Anonymous wrote:I doubt a new entrant into the market at the youth level is likely to be successful. In the youth market right now, Madlax still solidly dominates the NoVa market. NL and Bethesda get the vast majority of the good MoCo players. Cavs has put together fairly solid youth teams in the younger age range and VLC has moved into the youth market and already has some moderately successful youth teams, though they have just started to try to build elementary teams. Hard to see Blackwolf even achieving parity with Cavs or VLC. There just aren’t enough strong youth players to feed another team.

The problem the high school age only programs are having is that the stronger players are playing club much younger now. So the teams and talent consolidate at far younger ages than even a few years ago. So by the middle school years now teams are more sorted by talent - and a lot of the movement that used to happen in the seventh and eight grade are happening now by like fifth grade, which is crazy. But it’s definitely a far different market now than the days when Madlax, BW, and VLC could nab strong players in late middle school and field strong high school teams.