/rel. It's really no different than just denying access now. In fact, denying access now speeds up the process of consolidation. Additionally, pro/rel tends to emphasize winning over all else, which is not really in style right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ECNL headquarters are in Va. I am sure they are sensitive to fairly local issues. Arlington should have filed for both girls and boys at once and not waited. Hopefully this will be resolved.

What's your evidence that this did not happen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arlington should get ECNL and round off MA conference with 14 teams on girls side.

It would be a step down for them.

Nicely laid trap to continue the controversy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arlington should get ECNL and round off MA conference with 14 teams on girls side.

It would be a step down for them.

Nicely laid trap to continue the controversy.

And accurate statement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Arlington should get ECNL and round off MA conference with 14 teams on girls side.

If ECNL's goal is to simply round up girls MA conference, they might as well accept FCV, which has stronger girls teams than Arlington. Arlington's best shot at being accepted to ECNL is to go all in, i.e., moving both boys and girls programs to ECNL.

[Anonymous]

Explain to us ECNL's business model? What are their revenue sources and expenses? The allure is college scholarship, yes. But the paying customers are the parents of those kids via the clubs that they pay through. If I can get my kid exposed in showcases but travel less and pay less for travel, then I'd be more likely to pay. Exposure to college is via showcases, not league games, so why the long haul league games? Not sure how that promotes business. Yes - over saturated metro areas hurt "elite" allure, but were already oversaturated with these three DA teams, so add 'em.

[Anonymous]

Since when did Arlington’s mission turn into placing kids into college? Arlington never was a girls elite powerhouse on the same level as McLean, Bethesda or FCV. It is nothing more than a glorified rec organization. Stop the nonsense. Arlington is not ready for ECNL and does not produce enough talent to justify membership. Let the top girls move on if they can find a team to take them. The rest should go back to CCL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since when did Arlington’s mission turn into placing kids into college? Arlington never was a girls elite powerhouse on the same level as McLean, Bethesda or FCV. It is nothing more than a glorified rec organization. Stop the nonsense. Arlington is not ready for ECNL and does not produce enough talent to justify membership. Let the top girls move on if they can find a team to take them. The rest should go back to CCL.

I don't know anything about the girls teams and you may well be correct, although it appears some people at least disagree with you. But the boys teams, assuming the players remained with Arlington of course, would be the strongest teams by quite some distance.

This is why, although I have no direct knowledge, I believe that the rumors regarding ECNL possibly being willing to admit Arlington, but only if both boys and girls join together, might be true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since when did Arlington’s mission turn into placing kids into college? Arlington never was a girls elite powerhouse on the same level as McLean, Bethesda or FCV. It is nothing more than a glorified rec organization. Stop the nonsense. Arlington is not ready for ECNL and does not produce enough talent to justify membership. Let the top girls move on if they can find a team to take them. The rest should go back to CCL.

Arlington’s been building towards college placement status for the last three years. They are definitely ready for ECNL at U17 and below. And the club has told parents that the club has already applied for ECNL for both boys and girls.

[Anonymous]

They will get in if they have applied both boys and girls. They were not going to get accepted just girls. I am sure the boys side is not thrilled though. They probably thought it was worth it to try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They will get in if they have applied both boys and girls. They were not going to get accepted just girls. I am sure the boys side is not thrilled though. They probably thought it was worth it to try.

Irrelevant 2nd tier MLS or competitive ECNL.