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Find the environment that fits your kid between the two. Try to get out and into a session before the end of the year to see how they feel with the training and the players. I do know that Gunston appears to be bolstering their staff by bringing on a young and hungry coach that has a great deal of experience with younger SYC players and slotting him with a couple teams and a program coordinator role over there. Could be a good thing for their boys side.
I agree that its a good move on their part to try it. I think they needed to probably inform clubs that they were planning on doing it because I know a lot of people were caught by surprise and did not realize until prior to the start of the spring season that for U12's they were going to offer that as an option.
ECNL-RL has been a little all over the place especially around NoVa. Last year for 21-22 the league only had 8 teams and they didn’t experiment with having the U12’s play 11v11 in the spring season. This year the area expanded to 12 teams and split them into 2 red and blue divisions and with crossover we at least had 8 fall games. The spring was light due to some teams not fielding teams for 11v11. Looking to next year there will be one less team for boys/girls because of the Villareal/BRYC alliance so that will be interesting to see how they setup but it probably won’t be much different. They will likely just add another crossover game between the divisions.
ECNL-RL is such a mixed bag once U13 comes. Teams and kids disband because most of these clubs have some sort of alliance that tries to funnel kids into ECNL.
And the VPSL site is and always has been terrible. Scoring is hardly ever updated on time. Not much different than even the actual ECNL site sometimes when trying to find ECNL scores.
ECNL-RL is such a mixed bag once U13 comes. Teams and kids disband because most of these clubs have some sort of alliance that tries to funnel kids into ECNL.
And the VPSL site is and always has been terrible. Scoring is hardly ever updated on time. Not much different than even the actual ECNL site sometimes when trying to find ECNL scores.
CleansheetDad wrote:westsidesoccer wrote:
Thank you. This is very interesting. I am shocked to see almost no difference between ECNL and National PRO on the boys side relative to MLS Next. Though not too surprised. As a player parent, I don't see any point in discussing leagues across genders, or, more generally, across pretty diverse regions and all age groups. The fact that ECNL offers top play for young women is completely irrelevant to my son.
You may think it is irrelevant to your son that ECNL allows for top play for both girls and boys, but you would by wrong. Clubs must have both their boys and girls teams in the ECNL National league to be a member. This is one reason why Arlington is in ECNL and not in MLSNext. This allows ECNL to give a more sustainable model for clubs to market themselves and to make money. Boys and girls teams support each other. They allow clubs to pay coaches and give more scholarships to both sides. If you have a club that can only REALLY market itself for high level play to the boy segment of the population, then the club will need to have a large number of lower level teams with players that pay full amounts to support the MLSNext team expenses, along with the scholarships for that team. And I do feel sorry for those parents who have been sold on development for their children, when in fact all they are is a paying parent.
As a player parent, who has seen alphabet leagues rise and fall, or come and go (the old DA league comes to mind), I think MLSNext is just the old DA league with a new name. This affects the boys on the second teams when a league folds and then your club is trying to find a league to play in the next season. Many of these teams that are going into the National Academy League are currently in EDP, before that they were in CCL, and before that they were in NCLS. There really isn't much difference and ultimately, in a couple of years these same teams will be in another league so the MLSNext clubs can try to market themselves.
Go Luck to the teams that are joining the new league. Don't get too comfortable or buy anything with NAL on it as it will be obsolete in about 2 years time.
I thought the same thing and then discovered Baltimore Celtic fields a GA team and a boys ECNL national team. So is it really in their rules or what happened with that club?
MLS Next isn't going to be replaced. This 'new' league has already been somewhat in practice already with a lot of NE boys teams. Essentially this league will house 2nd teams for clubs that exist in MLS Next.
scrswm wrote:Fairfax BRAVE was an alliance between Vienna and Bryc right? They squeezing a third club to partner with for Ecnl rl? How many RL teams will there be between viva, bryc and Vienna?
I'm wondering that as well. Currently there is 3 RL teams between the 3 of them. Are they going to consolidate and have one RL team now between VIVA and BRYC? If not is this just now an 'alliance' similar to what has happened with NVA? Where NVA is the ECNL program and the RL feeders are Valor, Loudoun, and GFR. So is it just Brave as the ECNL and VIVA, BRYC, Vienna as the RL feeders?
Sadly that kick and chase/playing direct style of soccer is commonplace around here.
I think the decision is unfortunate for some of the younger ASA families that may have looked at their GA team as an option as their players age up. I don't know much about how Metro performed prior to their merger last year but if they've been fielding poor performing teams since the inception of GA then the decision makes sense I guess. My only gripe is maybe they didn't give the merger long enough to see if it would affect the teams in a positive way since its only been a year. I think ASA has a pretty strong 2012 group but those players wouldn't qualify for GA until after this next year.
FPYCparent wrote:I guess I've been away too long. Question ...
What is the impact on RL teams (particularly at GFR girls)? DD's FPYC 2008 team occupied the GFR '08G spot in RL in the fall (and in the upcoming Jefferson Cup). Will the individual clubs maintain their RL teams later in 2023 (U16 for the 2008s)?
I would imagine this doesn’t affect any RL teams much that are currently existing. This may have more effect on the younger groups as they age up like previously mentioned. Any rosters that may get affected would be any of the ECNL teams Loudoun had if/should any players decide to try for a roster spot but that’s really no different than any other year.
Blutarski wrote:TedLasso wrote:
Youth soccer would be so much better if there was pro/rel throughout but there's way too many different leagues/clubs currently to pull that off.
TedLasso, why would youth soccer be so much better with pro/rel ?
I definitely don't know or have all the answers, nor do I know what the silver bullet is. What I do know is that the current landscape is a huge and there are far too many clubs and leagues nationwide even for 'national' programs/leagues. A good article about this came out when the DA folded but still within there you can see why it would be difficult to solve this problem we have.
https://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2020/4/16/21223638/us-soccer-development-academy-closed-coronavirus-mens-womens-national-teams
personanongrata wrote:Manodedios wrote:VDA added Herndon about a year ago, maybe not even a full year ago, and I think this is ‘turf’ protection from the other 3 clubs. I know Herndon was offering some RL players the opportunity to PT play/practice with VDA, which GFR and Valor couldn’t match. Loudoun pulls players from Western Fairfax, so they probably want to limit Herndon and VDA as much as possible. I don’t think there is a lot of love between those two (Loudoun and VDA).
Ultimately, though, all of these partnerships are about protecting the salaries of a handful of directors and do zero to improve player development.
ECNL would be better with a pro/rel system than this mega merger BS. The 07 boys GFR team could play in ECNL today if there was promotion. How many lifelong Loudoun players will get cut to make room on a combined team ?
Youth soccer would be so much better if there was pro/rel throughout but there's way too many different leagues/clubs currently to pull that off.
Blutarski wrote:awesomepossum wrote:ECNL told McLean and BRYC to merge to become Union and Brave and if you look at the branding for Alliance I assume they told Loudoun to do this merger. They’ve voiced they don’t want to add new teams in Northern Virginia and the Mid Atlantic conference is huge. It does allow them to get more Clubs involved in ECNL in some form. It might help Loudoun a little but mostly it makes Great Falls and Valor part of the ECNL umbrella in some form. That’s my take…
Nonsense.
1. ECNL has no interest in directing club mergers. Alliance or no alliance, the best female players gravitate to ECNL anyway. It's been that way as long as ECNL has been around.
2. Neither Valor nor GFR were even close to qualifying for ECNL membership. For them, this is a weak attempt to claim they are keeping their best girls in the system, however based on the way that similar alliances work, they will not have much of a part in running the ECNL teams.
3. VA Union is an alliance between McLean and SYC. BRYC is not involved. There are/were different motivations for this alliance than the Loudoun alliance.
4. For all 3 clubs, this may allows control of more field space and leverage with county resources.
Great point on number 2. There’s usually one club within alliances/mergers/unions where they have more control over what’s occurring on the ECNL teams.
It’s not a dilution for the national league but for the regional league it might affect the clubs RL teams depending on their depth and player quality. Which for example like I previously mentioned on the VDA partnership. VSA typically is fine after they send players up to VDA and as of late with PWSI they have a difficult time fielding teams after U12. PWSI hasn’t even fielded a full 2009 roster the past two seasons for RL play.
Really just depends on how they handle the model of the umbrella.
This could further dilute the competition level in the regional league. If you look at some of the umbrella teams like PWSI for example, they tend to fall off hard once ECNL kicks in at U13 on their girls side. They seem to struggle to assemble teams once they lose some players to ECNL at U13. On the other hand their sister club VSA seems to have more consistency but perhaps their numbers are larger than PWSI.
Overall its probably not a bad situation being that there is now another tier for higher level players within those clubs. How it plays out will be up to the three clubs and how they manage the teams and players leading up to those teams.
This could further dilute the competition level in the regional league. If you look at some of the umbrella teams like PWSI for example, they tend to fall off hard once ECNL kicks in at U13 on their girls side. They seem to struggle to assemble teams once they lose some players to ECNL at U13. On the other hand their sister club VSA seems to have more consistency but perhaps their numbers are larger than PWSI.
Overall its probably not a bad situation being that there is now another tier for higher level players within those clubs. How it plays out will be up to the three clubs and how they manage the teams and players leading up to those teams.
Mid-season bump.
I’m a bit surprised by VDA. Seems they have taken a step back.
I’m a bit surprised by VDA. Seems they have taken a step back.