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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To Arlington parents, the goal should be for each of your respective teams to have the scorelines exceed the level of the team you are playing.  This, combined with past performance, should get you to the top level of both ECNL and non-ECNL tournaments.  Once there, Arlington should strive to take home some important tournament wins.  This is your chance to establish your team as the dominant big fish in a little pond.  If you [b]cannot[/b] accomplish this, then you have no argument. [/quote]

I agree that these things are good goals.

However I'm not sure that the "argument" depends on achieving them and bringing trophies home.  I think the concern that parents have is not that there won't be some competitive games.  We know there will, and we know that some ECNL teams are very good.  The concern is just that there will be too many uncompetitive games.  And I think that argument will be based on - well - very simply - whether or not there are too many uncompetitive games.

If you [b]can[/b] accomplish this, being at the top of ECNL will get a lot more quick exposure for aspiring MLS players than being a mid-level team in Tier 2 MLSYA.  If collectively the Arlington teams do well their first year in ECNL, it will empower the parents to show the club that the competition in ECNL is weak and give you the argument to switch to MLSYA.      [/quote]

I don't think the board made the decision to switch to ECNL because they felt that the level of play would be equivalent to MLSYA, nor because they felt the MLSYA was too high a level of play.  So proving that it isn't won't change their minds.  They made the decision, as far as I can tell, because they felt that ECNL was a stable league which allowed them to provide a secure option to parents while MLSYA was still very much up in the air.  MLSYA still can't define which teams are in which divsisions, what the relationship between MLS and non-MLS clubs will be, or even what age groups MLS clubs will have and how the league will work for non-MLS clubs in age groups which some ior all MLS clubs don't plan to have.

It's entirely possible that MLSYA will fall apart, or even fail to launch, or that this region at least just doesn't have enough teams to be viable without horrifying travel requirements.  And to some degree those things might have happened because Arlington, VDA and Richmond chose to jump ship - thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy  I can't imagine Bethesda is ecstatic at this point.  If they stay in the MLS league, instead of the current schedule with more than half their away games within an hour's drive, they will presumably be looking at 2-3 games within that distance against DC and Baltimore (with PA Classics a little further away), and the rest in northern PA or New York, and quite possibly several in New England or Ohio.  I suspect the fact that VDA and Richmond had already defected played strongly into Arlington's decision to do the same.  And if Bethesda were now to defect, then what does Baltimore do?  Etc.[/quote]

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