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ECNL moving to school year not calendar
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Anonymous
Oh man, you are funny thinking, and worse asserting to others, you are an expert or even remotely understand how college sports and college recruiting works. College coaches can't even talk to kids until they are a certain age so no advantage of playing up there. Maybe some from seeing how showcases work, who attends, the kid reaching out to hope to be on the radar (if the coach is even at the school when it matters....) but that's it. Only a small number of freshman are tracked and most recruiting happens junior year. As most things in life, probably better to just say nothing. |
Anonymous
My kid plays in a market where GA and ECNL compete and what you describe is not how things work. At the higher levels there's 2 kinds of players. The ones who's patents are still chasing the dream + driving an hour to and from to play for xyz super team. The ones that have settled into whatever team they're comfortable on. Usually this is whatever club is best and closest. Month you were born doesn't make any difference to coaches after u14 the only thing that matters is what you can provide to the field. |
Anonymous
Same here in a very big market with multiple GA and ECNL teams (and similar with MLSN and ECNL on the boys side). Some people drive for the "best" team, many people choose whichever is closer, others choose based on where their kid will play more. At least here, if ECNL is SY and GA is BY, it would add that as another factor for people to consider and potentially mitigate some of the RAE negatives of a single choice for the younger kids. A potentially net positive for overall talent development. |
Anonymous
You swapped the subject between clubs / coaches and parents. I spoke about how clubs work, not how parents work. If you’ve settled for comfort and convenience, you’re average. And like I said, average goes both places. However, your response makes my point. If people are settling for convenience, they aren’t going to get up off the couch, and take the longer commute because of birth months. It would be worthless anyway, because as I said, clubs aren’t going to stock up on average because of an age cutoff change either. |
Anonymous
You’re using my point to launch into your topic, but you make my point. You’re arguing that the kids looking for marginal advantage are better positioned for college recruitment because they’re playing with their graduation cohort and appear on coaches radars when they enter the window of eligibility. That sounds awfully like “what applies for the case applies to all.” Also it’s pretty clear you don’t understand the environment. There are middle schoolers on college coaches radars. All sorts of interest can be communicated indirectly (via coach to club, etc), recruiting questionnaires, camp invites, non-recruiting swag, can be sent any time. The only restrictions are grade year based not age based - coaches can’t communicate directly or privately until June 15 at the end of 10th grade, and official visits can’t be made until Aug after 10th grade. Couldn’t have wished for a better response to prove my point 🤣 |
Anonymous
Not sure it's convenience as vs. do-able for a particular family and vs. dealing with the toxic parental politics that typically exist on xyz super teams, especially if that closer team still affords the opportunity to be recruited. I also read all the time about players even from smaller clubs getting named to xyz regional and national teams. Same is true in college recruiting. Sure certain leagues provide the most opportunity but IF you don't go that route, you can make your own way still. |
Anonymous
Very true! But that’s different from the topic above. A team is not a destiny. That doesn’t negate the point. |
Anonymous
This x1000 The top clubs that recruit tend to attract parents that will do anything so their kid can be on the flavor of the month team. They get crazy because the commitment is making them crazy. You want your kid to be on a high level competitive team but you don't want to be driving 3 hours a day for practice on top of 1 hour a day for work. As you said the same scouts all go to the same events. Some clubs might have connections that open doors. But natural talent any ability combined with hard work and dedication will open more. |
Anonymous
You are wrong. After ECNL change to SY, D1 college recruiting will be 95% from ECNL. After that, people will argue which is better between RL and GA. |
Anonymous
No, it's more likely all big leagues switch to SY and the status quo remains unless a more pro-oriented pathway emerges for girls. |
Anonymous
Wishful thinking. ECNL will have the strongest grad year team lineup. GA is literally dead for college recruiting after ECNL switch and will be more or less similar level as RL. ECNL will take another 5 top GA clubs this coming season. |
Anonymous
That sounds pretty wishful, too. There's too big of a youth soccer world for ECNL to get that dominant. To do so, they'd need to grow by more than 5 clubs, then they get too big and leave themselves open why they formed in the first place. |
Anonymous
You definitely not get what I said and do not understand ECNL business model. Their service is D1 college recruiting. Currently they have 75% market share, which is dominate for their business. After SY switch, it will jump to 95%. So for D1 college recruiting, it is game over. GA needs to pivot to stay relevant. They have 1 year to figure it out. |
Anonymous
You seem pretty confident in your random guess. |
Anonymous
They only get 95% if they start admitting a lot more GA, and USYS clubs, otherwise they remain too small and too expensive to get all the top talent, especially in some markets. |