dcu13 wrote:My son had 1 game at Glenelg HS and 2 games at the Moose Athletic Center in Glen Burnie. Both are fine facilities but it's not the "tournament experience" of seeing tons of other kids at a sprawling facility. Those were fun memories of my soccer childhood. I guess the tournament (and many others) are just continuing to expand so they're looking for any available rectangular space.

Was that for the SAC tournament? I know this sounds crazy, but I kind of miss / like Covenant.

We played in VSA’s Cannon Cup. Well organized, good location for us, good fields, friendly staff, easy parking. Their 7v7 fields are smaller than many, which led to lots of scoring.

The only downsides were crappy parents from 1 of our 4 opponents, and 1 of 4 refs was probably the worst I have ever seen. She clearly had no idea what she was doing and didn’t want to be there. The other 3 were excellent.

Arlington is a good club that I often recommend to parents, but it is not the end all or be all of soccer by any means. I don’t strictly know this, but I would guess the 2014 SYC boys are better than 2014 Arlington.

I have a 2014 boy, and agree that is a strong birth year. Lots of good posts in this thread.

Where in Falls Church are you? North, South, East, or West? How about McLean, Vienna, or BRYC?

Generally, I like seeing the smaller clubs get players, because so many of Arlington and McLean’s players are plucked from other clubs (ie the rich get richer).

BunchlineDC wrote:

soccermomsrule wrote:U13 (2010) ECNL RL is the same... 5 league games in the spring even though these kids are too young for high school and showcases.

ECNL needs to combine the NOVA brackets into one.

They did for the spring. They only did the red / blue thing in the fall.

This also leads to the irritating point that it is the second half of May, the season is literally over (all ECNL-R 2010 girls' games have been played), and both the schedule and standings have not been uploaded to the ECNLgirls website (it still only shows the fall). You have to go to the VPSL website to see it:

https://www.vapremierleague.com/rlschedules

For the 2010s, Arlington, McLean, PWSI, Stafford, GFR, and BRYC played 4 league games this spring. Loudoun and VSA only played 3!

Some of these games were played as both state cup and a league game, so not all state cup games were incremental to this schedule, and teams that didn't make the semis only got 3 games.

Many of these girls are 6th graders, so HS soccer is a long way off.

Our club at least plays 6 tournaments / showcases per year, plus state cup, plus scrimmages, but the ECNL-R schedule seems incredibly anemic. What a massive difference with full ECNL, where teams are sitting at 24 games played (over double many ECNL-R teams' schedules).

7 games in the fall, and only 4-5 games in the spring? Doesn’t that feel crazy light?

Fortunately, State Cup games added a bit, but NCSL plays 9 games.

Do they do this to allow for HS soccer in VA?

Technically, each team plays 11 different opponents in league play (since there are 12 teams). But yes, red teams play blue teams. You will play some opponents twice, I think usually the opponents in your color.

Yes, if you look at the 12 teams listed, all are DC area teams, so travel for those games is minimal. Full ECNL will involve a lot more games, and more travel to North Carolina, Richmond, VA Beach, and Baltimore. That said, we travel 3+ hours a couple of times spring and fall.

I don’t know this, but I do believe 2nd team players at these clubs could play some kind of college soccer.

There are 12 ECNL-R clubs in the Virginia-North region. The “red” clubs you listed (Arlington, Loudoun, Herndon, McLean, Vienna, and Braddock Rd) plus the “blue” clubs (VSA, Great Falls Reston, Villarreal, Valor, PWSI, and Stafford. Your league games will be against this group, but you will play other clubs in tournaments.

I have a child playing ECNL-R, and we have enjoyed it. It can feel cliquey. Remind your child to be kind and welcoming to others once they have made it into the clique. We receive winter training and limited summer training.

Both Arlington and McLean are quality clubs with good coaching staff.

Cruzado wrote:It would be good for Northern VA if BRAVE succeeded as a strong ECNL club.

However, taking a step back and looking at the overall situation, it looks like for BRAVE to be successful there will need to be a simple merger of BRYC and Vienna. Full stop.

With a complete merger, the best players could support a good ECNL team and there should still be enough players at the next level who can support strong ECNL-R teams.

Just my two-cents.

I’m not sure what this accomplishes. The youngest group (2010s) are fine. The girls are 11-6-2, tying with an excellent VDA team for 56 goals scored, just behind Union’s 58. They just narrowly lost the 2nd flight in Jeff Cup last weekend.

The Brave boys are 5-17-1, but did so without much support from the existing BRYC players. I’ll withhold judgement on that, but it will take time for new players to flow through.

The VYS 2010 girls are 4-1-2 in ECNL-R and in the North, only VSA is objectively better. The boys are 3-5-0, but again, had to make up for all the BRYC boys who left.

It isn’t like combining clubs helps Brave at all, and the VYS ECNL-R teams are fine. The BRYC teams will likely improve with more competitive ECNL Brave teams.

For the 2011s, the VYS boys are 3-3, and the girls are 3-4. The 2012 VYS boys are 5-2-1, and the girls are 5-3.

Give it time, but for the younger groups to be middle of the pack or better is promising.

ETA- We already basically have a merger for top teams, this just merges their ECNL-R teams. I don’t think they need that, and you compromise on practice location.

Your credit card company won’t (and shouldn’t) do anything here unless you have extenuating circumstances.

Your best best was to buy travel insurance, but at this point, I’d be pushing for a rebook. Decent chance you’ll get that.

Anonymous wrote:It can be a bunch of things. Thermostat, burned out coil.

+1. Our Samsung dryer did the same thing a few years ago. Ordered a new thermostat online ($50-ish), unplugged it, removed a few screws, unplugged the old thermostat, then switched it out and put everything back together. The whole process took maybe an hour.

If you can build ikea furniture, you can replace a dryer thermostat.

A few years after that, I did the control board. Have also replaced the start capacitor in our HVAC, and the pump in our dishwasher. Dishwasher was by far the hardest due to getting it pulled out of the cabinets and the plastic parts breaking easily.

Is he a 2015? I assume so. It sounds like you want him to play travel soccer. Tryouts will be late spring for the fall season. He could play ref for the spring, or you could reach out to clubs about having him okay up with the 2014s for the spring.

Blutarski wrote:

Ihatedumbsoccerparents wrote:Anyone on this board have first hand experience on any other umbrella situations…VDA, Brave, Union? I’m new to NOVA and don’t know the history of those clubs. Obviously Loudoun is the stronger club of the 3 for NVA no offense meant to any club. Did any other situation have a similar feel of the power/rankings dynamic as these 3?

4. In the Union alliance, a handful of SYC girls make the ECNL ranks, but the teams are run by McLean for the most part.

I realize you said “for the most part”, but the 2010 girls are mostly SYC.

Funny this came back up, because we lost our game today based on a similar situation. Same CB and GK (both strong players).

This time there was no error by anyone else, just a long ball being chased down by the CB. GK started coming out so CB held up her run (could have easily played it), but then GK hesitated (would have been close). Forward ran in, stole it, and scored easily.

I reiterated to my daughter the need for communication with the GK, and if she can easily play it, not to lay off unless she is 100% sure the GK will easily get it. In this case, the GK didn’t call her off, so the CB (my daughter) clearly made an error.

We’re doing futsal. Always a great time.

11v11, ECNL.

GK is good, but inexperienced. Right back plays an absolute duck of a pass back to GK, that gives GK at best a 50% chance of getting it before the onrushing striker whose eyes just lit up like it is Christmas.

You’re a CB, and can easily get to the ball first and clear it, really without breaking much of a sweat. You start to do so and your GK calls you off.

What’s the play here?

As a former CB, I say when in doubt, kick it out. In this case, the CB held up her run, striker got there first, took a shot, but GK made the save (fortunately).

This is why even though I played keeper for a while for my club team years ago, and I suspect my kids might be good at it, I do not allow them to play keeper at a young age. Coaches tried to do the same thing to my DD, and I wouldn’t allow it.

My recommendation is to push back hard on this. No more than half of every game in goal, your kid should play the other half (or close to it) on the field, and should get plenty of field practice and scrimmage time. Any goalie training should be incremental to the field practice the rest of the players get.

This changes after a couple of years, but should hold true at least for U9-10