Quality of WCAC high school soccer
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Anonymous
| The quality of soccer parents hasn’t improved, I see. |
Anonymous
| Baltimore seems to be a good bit stronger in terms of HS teams (MIAA) than the DC area - public or private. |
Anonymous
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My kids play at one of the larger WCACs. The quality of play is not great compared to club. However, it is a lot of fun and the kids love it. There's more camaraderie and less competitiveness within the team itself.
The best HS kids are also good MLS/ecnl players. Most of the varsity players are big, fast, athletic kids. And yes, some club kids do not play HS soccer. Conversely, some good club kids do not do well in HS soccer if they are not fast or big. Athleticism is more important for HS soccer than club. Club you're restricted usually to your age group, and in HS they are all mixed together. Club have played in a system together for years and years. At HS it's a new group every year. Imho hardly any of these kids will play in college and virtually zero will play pro. Might as well enjoy playing HS if they can manage their time. I also don't think that WCAC soccer is any better than at the publics. Football and basketball yes, but not soccer. |
Anonymous
"Friends" seem to be used quite liberally here. I'm sure all the kids on the soccer team have true friends who are not on the soccer team. You must be one of those 'play date' parents sending out invites every week. |
Anonymous
Not true. |
Anonymous
In the last 3 years, MIAA has had Gatorade national POY (Jacob Murrell - Georgetown’s leading scorer), and 2 ECNL National POYs (Ben Madore- Penn St, Dan Klink-UNC commit). Those 3 went to 3 different MIAA schools. Last year’s Calvert Hall team had 5 D1 players and a 6th who is with FC Cincinnati 2. There isn’t a DC area team that has close to the level of talent of the top MIAA teams. |
Anonymous
| How are the Baltimore public schools? They have good soccer at them? Baltimore is a dump. |
Anonymous
My bad...thought we were talking girls high school. Very good players from Bmore on the boys side always. Bethesda area pumps out great players every year as well....Gabe Segal (Stanford/NYFC) and Kris Fletcher (Landon/DC United) went straight to pros and doing well, several went Euro at 15...the pipleline is strong in Bethesda areas, but less and less of the boys side play high school unfortunately. |
Anonymous
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OP, my son is a freshman this year at a large WCAC high school and played on the freshman soccer team. (Which was competitive to even get a spot on.) It was an absolutely great experience and at this point he hopes to play the rest of his years in HS as well. He also plays club and it was nearly impossible to do all practices and school work, so during the school season club practices did often get dropped. (Some kids may prioritize differently.)
I would definitely recommend it. A lot of fun was had and friendships were made. My kid didn't know many others going in so the soccer connection was key for him. I know club is king but there is something invaluable about playing for your school. Best of luck! |
Anonymous
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Is the competition level for WCAC (marginally) higher than the public high schools?
My son is a 6th grader on a U13 competitive ECNL-R team. He also plays other sports right now. We had practices at Oakton and Marshall HS in the past and have seen the JV teams play their games at both of those high schools. It was just awful. I am pretty sure our club's U14 team can whoop those 2 JV teams. The U13 (6th-7th grade) boys need to hit puberty first. |
Anonymous
NO. I have kids in WCAC and public. About same level, sometimes worst because WCAC schedule has some very, very tiny schools in their schedule that have a non-existent player pool. Big wins 11-0 are common and then there are maybe 1-3 semi-competitive games that are still kickball anyways. As someone else pointed out, the DC 'state' championship is really just like another league game/tournament. Not many teams and DC itself isn't a soccer area (minus Reed) like the suburbs/suburban HS. Some of the bigger WCAC schools have a very diverse player pool being to draw from all over the DC/VA/MD so you get the goliaths vs David. |
Anonymous
Is your son on an ECNL or MLSNext team? We found in the older grades those coaches did not appreciate missed practices and the Fall is the primary season for Club at HS ages. In our experience, our sons had to choose after Sophomore year. They played Fresh/JV but there was no way they could have balanced Club at that level and HS and still maintain their A grades. Varsity is a very big time suck in WCAC even if your kid isn't doing Club. Since ours did not want to give up Club for just playing HS 2 months--and their ECNL/MLSNext coaches wanted players at practice --they quit HS. It was still a good experience and they made really good friends on the team. |
Anonymous
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^ some of their friends made the opposite choice and quit Club completely for HS and seemed happy too.
My kids just really wanted the competition level and had aspirations of playing in college. The older one is, younger one still in HS. |
Anonymous
| This is PP and no, he is on an EDP team and I agree that if he moves to MLS Next it will be a different story. For now his club coach has been understanding, although I'm sure not thrilled, but hopefully we can make it up in the Spring. I guess we will deal with the school vs club when/if it becomes an issue. It would make me sad though. |
Anonymous
Yeah. We live in VA so what completely sucked is that for ECNL, EDP, etc there are almost no spring Club games to compensate for VA public HS in the Fall. So practices were my son, one of his HS teammates and a few kids that didn't play HS soccer at mixed age group practices that had few kids show up. Fall really is the primary Club season. My older one made the switch from ECNL to MLSNext so he could play year-round. IT was no fun having no team and almost no games in spring. This is going to be my other son's problem this spring. I think his last ECNL game is in February. |