The age groups only have one or two divisions so getting good competition is a crap shoot.
In a good season: Half your team's games will be good even games, half will be blowouts.

SFL had their scheduling programmed to keep games within a certain mile radius. NCSL said they were keeping the same format. They clearly did not. Not only did they not follow the SFL geographic restrictions, they added new teams that are rdiculously far outisde the boundaries of a northern va suburban rec league.

Perhaps they will improve this. I’m from the travel side and they have been great to work with. I can’t imagine they won’t try to make it better going forward. Curious about what matters more to you guys- balanced competition or distance? I’m not being snarky. Maybe the NVSC/ PWSI/ Culpeper/Fredericksburg/ add Stafford? clubs could be a group?
I remember being annoyed by having to go to Roanoke and VA beach for single games when CCL existed on the travel side. I get where rec teams don’t want Fredericksburg on their schedule.

Anonymous wrote:In Ashburn, I was expecting to play clubs in Loudoun & Fairfax, Chantilly, Centerville, maybe as far as McLean. Our first match is at Hellwig Park.

NCSL does not know how to run a rec league. They are treating it like a travel and are completely oblivious to the audience they need to serve.

In Ashburn, I was expecting to play clubs in Loudoun & Fairfax, Chantilly, Centerville, maybe as far as McLean. Our first match is at Hellwig Park.

You can tell they made zero effort by looking at the SOTH schedules. They have a team playing NVSC twice, an Ashburn team, Springfield, and a Centreville team. SOTH should be playing closer in teams like Alexandria, Mclean, Annandale. We are NVSC and have never played one of their teams before.

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Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

While it's far, it's not much farther than a lot of other matches. We are going over an hour for a few matches. And we are farther from Fredericksburg than Sterling.

Over an hour? From where to where?

DP. We're in Alexandria and have a game in Fauquier

That's ridiculous. The league made no effort to follow SFL's procedures for keeping game distances reasonable.

They clearly were disnhonest to the team reps about following sfl's guidelines on traveling distances.

That takes work. Why do more work when you can just dump a spreadsheet into demosphere and use whatever it spits out?

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

While it's far, it's not much farther than a lot of other matches. We are going over an hour for a few matches. And we are farther from Fredericksburg than Sterling.

Over an hour? From where to where?

DP. We're in Alexandria and have a game in Fauquier

That's ridiculous. The league made no effort to follow SFL's procedures for keeping game distances reasonable.

They clearly were disnhonest to the team reps about following sfl's guidelines on traveling distances.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

While it's far, it's not much farther than a lot of other matches. We are going over an hour for a few matches. And we are farther from Fredericksburg than Sterling.

Over an hour? From where to where?

DP. We're in Alexandria and have a game in Fauquier

That's ridiculous. The league made no effort to follow SFL's procedures for keeping game distances reasonable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

While it's far, it's not much farther than a lot of other matches. We are going over an hour for a few matches. And we are farther from Fredericksburg than Sterling.

Over an hour? From where to where?

DP. We're in Alexandria and have a game in Fauquier

The SFL had a formula and wouldn't schedule games outside of a certain travel radius.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

While it's far, it's not much farther than a lot of other matches. We are going over an hour for a few matches. And we are farther from Fredericksburg than Sterling.

Over an hour? From where to where?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

While it's far, it's not much farther than a lot of other matches. We are going over an hour for a few matches. And we are farther from Fredericksburg than Sterling.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To be fair, their second divisions do say "east" or "west" on them.

We are in Sterling. That's like as far as possible away from Fredericksburg. I do not think they took locations into account at all.

On a Saturday, with beach and vacation traffic going south, that could take two+ hours one way. Forget it if there's an accident.

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Anonymous wrote:I would expect the game to remain on the calendar. Allowing teams to decline the game essentially kicks Fredericksburg out of the league

They will be de facto declining the game anyway, by forfeiting in advance OR only a handful of kids actually showing up to play. There is no downside to forfeits in this league, no one cares about standings. The SFL last year had a huge problem just trying to get coaches to send in the scores. Even winning coaches wouldn't bother.

I think the league would rather it be the clubs forfeiting than them pulling away games. I think NCSL should admit it was a mistake, stick the fredericksburg teams in bottom travel brackets for this season so the kids get games and then put in geographic restrictions in the fall and going forward

agree that this would be a fair solution.

Yes, let the league eat the cost difference, since they made this huge mistake in the first place.