Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Who exactly would this consolidation benefit? ECNL loses member club team fees. Clubs lose their ECNL status. Fewer ECNL spots for local players. All so a DMV team might go deeper into the playoffs? Who does this help?

Maybe"ECNL status" doesn't mean much if you never advance to the finals.

Huh? ECNL is a college recruitment platform. It functions very well in that regard even if you never advance to the finals. Only crazy soccer parents care this much about advancing to the finals.

some crazy soccer parents want their kids to be recruited by more than va tech and other local schools. Man i wish this wasn’t so anonymous. Some of yall being ok w mediocre results and losing mentalities need to pool your kids together. This is why this area needs more consolidation. If you’re ok w not going to playoffs there is another league to play in…. And no its not GA

Plenty of players from DMV have been recruited to non local colleges without going to finals. ECNL has these events called showcases and all teams are invited. ECNL is not a pro league where winning a title is the goal. Of course it’s fun if you do but college recruiting is the point.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Who exactly would this consolidation benefit? ECNL loses member club team fees. Clubs lose their ECNL status. Fewer ECNL spots for local players. All so a DMV team might go deeper into the playoffs? Who does this help?

Maybe"ECNL status" doesn't mean much if you never advance to the finals.

Huh? ECNL is a college recruitment platform. It functions very well in that regard even if you never advance to the finals. Only crazy soccer parents care this much about advancing to the finals.

some crazy soccer parents want their kids to be recruited by more than va tech and other local schools. Man i wish this wasn’t so anonymous. Some of yall being ok w mediocre results and losing mentalities need to pool your kids together. This is why this area needs more consolidation. If your ok w not going to playoffs there is another league to play in…. And no its not GA

Anonymous wrote:Both won. Bethesda 2-1 and Arlington 2-0

How were the games? Competitive? Got lucky or not.

Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

It does not happen. They are not cutting Arlington or Union. Really doubt VDA. Some parents would drive. I would say it would be 50-50. Most of the girls on teams in this region have other stuff going on. Soccer is their main pursuit but not the only one. Union and Arlington girls are more than half private school. School is still top not soccer for many.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Who exactly would this consolidation benefit? ECNL loses member club team fees. Clubs lose their ECNL status. Fewer ECNL spots for local players. All so a DMV team might go deeper into the playoffs? Who does this help?

Maybe"ECNL status" doesn't mean much if you never advance to the finals.

You are pretty uninvolved with an ECNL program, correct? ECNL status is everything if you want to play in college. That is what ECNL is -- a college recruiting platform. Almost every kid on every team is recruited. Some target the best soccer schools, some the most money, some the best academics, some anything D1, some local schools. You need talent to go to P4 schools and to the high academic D1s and D3s. But the whole plan is to showcase the players and make it easy for college coaches. P4 takes from all over including teams that never made the playoffs. Winning is great and you would rather be in finals than not but that is not the mission.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Who exactly would this consolidation benefit? ECNL loses member club team fees. Clubs lose their ECNL status. Fewer ECNL spots for local players. All so a DMV team might go deeper into the playoffs? Who does this help?

Maybe"ECNL status" doesn't mean much if you never advance to the finals.

Huh? ECNL is a college recruitment platform. It functions very well in that regard even if you never advance to the finals. Only crazy soccer parents care this much about advancing to the finals.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Who exactly would this consolidation benefit? ECNL loses member club team fees. Clubs lose their ECNL status. Fewer ECNL spots for local players. All so a DMV team might go deeper into the playoffs? Who does this help?

Maybe"ECNL status" doesn't mean much if you never advance to the finals.

Anonymous wrote:So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Who exactly would this consolidation benefit? ECNL loses member club team fees. Clubs lose their ECNL status. Fewer ECNL spots for local players. All so a DMV team might go deeper into the playoffs? Who does this help?

Anonymous wrote:Slammers beat Surf today. Slammers versus Legends in the ecnl championship game.

Surf beat Union and Bethesda.
Slammers beat VDA.

DMV cannot hang with SoCal.

Bethesda took Surf to PKs, and Brave lost to Legends 4-3. I think it would be a tough sell for those Cali teams to claim the DMV teams “couldn’t hang” with them.

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Anonymous wrote:Anyone able to get the livestream to work?

Not working for me, either.

They are charging for the service.

Right, and? It’s not working.

yikes
Was debating on buying as i wasn’t sure about hudl vs veo. Are the teams not allowto setup veo etc

I got a refund from hudl pretty quickly. Submit a ticket through the ECNL Streaming platform website.

So how does further consolidation in the DMV happen? ECNL leadership decides it just like they did with Union and Brave? It would make sense to go down to two ECNL clubs in NOVA just outside of DC instead of three (counting NVA, Arlington, Union). VDA draws up and down 95 to Richmond. Southern California ECNL players travel really long distances too to their practices. No way we’re more congested than souther California. Parents would be willing to drive far for a really competitive club in the DMV.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no Destination club in our area. Talent diluted. Look at Penn Fusion or PDA. Those are destination clubs for large Metro areas and families will drive well over an hour each way to have their DD play there.

I grew up in NoVa and lived there most of my life before relocating to the Philly area 5 years ago. Penn Fusion is definitely a destination club, but still plenty of other big clubs in the area that are successful. They're also relatively new only forming the current structure in 2009 so I agree one or two clubs in the DMV should have been able to develop into the premier club with the appropriate leadership. I hate to say it, but in the DMV you could be driving an hour+ and still only be 10-15 miles away so it definitely dilutes the talent. There's no quick fix for how the region is currently situated.

It’s almost backwards in the DMV. There were two premier/destination clubs but the addition of Loudoun hurt FCV and the more recent addition of Arlington hurt McLean.

Fairfax VA Union and NVA will be the destination clubs moving forward.

NVA does have beautiful fiields and complex. Union though doesn’t even have bathrooms at their fields.

Anonymous wrote:

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SoCal has at least a couple major advantages but they will never admit it. Egos in SoCal would never admit to any advantage.

What's their advantage? Weather is warm? Large population? Gotta be more than just that. What's keeping DMV from being as competitive?

as others have echoed. Coaches, politics and crummy foundations at the academy level.

We cant hide behind the weather, indoor facilities and year round futbol. Teams north and south of us are thriving post season.

I know of at least three clubs w divisive coaches who have attempted to peg their “star” players at the expense of pissing of the real stars of their teams. Parents are waking up to it however. And it doesn’t bode well for the next off season. Please note the thriving clubs dont have all the turnover and are playing team ball…. Egos removed.

It's also parents who only care about wins which forces coaches into implementing shortcuts to keep their job. This creates a negative reinforcement loop that culminates in kickball teams that slaughter B teams but can't compete against high level A teams.

It’s the parents fault! It’s the coaches fault! It’s the clubs fault! It’s the league structure! It’s too much money! It’s bad leadership at US soccer! It’s playing by birth years instead of grade levels! It’s the weather!

So many excuses. Maybe these are all just symptoms but not the cause to be “fixed”. Maybe as a country, as a culture, we’re just not as good at soccer as other countries or other more popular sports.

The comparison here is with other US clubs, not other countries. CA does it better within the US culture. So does Texas. Texas is even more curious because they have a huge, dominate football culture that competes for athletic boys and they still manage to produce great soccer players

California teams also play year-round. they start in August and finish in May. We stop for high school soccer.

California HS soccer is November - March.

Anonymous wrote:
So many excuses. Maybe these are all just symptoms but not the cause to be “fixed”. Maybe as a country, as a culture, we’re just not as good at soccer as other countries or other more popular sports.

Umm, we're talking about DMV vs California.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no Destination club in our area. Talent diluted. Look at Penn Fusion or PDA. Those are destination clubs for large Metro areas and families will drive well over an hour each way to have their DD play there.

I grew up in NoVa and lived there most of my life before relocating to the Philly area 5 years ago. Penn Fusion is definitely a destination club, but still plenty of other big clubs in the area that are successful. They're also relatively new only forming the current structure in 2009 so I agree one or two clubs in the DMV should have been able to develop into the premier club with the appropriate leadership. I hate to say it, but in the DMV you could be driving an hour+ and still only be 10-15 miles away so it definitely dilutes the talent. There's no quick fix for how the region is currently situated.

It’s almost backwards in the DMV. There were two premier/destination clubs but the addition of Loudoun hurt FCV and the more recent addition of Arlington hurt McLean.

Fairfax VA Union and NVA will be the destination clubs moving forward.