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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lol, lot of BS in this thread. Pretty much ignore everything that wasn't posted by an ECNL player or parent it's just speculation.

First, the ENCL rules leave clubs wiggle room and the clubs have different interpretations of how they manage the schedule to work around HS. This gives coaches the flexibility to work with their player pool and manage things to try to keep the girls healthy but still keep them progressing. It's not perfect and if your ECNL coach is an idiot or your HS coach is an idiot you may have some difficult choices to make.

My daughters both really wanted to play for their school. The excitement of representing their school meant something to them, something that playing for an ECNL team didn't. This was back when there was no GDA so ECNL was the undisputed top level at the time. When they talked to their coaches, both coaches were willing to work with them. In both cases the coaches knew they would be stars and help them win and they were willing to be flexible enough to keep them from going straight to injured reserve. That said they still chose to go straight from HS practice to club practice on some nights, if they knew it wasn't going to be too much. The HS team was not very good and the girls weren't very fit so if that team did fitness it was really just a good warmup anyways, that's all they could handle. If they had a HS game they skipped ECNL practice and if they had a club game on the weekend they could skip Friday HS practice. Again, if any of their coaches was the typical NoVa soccer coach chasing his own glory at the expense of the kids it may not have worked out for us. If that's your coach find a new team.  I did lose a lot of sleep those seasons but we got lucky and escaped with no injuries.

As for the ECNL schedule, this is how it worked for us. ECNL does not skip HS season for the years before HS. Also for us ECNL was year-round for us so it's not like we only played during the fall season. We started training after tryouts in June, with preseason tournaments and friendlies over the summer and a minicamp with daily training before the fall season. We had the majority of games over the fall season, but then the interdivisional games with clubs from states like MD with different HS seasons were scheduled during the winter so we kept training through the winter. During the spring we were preparing for the ECNL national events at the beginning of summer so we had our regular training schedule and a light schedule of games, mostly friendlies. The spring training was also to help keep players from picking up bad habits from the HS soccer which was usually not very thoughtful in the approach to the game and often not compatible with the possession style our ECNL club played. Some of the spring practice were lightly attended but the team had some private school and MD players who were at every practice in the spring so even if a lot of players had games there was never less than half the team.

What did not seem to work well were the players on their teams from MD or private schools who wanted to play HS soccer at the same time as our ECNL busy season. That was a disaster for those who tried it. Ending up with either poor performance or injuries from being overextended. I would advise you not to do that, if your daughter goes to a private school or you live in MD, look for a MD ECNL club or make the choice between school and club.

Also not sure what people are talking about with ECNL fees. Ours were practically the same as what we were paying for regular club and from the schedule above we got more out of ECNL for that. We did end up paying a little more each year in travel expenses because we had league games 5 hours away so it did end up costing more but not so much more compared to the travel we did going to tournaments with club team.

Both of my daughters had their ECNL teams change coaches and ended up having to leave ECNL to get better coaching when the new coach was substandard. They both went on to play in college and the coaching and development they got was more important to us than the prestige of playing in the most elite league. They also both continued to play for their HS team and played HS 3 out of 4 years.

The biggest drawback of ECNL was the travel. It pulled them out of school and sent them on road trips too much. This is a US Soccer issue, and a parent stupidity issue. We have enough talent in the DMV to have our own top division be a higher competitive level than ECNL or GDA without any remote travel if we all put our kids in a DMV league with promotion and relegation--but that would make way too much sense.

Was ECNL worth it for us? Yes. Both had a few good years where it was exactly what they needed. They got some great coaching and exposure to same great players. I saw players they played with or against in nearly every tournament game I watched last year. Was it the right decision for them to leave ECNL when they did, based on who their coaches would have been and who they had after they left, yes that was the best available option as well. If you have a great coach and your daughter is making great progress then she's where she needs to be. If not look for those things, the league the team plays in is not nearly as important as those.

And looking back they are both very glad they got to play for their school too. It was an important part of their social growth and there's no way they would give that up. Their school team did have a much longer schedule the year they made it to state finals, but that's not standard very few teams in the state make it that far each year. Yes, it was a greater risk of injury when they choose to do both at the same time. That said, playing soccer is a greater risk of injury than not--you have to take some risks to live your life. As a father at the time I tried very hard to talk them out of playing for their school. I was looking at it from a developmental perspective and thought it wasn't worth the risk. They both saw other value in representing their school community and in the end I had to support their choices. 
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Things change. Current ECNL parents are explaining how it is now and it is different from your experience. [/quote]

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