Reply to Best soccer team for 05 boy in the area targeting future college recruiting

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The youth soccer landscape is such a mess, it's amazing college recruiters even know where to go.  Specific to the DAs if recruiters are looking at teams in or around the DC metro area, there are only three clubs (DC United, Bethesda and VDA) supporting DAs at the U16 and older ages.  After u15, Arlington drops off and Loudoun moved to ECNL.  As for the 05 ECNL teams in Virginia, all three (Loudoun, McLean and BRYC) seem to be struggling.  
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Does that mean that only DA is good enough for a good recruiting? My understanding is that VDA has U16 and U17 merged, which means that there are mostly older players in a team. DC United is very difficult to get in, Bethesda is too far. We were thinking about ECNL as a good option, but It seems like ECNL teams in our area are not good at all and have low percentage of recruited boys. I keep hearing that their teams are struggling. We were considering McLean ECNL because they told us that ECNL has better showcases, than DAs, and that DA players are mostly targeting professional soccer.  Can someone, please, clarify?[/quote]

Unfortunately, your questions emphasizes the point I made in my earlier post; that is, the landscape of youth soccer is just so murky, it's not clear what the best path forward is for a quality player who is not on a DA Team. I do agree with others that there are very good D2 and D3 schools, especially if the focus is on academics, which it should be. I raised the question about D1 after watching the College Cup this past weekend. I was surprised how many foreign born players the four teams (UVA, Wake Forest, Stanford and Georgetown) had on their rosters, as well as the number of players coming from DAs and wondered what recruiting really looks like.  Is it the players targeting the schools they want to go to or is coaches actually scouting for the best players?

As for the original questions about the top 05 teams in the area, there are several very good teams, not including the DAs.  In Virginia, Alexandria, Villarreal, SYC and Arlington have quality, successful teams.  In DC, Capital FC is very strong as is Bethesda - if you're willing to go to Bethesda.  Of course, there are lots of strong opinions about each of these teams and the clubs surrounding them.  I'm not getting into the politics of each club, I'm simply putting out which teams in the immediate DC metro area have seen success lately.  As for ECNL, it may be the "new" CCL for Virginia teams.  With few DA options at U16 and above, some clubs may gravitate putting their top teams in ECNL for the opportunity to play teams up and down the east coast, to include NC and SC. [/quote]

I'm fairly familiar with the rosters of this year's College Cup teams, and neither Georgetown nor Stanford has many foreign players.  UVA and Wake always seem to have a lot, and it's definitely worth taking a look at the historical archives of team rosters to get a sense of whether coaches seem to recruit significant numbers of foreign players or players from a particular region of the US.  For schools like these four, with both great academics and great soccer, most of the players on the roster will be pretty well known regionally or nationally, but there always seem to be a few local kids that the coaches got to know at camps or non-DA showcases.

For the OP, it is not at all true that boys ECNL has better showcases than boys' DA (the boys' DA showcases attract pretty much all of the college coaches), and it's also not true in our region that most DA kids go pro instead of to college.  That being said, if your son can't get to or get on a good local DA team for whatever reason, my advice is to look for teams with coaches who have a history of getting teams to the National Leagues or who have a reputation for placing a lot of kids in college.  You'll have to research club website archives and ask around to figure this out.  Also, don't forget that the academic piece is at least as important as the soccer one.  Good players with great grades and great test scores who take the initiative to stay in touch with coaches during the recruiting years will have good options.  Don't let your kid fall into the trap of thinking that D1 is "better" than D3.  It's all about the fit, and the balance between soccer, academics, and social life.

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