Riverbend FC

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Let's just all be for real here for a second. RbFC's big plan is they have a pathway to GA Aspire? So glad my daughter’s team dodged that bullet and did not follow her coach to that club.

No, they will basically be Aspire, with a pathway to GA.

Which means no teams below u13, no second girls teams in an age group, and no boys?

Or are they just going to pay Loudoun to continue to access NCSL? And practice in a big Great Falls backyard?

And in terms of this "pathway," does RbFC's technical director have a voice at NVA in any formal way, or will this be structured even more favorably to NVA than GFR's failed NVA alliance?

So much time, so little information.

I don’t understand people’s obsession with this pathway. Anyone at any club has a pathway when they get to that age group by going and trying out at any club. Being part of Loudoun doesn’t guarantee you continuing on that top pathway. Having a pathway is one thing, a player developing at that top level is another.
Kids will play anywhere and learn, develop and stay with friends until they get to play 11v11 then move to bigger clubs for those leagues.
The pre-ECNL, and pre-MLS Next teams are a bunch of letter, means absolutely nothing. GFRs Pre-ECNL 2015 boys should be division 12 NCSL but they are labeled just because GFR pays to be in ECNLR

I generally agree with you but perhaps kids actually at Loudoun actually have some advantage when it comes to Loudoun/NVA GA bc coaches involved in the GA teams already have some familiarity with them. But I don’t think an RbFC kid will have any leg up on a GFR or Valor or VYS or Herndon girl trying out.

I think the kids on the top teams at the clubs that feed directly into the higher leagues definitely have an advantage, in the sense that they are already on a really strong team. They have proven that they can compete with and against other strong players. As much as we want to believe that a kid from a smaller/less successful club can come along and make a team, it’s harder for them because in the coaches’ minds those kids haven’t had to prove themselves in that way. Let’s face it most kids would already be on a top team at one of the best clubs if they were good enough for it. Not too many are hanging out at smaller/lesser clubs just because of money or the drive. If those are truly factors they usually aren’t trying out for the big clubs at U13 either because they involve even more money and driving.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

A strong RL team, Oklahoma Celtic just accepted GA. GA is signing RL teams in strategic locations around the country that can challenge the ECNL team in the area.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

Division standings are only a rough approximation for high school ages because there are two divisions
ASA 2008 is the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2009 is again the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so again approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2010 is the 3rd ranked RL team in VA and looks like it also played top-ranked VDA (ECNL) pretty even.

Looks mostly to me like the NVA/Loudoun teams overperformed, probably due to the fact that NVA/Loudoun has been able to practice over the past month while the other teams have not and because NVA/Loudoun used their regular rosters as it was their tournament and they were invested in wins.

Also, how did those Aspire teams do in the NCSL divisions?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

A strong RL team, Oklahoma Celtic just accepted GA. GA is signing RL teams in strategic locations around the country that can challenge the ECNL team in the area.

Why did GA pick this RL has been over an up-and-coming OK Aspire team?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

A strong RL team, Oklahoma Celtic just accepted GA. GA is signing RL teams in strategic locations around the country that can challenge the ECNL team in the area.

Wait, I thought RL teams were worse than Aspire? Now they can just slot into GA? Weird.

[Anonymous]

Better than all the RL teams that weren’t good enough to be invited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's just all be for real here for a second. RbFC's big plan is they have a pathway to GA Aspire? So glad my daughter’s team dodged that bullet and did not follow her coach to that club.

No, they will basically be Aspire, with a pathway to GA.

Which means no teams below u13, no second girls teams in an age group, and no boys?

Or are they just going to pay Loudoun to continue to access NCSL? And practice in a big Great Falls backyard?

And in terms of this "pathway," does RbFC's technical director have a voice at NVA in any formal way, or will this be structured even more favorably to NVA than GFR's failed NVA alliance?

So much time, so little information.

I don’t understand people’s obsession with this pathway. Anyone at any club has a pathway when they get to that age group by going and trying out at any club. Being part of Loudoun doesn’t guarantee you continuing on that top pathway. Having a pathway is one thing, a player developing at that top level is another.
Kids will play anywhere and learn, develop and stay with friends until they get to play 11v11 then move to bigger clubs for those leagues.
The pre-ECNL, and pre-MLS Next teams are a bunch of letter, means absolutely nothing. GFRs Pre-ECNL 2015 boys should be division 12 NCSL but they are labeled just because GFR pays to be in ECNLR

Pathways are useless without invested coaches that advocate for feeder kids at the pathway destination. NVA didn't work for GFR (and won't for RBFC) because it was/is controlled by Loudoun coaches. FVU doesn't work for most of the partner clubs because it is controlled by Vienna coaches.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

Division standings are only a rough approximation for high school ages because there are two divisions
ASA 2008 is the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2009 is again the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so again approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2010 is the 3rd ranked RL team in VA and looks like it also played top-ranked VDA (ECNL) pretty even.

”Mid-pack” statewide = top of the pack in NOVA for RL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's just all be for real here for a second. RbFC's big plan is they have a pathway to GA Aspire? So glad my daughter’s team dodged that bullet and did not follow her coach to that club.

No, they will basically be Aspire, with a pathway to GA.

Which means no teams below u13, no second girls teams in an age group, and no boys?

Or are they just going to pay Loudoun to continue to access NCSL? And practice in a big Great Falls backyard?

And in terms of this "pathway," does RbFC's technical director have a voice at NVA in any formal way, or will this be structured even more favorably to NVA than GFR's failed NVA alliance?

So much time, so little information.

I don’t understand people’s obsession with this pathway. Anyone at any club has a pathway when they get to that age group by going and trying out at any club. Being part of Loudoun doesn’t guarantee you continuing on that top pathway. Having a pathway is one thing, a player developing at that top level is another.
Kids will play anywhere and learn, develop and stay with friends until they get to play 11v11 then move to bigger clubs for those leagues.
The pre-ECNL, and pre-MLS Next teams are a bunch of letter, means absolutely nothing. GFRs Pre-ECNL 2015 boys should be division 12 NCSL but they are labeled just because GFR pays to be in ECNLR

Pathways are useless without invested coaches that advocate for feeder kids at the pathway destination. NVA didn't work for GFR (and won't for RBFC) because it was/is controlled by Loudoun coaches. FVU doesn't work for most of the partner clubs because it is controlled by Vienna coaches.

“Feeder kids” are less about advocacy and (ideally) more about players being taught/coached similar concepts, enabling them to play the style of play the top team coaches are looking to play.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

Division standings are only a rough approximation for high school ages because there are two divisions
ASA 2008 is the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2009 is again the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so again approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2010 is the 3rd ranked RL team in VA and looks like it also played top-ranked VDA (ECNL) pretty even.

”Mid-pack” statewide = top of the pack in NOVA for RL.

2008 top NOVA teams are VSA and BRYC. 2009 are VSA and GFR. 2010 is VYS. I do admire your willingness to die on this hill though.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

Division standings are only a rough approximation for high school ages because there are two divisions
ASA 2008 is the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2009 is again the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so again approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2010 is the 3rd ranked RL team in VA and looks like it also played top-ranked VDA (ECNL) pretty even.

”Mid-pack” statewide = top of the pack in NOVA for RL.

2008 top NOVA teams are VSA and BRYC. 2009 are VSA and GFR. 2010 is VYS. I do admire your willingness to die on this hill though.

Arl 2010 beat VYS head to head and finished ahead of them (1st and undefeated) in the standings. And BRYC? Lol. You can’t just make sht up and post it as facts. Arl and VSA are all RL has in NOVA at the HS ages.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand all this drama and hassle for one girl's rec level team to switch clubs.

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

Division standings are only a rough approximation for high school ages because there are two divisions
ASA 2008 is the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2009 is again the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so again approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2010 is the 3rd ranked RL team in VA and looks like it also played top-ranked VDA (ECNL) pretty even.

”Mid-pack” statewide = top of the pack in NOVA for RL.

2008 top NOVA teams are VSA and BRYC. 2009 are VSA and GFR. 2010 is VYS. I do admire your willingness to die on this hill though.

Arl 2010 beat VYS head to head and finished ahead of them (1st and undefeated) in the standings. And BRYC? Lol. You can’t just make sht up and post it as facts. Arl and VSA are all RL has in NOVA at the HS ages.

You are really struggling to stay on point. You love the rankings app. Those facts say 2010 VYS is 6 and ASA is 12. For 2009 VSA is 7, GFR is 9, and ASA is 21. For 2008, VSA is 8, BRYC is 11, and ASA is 16. I think it is you that has the agenda trumpeting ASA losses with half-speed teams in a second rate tournament no one cares about as the coming downfall of RL.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

Division standings are only a rough approximation for high school ages because there are two divisions
ASA 2008 is the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2009 is again the 6th ranked RL team in VA, so again approaching mid-pack.
ASA 2010 is the 3rd ranked RL team in VA and looks like it also played top-ranked VDA (ECNL) pretty even.

”Mid-pack” statewide = top of the pack in NOVA for RL.

2008 top NOVA teams are VSA and BRYC. 2009 are VSA and GFR. 2010 is VYS. I do admire your willingness to die on this hill though.

Arl 2010 beat VYS head to head and finished ahead of them (1st and undefeated) in the standings. And BRYC? Lol. You can’t just make sht up and post it as facts. Arl and VSA are all RL has in NOVA at the HS ages.

You are really struggling to stay on point. You love the rankings app. Those facts say 2010 VYS is 6 and ASA is 12. For 2009 VSA is 7, GFR is 9, and ASA is 21. For 2008, VSA is 8, BRYC is 11, and ASA is 16. I think it is you that has the agenda trumpeting ASA losses with half-speed teams in a second rate tournament no one cares about as the coming downfall of RL.

Actual results > rankings app. I never posted about a rankings app. RL in NOVA is already done, it’s only a handful of parents at GFR that don’t realize it yet.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don't see the point to this whole complicated fake "pathway" to NVA for just the one RBFC team that exists.

From a strategic standpoint, NVA launching an Aspire team in Fairfax with Riverbend makes a lot of sense.

Geography matters more than people admit. Most families prefer a 10–25 minute drive to training. Once you push past 30 minutes multiple nights a week, the pool shrinks fast, especially for multi-kid households. Loudoun and VRSC naturally pull from western Fairfax and Loudoun because of proximity. By placing Aspire’s home base in Fairfax County, NVA opens access to a completely different player base that likely wouldn’t consider driving west consistently.

Fairfax County has over 1.1 million residents and produces one of the deepest youth soccer pools in the region. Yet the top-tier pathway options locally are limited. Great Falls Reston (GFR) offers ECNL-RL, NCSL, and EDP. Vienna competes in the RL. McLean has Aspire, but roster spots are finite and internal competition is tight. For players in central and eastern Fairfax, Aspire in Fairfax becomes a strong, convenient alternative without requiring a Loudoun commute.

From a league positioning standpoint, Aspire generally sits above ECNL-RL in the player development hierarchy, which makes it attractive to families seeking a higher competitive ceiling without jumping immediately to full ECNL travel demands. That naturally creates interest from players currently in RL who feel capped.

It’s also smart portfolio management. Instead of concentrating Aspire talent pools in Loudoun and competing for the same households as VRSC, Fairfax expands the footprint and reduces direct cannibalization. Different geography, different recruiting lanes.

Fairfax is a massive soccer ecosystem with strong rec foundations and competitive club pipelines. Putting Aspire there taps into a dense player base that hasn’t had as many elite pathway options within immediate reach.

This is delusional. The local Aspire teams are made up mostly of ex-NCSL players when the respective clubs went GA. No one is fighting for roster spots on Aspire teams. No rational actor thinks Aspire is better than RL. GA is barely better than RL.

Please explain these rankings then

I agree that most people think that but that is based on how strong RL used to be. Currently if you average the rankings for all teams in mid Atlantic’s south GA, VA RL and Mid Atlantic South Aspire you will see a different story. For instance for 2011 you get

GA - 331
Aspire - 772
RL - 926

RL has a few really good teams but also numerous teams ranked 1000+.

I’m not interested in debating dubious rankings from an unidentified source. All I know is my DD plays on an RL team. In bigger tournaments we’ve played other RL teams, GA teams, and an occasional NL team. There’s never been an Aspire team within five bracket levels of her team. If you doubt that, look at the Jefferson Cup brackets and look for Aspire teams.

Maybe Aspire would be competitive with the bottom of the RL table. Even the bottom of the table GA teams would not be competitive at the top of the RL table, much less Aspire teams.

I think you have an overly aspirational view if Aspire.

So on one side of the debate we have a rankings app that is used by many, continues to be tweaked and constantly re ranks teams based on results. On your side of the debate we have your “eye test”.

You can’t cherry pick the top few RL teams and then say the entire RL league is better. Those top RL teams are good. No doubt. But the league as a whole has way more weak teams than strong.

For 2011, the lowest ranked Aspire team is Alexandria at 1265. There are six RL teams (DCSC, LMVSC, VIVA, BRYC, Herndon and SOCA) that are ranked lower than that.

The problem with your argument is not just that it relies on unreliable rankings but that it primarily turns on the least meaningful part of those rankings. It is at the top of the rankings where they have the most value, even if they are dubious even there.

I might be willing to accept that there is some real, discernable difference between the team on the rankings app ranked 5 in the USA vs the team ranked 25, or between the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50, or 50 v 100, or 100 v 250, etc. Do I think it's very meaningful? No. In the year I'm most familiar with, 2014G, Richmond Orange 1 has been ranked as high as something like 38 and as low as something like 86 and is currently ranked 72. Do I think these shifts mean anything? No, I just think it means that team is roughly competitive with the teams ranked 35 to 80.

But when we are talking about the bottom ranges of the rankings, they don't convey any meaningful information because there is so little information for cross-comparisons and so many very similar teams. So for the range from 1500 to 2500, in my view, that's all one undifferentiated mass separated only by noise. But these are the numbers you are trying to make your case from. If Alexandria 2011 played those six RL teams, maybe it's 3-3, maybe 4-2, 2-4, could be 6-0, 1-5. The rankings don't tell you that much, esp. because even individual games in soccer can be very variable and influenced by random factors.

Not an argument. Just added up the rankings and took the average. Then provided the data.
But I definitely know the team ranked 1500 is much better than the team ranked 2500.

Average rankings is a terrible way to compare leagues, as a league with a bunch of good teams and a few atrocious teams will look worse than a league full of mediocre teams. That proves itself just by looking at the 2011 rankings. 2011 VA RL has 3/19 in the top 250 nationally (above 7 of the 12 GA teams in MAS!!!) and Aspire MAS has 0. 2011 VA RL has 8/19 teams in the top 500. Aspire MAS has 2/9. Do both leagues have crappy teams below that? Of course. RL being way bigger has a few more of them, which drags the average down (although VRSC at 806, McLean at 1049, Loudoun at 1236, and Alexandria at 1260 are trying their best to bring the Aspire average down!). But in RL you are likely to play half your games against top 500 teams while in Aspire you might get one of those a year. Seems pretty clear to me which is the (way) better league.

RL also has 5 teams above 1600. For reference Valor Gold is 1600 and they came in last in NCSL D1.
At best RL and Aspire are equivalent. RL you play a few good, most medium and some really bad. Aspire is a lot of medium.

Valor gold is not RL

I think that is the point. Based on rankings RL has 5 clubs that wouldn’t even be in NCSL division 1.

Also based on the rankings, in most age groups Aspire has one actually competitive team and RL has five to ten.

What would you define competitive as?

Able to beat a mid-table NoVa GA team half the time.

For HS age girls, Arlington RL is as strong as RL gets in NOVA, and they didn’t fare too well against weaker GA teams this past weekend.

LOL - "didn't fare too well"

ASA 2010 RL 1 -3 VDA 2011 ECNL
ASA 2010 RL 0-1 NVA 2010 GA
ASA 2009 RL 0-4 NVA 2009 GA
ASA 2009 RL 1-4 Loudoun 2009 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-0 FCGB 07/08 GA
ASA 2008 RL 0-3 Shore FC 07 Elite NL
ASA 2008 RL 0-4 Loudoun 07/08 GA

Who cares about ASA? It isn't "as strong as RL gets" in any of those ages. Its performance in the vaunted pre-season February Loudoun Showcase with wonky rosters and teams that haven't practiced in six weeks against teams that have been playing and practicing all winter does not provide data that Aspire is better than RL. To the extent you can draw any conclusions from this showcase, you will also note that the RL teams were placed with GA teams by Loudoun Soccer, a GA club, which shows how it views the leagues' competitiveness. Loudoun buried most of the (few) Aspire teams that were invited in NCSL-level brackets.

ASA is as strong as it gets for RL in NOVA. Those 3 teams finished in 1st, 1st and 3rd in league play. RL is fading.

A strong RL team, Oklahoma Celtic just accepted GA. GA is signing RL teams in strategic locations around the country that can challenge the ECNL team in the area.

Why did GA pick this RL has been over an up-and-coming OK Aspire team?

Aspire didn't have any teams in Oklahoma. Girls Academy has a team in Tulsa, but no presence in OKC. ECNL made the decision that OKC could not support 2 ECNL teams and wanted to leave Celtic in RL, even though they are showing signs that they could overtake OK Energy FC.