Girls Development Academy

Remember the exception to the duals is if you have won a national championship in the last 3 years. They were basically speaking to the Slammers, Blues and Surfs of the world saying you can do as you please.

The Slammers thing is a very unique situation. My son plays for the LAFC DA. They are very particular with every connection they make. They still haven't allowed Slammers to put the LAFC logo on their jerseys like the boys have it. They seem to be more interested in quality over quantity, which they can afford to do with a billionaire main owner and lots of millionaire owners under that.
So their being technically separate didn't actually matter then? That would solve issue #1, but make #2 even worse. That would mean ECNL considered them the same club and gave them an exemption specifically on that basis, yet still put them on the "all in" list.

Also, the LAFC logo is not the issue. It's holding themselves out as a "Slammers" team (and using Slammers coaches).
 
Don't build information into my statements. I never said simply playing that many minutes would make her ready for college. I was speaking of the sub rule and how it will effect players physically. We all know D1 at every level is a whole different game. You are playing with women and not girls.

Do you understand that college has unlimited substitutions?
 
Wait a sec, are you saying that Legends was more of a recruiting organization than a couple of the clubs (we all know who they are) that had ECNL???? That is very funny! It must've been even more crowded than I remember around those porta-potties at the Polo Fields. Thank you for the good laugh, MAP!

My player spent most of her career with Strikers so I don't get the Polo Field reference. If you think that Surf has to recruit you clearly don't have a player that played for Surf. Top players come to Surf in order to play with other top players. My player moved to Surf as a senior to play with two of her future college teammates (who both left other SD clubs to play for Surf) and to play for a particular coach who had coached her 4 of the 5 previous seasons.

You can be a Surf hater if you want to be but you have no clue about how things work down here.
 
My player spent most of her career with Strikers so I don't get the Polo Field reference. If you think that Surf has to recruit you clearly don't have a player that played for Surf. Top players come to Surf in order to play with other top players. My player moved to Surf as a senior to play with two of her future college teammates (who both left other SD clubs to play for Surf) and to play for a particular coach who had coached her 4 of the 5 previous seasons.

You can be a Surf hater if you want to be but you have no clue about how things work down here.
I respect Surf and think it is an amazing club. I was referring to recruiting at Surf Cup, not necessarily BY Surf. Plus it was a joke, so you can chill. Anyway, what's wrong if they recruit? I don't hate recruiters. I admire them. Nowadays every single club with DA or ECNL is a recruiting club. Trust me.
 
I read it this morning. I made a lot of these points when this all started. DA clearly isn't for everyone. Pretending it was all inclusive leads to a lot of animosity.

In the IE we have a lot of good public schools so we don't have to worry about the waivers. My girl plays in the Valley though and most of the girls on her team go to private schools. With the costs I can see why girls would need to play high school. The club wasn't doing waivers so I see a lot of the 01-02 players who are really good on the DPL. Our 03 team probably lost some players due to not having waivers.

The sub rule is a game changer. Especially with the girls learning a brand new system. Some people simply don't learn very fast on the fly and need to come out the game and watch then try again. I really think it comes down to the coaching to be honest. No matter how good a coach is at practice, game management is the real key factor in having your team run the system right. We get frustrated because our coach tends to keep the girls who are struggling on the field and the ones who are doing good get pulled. I don't see that so much on other teams. Guess its all in how the coach thinks he or she needs to develop. With game time so limited, I prefer the reward system of playing those that get it over those that don't.

I don't have a problem with no outside competition. My kid didn't sign up for the DA to have to play NPL the next day because the coach didn't play her. We have been on that roller coaster before and it really doesn't help develop a player to play with lesser level competition. Also, some coaches use it as a punishment for a kid, which is what happened to us.

No one signs up not to play, but you also have to be realistic about your level as a player. Watching kids make the same mistakes they were 7 months ago or not developing a first touch, etc... kind of makes it clear the player isn't ready for this level. The speed of play makes it difficult to get better if you aren't putting in the proper amount of work. No amount of game time can fix the fact you aren't working on your game outside of practice.

One thing I told my daughter. If you can play a whole 80 or 90 minutes at a high level in the DA, college will be a breeze because you can actually get subbed and come back in there.


Here are my thoughts:

High School - I have mixed emotions on this one. My dd played DPL in the fall and was a DP for the DA. She was offered full time DA just before HS started and was given the choice of moving to the DA then or after playing HS. She chose to play HS (junior year). She liked the friendship part and as a parent I love the packed stands, newspaper articles and accolades she received. So on the plus side it feeds the players and parents egos. The negative is that even though we won league the quality of soccer was quite poor. Almost unwatchable at times. I also think 2-3 games per week is a bit too much along a lot of cheapshots occurring between rival schools. My dd will not play her senior year (her choice) and says she won't miss it. Ultimately, I don't have a problem with the No HS rule for DA. Girls that want to play HS have other options for leagues.

Substitution Rule - I don't have a problem with this rule. The problem I would have is how a club implements it. Carrying 22 girls on a DA roster is just way too many with this rule in place. Ideally a team would carry 16 - 18 girls. Then they would use their DP slots to pull players up from their reserve team as injuries occur or reserve players develop. This allows the girls that would have filled out those last roster spots to get substantial playing time and still get DA exposure. I think the problem occurs with clubs driven to fill their last 4-5 roster spots to make more money.

Outside Competition - I am okay with this rule for the team but not the players. I believe DA teams should be allowed to assign players to their reserve team for an extended period of time and that they then can return to the DA in the same season. Think of baseball and how clubs use their minor league teams for marginal or up and coming players. For example player X gets injured and is just returning or player Y is not getting much playing time. They still practice with the DA but they get sent on assignment to play for their reserve team until they are able to contribute to their DA team. The time frame would need to be in weeks to avoid teams shipping players to their reserve to just to gain wins.
 
One facet not being taken into consideration post ECNL formation is how many ULittles (u10 - u12) left Clubs like Legends and Beach to chase the ECNL club marketing machines?

Nevertheless, the past can be debated but it won’t change the present. Good luck to all of us left to navigate this crap!

What you might not realize is that when Coast Premier League was the top level the best players would leave whatever club they were on at U15/16 to go play for the teams that were in Coast Premier and they were the usual suspects: Slammer, Blues, West Coast, Arsenal, Real So Cal, Strikers, Eagles Laguna Hills Eclipse and Southbay Force. Beach, LA Rampage, Legends, LAFC and others came along later. This is nothing new.
 
Damn!!!! That was seriously harsh. You said that as if Legends doesn't have talented players and coaches. No matter how you feel about the person leading it, that isn't a fair assessment that they could only compete in the 2nd circuit. Nothing is perfect at any club and I'm not here to defend Legends, but let's stay fair on this. BTW, my kid doesn't play for them anymore and won't so I'm not partial to them in any way. I drive my girl 45 minutes away instead and all her friends are on the Legends team.
I was surprised by that take as well. My daughter has never played for Legends, but has competed against them over the years and they have been consistently good. Plus, their 01/02 GDA team is one of the top teams in the country and the star forward on that team (the #4 ranked class of 2020 player in Southern California) has been with Legends since at least U14.
 
I never said that Legends doesn't have talented players. I said that they are a recruiting operation. Their style of play does not prepare players for success. Talent only gets you so far....

Travel was the majority of what I paid for in terms of club costs for my player. In other words, it isn't free.

Can anyone here confirm that travel costs for LA Galaxy and Pats is free? I doubt it but I will believe a parent from one of those clubs....
LA Galaxy does cover all costs including travel. Tech can confirm about Pats.
 
LA Galaxy does cover all costs including travel. Tech can confirm about Pats.
My DD is on Pats 04 DA, we paid for uniforms at beginning of season, approx $200 and we had to participate in a club fundraiser selling raffle tickets, 50 tickets - $10 each ($500 total). There was a small ask for food money, when our girls traveled to Arizona, NorCal, and Showcases which was very minimal.

The fundraiser was a tough one, especially if you had to buy out those tickets yourself, it's an indirect way of raising the money to fund club DA expenses.

Outside of the items mentioned above, we haven't paid anything else this season.
 
Do you understand that college has unlimited substitutions?

Yes. That was the whole point. If you can go hard for 80 or 90 minutes in the DA, you can hard for how ever long your coach allows you to on the next level. The fact you have to be good enough to be there in the first place is assumed.
 
I was surprised by that take as well. My daughter has never played for Legends, but has competed against them over the years and they have been consistently good. Plus, their 01/02 GDA team is one of the top teams in the country and the star forward on that team (the #4 ranked class of 2020 player in Southern California) has been with Legends since at least U14.

I had a club player before there was a Legends and unfortunately you have a player that is significantly younger than mine. Your experience is much more recent than mine so I wouldn't expect you to know the history. Please point out to me a player who spent most of their club career with Legends (especially the recruiting years) that is having success post high school....
 
Yes. That was the whole point. If you can go hard for 80 or 90 minutes in the DA, you can hard for how ever long your coach allows you to on the next level. The fact you have to be good enough to be there in the first place is assumed.

Do you understand that 90 minute players operate at a different exertion level than 10-20 minute players? Do you know what the beep test is?
 
Here are my thoughts:

High School - I have mixed emotions on this one. My dd played DPL in the fall and was a DP for the DA. She was offered full time DA just before HS started and was given the choice of moving to the DA then or after playing HS. She chose to play HS (junior year). She liked the friendship part and as a parent I love the packed stands, newspaper articles and accolades she received. So on the plus side it feeds the players and parents egos. The negative is that even though we won league the quality of soccer was quite poor. Almost unwatchable at times. I also think 2-3 games per week is a bit too much along a lot of cheapshots occurring between rival schools. My dd will not play her senior year (her choice) and says she won't miss it. Ultimately, I don't have a problem with the No HS rule for DA. Girls that want to play HS have other options for leagues.

Substitution Rule - I don't have a problem with this rule. The problem I would have is how a club implements it. Carrying 22 girls on a DA roster is just way too many with this rule in place. Ideally a team would carry 16 - 18 girls. Then they would use their DP slots to pull players up from their reserve team as injuries occur or reserve players develop. This allows the girls that would have filled out those last roster spots to get substantial playing time and still get DA exposure. I think the problem occurs with clubs driven to fill their last 4-5 roster spots to make more money.

Outside Competition - I am okay with this rule for the team but not the players. I believe DA teams should be allowed to assign players to their reserve team for an extended period of time and that they then can return to the DA in the same season. Think of baseball and how clubs use their minor league teams for marginal or up and coming players. For example player X gets injured and is just returning or player Y is not getting much playing time. They still practice with the DA but they get sent on assignment to play for their reserve team until they are able to contribute to their DA team. The time frame would need to be in weeks to avoid teams shipping players to their reserve to just to gain wins.
This underscores the maxim that everyone's situation is different and there is no single right answer. While some people may have a worse time with these particular DA rules, in your situation, it worked fine and you got the results you were looking for. Also in your case, it is good that the DA format worked because the ECNL options are more limited (north LA). For others, the DA format is terrible and ECNL works better.

All of the back and forth about the pros and cons of DA's particular format vs ECNL's format reminded me of an article I read about the marketplace battles between new tech formats like Blu-ray and HD DVD years ago, and applies to adoption rates for programming languages today and software for wireless controls. Contrary to what I thought early on, the DA vs. ECNL battle will ultimately not be decided by the consumers (paying parents/players) but rather the alliances behind the scenes. Here's a quote from the article about what ultimately tipped the scales in the Blu-ray tech war: "However, practically none of these factors (the pros and cons of each format) played too great of a role in the war. One of the main reasons why each format performed the way that it did was because of the alliances established by the major corporations backing it. Hitachi, LG Electronics, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Thomson founded the Blu-ray Disc Association, and they quickly gained support from Dell and Apple before the product was officially released. HD DVD had several supporters who remained affiliated with the DVD Forum during this time, including Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, and Microsoft." In the end, the movie studios started to fall in line with Sony and the others because of licensing and distribution relationships, and once a couple bigger studios went that way, it was only a matter of time before HD DVD was dead.

In this analogy, the clubs are the studios (the content providers) and the leagues are the tech formats. Once influential content providers (such as the PDA, Michigan Hawks, etc.) make a full commitment to ECNL over DA, this could predict similar migrations in SoCal. I think the DA has a better chance of hanging on here because of the deep talent pool, but if the clubs across other regions put all their best teams into ECNL, and just one more influential club here follows SoCal Blues' lead and matches up their best older teams in ECNL, the dominoes will fall rapidly.

It could go the other way too. But these announcements by big clubs like those in New Jersey and Michigan are very significant because marketplace behavior is herd mentality all the way.
 
Does it really matter how many clubs they add if they lose Michigan Hawks, Eclipse and PDA? Michigan and PDA are 2 of the top 10 GDA clubs in the country. Eclipse is top 20. This is big news.

After reading so many of these articles I'd love to hear what US Soccer has to say on this. Seems like all I hear are crickets from them on big clubs leaving and them not changing the rules for the benefit of the girls as so many of us have pointed out. Come on US Soccer, chime in. Tired of this 1 sided argument.
 
Here are my thoughts:

High School - I have mixed emotions on this one. My dd played DPL in the fall and was a DP for the DA. She was offered full time DA just before HS started and was given the choice of moving to the DA then or after playing HS. She chose to play HS (junior year). She liked the friendship part and as a parent I love the packed stands, newspaper articles and accolades she received. So on the plus side it feeds the players and parents egos. The negative is that even though we won league the quality of soccer was quite poor. Almost unwatchable at times. I also think 2-3 games per week is a bit too much along a lot of cheapshots occurring between rival schools. My dd will not play her senior year (her choice) and says she won't miss it. Ultimately, I don't have a problem with the No HS rule for DA. Girls that want to play HS have other options for leagues.

Substitution Rule - I don't have a problem with this rule. The problem I would have is how a club implements it. Carrying 22 girls on a DA roster is just way too many with this rule in place. Ideally a team would carry 16 - 18 girls. Then they would use their DP slots to pull players up from their reserve team as injuries occur or reserve players develop. This allows the girls that would have filled out those last roster spots to get substantial playing time and still get DA exposure. I think the problem occurs with clubs driven to fill their last 4-5 roster spots to make more money.

Outside Competition - I am okay with this rule for the team but not the players. I believe DA teams should be allowed to assign players to their reserve team for an extended period of time and that they then can return to the DA in the same season. Think of baseball and how clubs use their minor league teams for marginal or up and coming players. For example player X gets injured and is just returning or player Y is not getting much playing time. They still practice with the DA but they get sent on assignment to play for their reserve team until they are able to contribute to their DA team. The time frame would need to be in weeks to avoid teams shipping players to their reserve to just to gain wins.

Thank you for the insight. It's nice to get it from someone with an older girl in the system.

My daughter watched enough high school soccer in the 7th and 8th grade to know she didn't want to participate as she entered high school. Also, her high school at the time carries almost all seniors and juniors on the varsity team with freshmen and sophomores being on the JV or Freshman team. She knew those players on the younger teams and the talent level isn't what she was looking to participate with. We went and watched some of their games to support her friends and the game play was fast, but in general poor. Not to mention the dirty fouls. DA fits her perfectly. She had a friend who got a waiver and played and that team was very good. In fact they played like a DA team so her experience was terrific.

The sub rules - I don't like it for the 04s and 03s. Frankly, they aren't mature enough to get the proper development out of it. Most of these girls don't watch soccer and the learning curve is slow. Keeping a player on the field who makes the same mistakes over and over isn't getting the team or the individual a better development environment. The 04's and 03's need to be taught. A coach needs to be able to pull them over and say, "We don't just bomb the ball out the back anymore. I'll give you another chance or else you're sitting the rest of the game and maybe the next game or two.", or "We need you to hold on to the ball and let the game develop more. You are playing a bit rushed. Watch how our movement is now and see how we are building and progressing up the field.". Old habits die hard and as long as they are on the field, the players think they are doing it right. I would like a 3 subs per half with no re-entry that half rule.

* I won't have the problem with the sub rules since the girls will be like the boys and come in on a U12-U11 combo team that allows unlimited subs starting next season. They should be able to understand what they need to do by U14 with two seasons under their belts. It's this transition group I worry about.

I agree, rosters shouldn't be more than 18 if the true aim is development. The DPL is there to cover for the injuries, defections, etc...

To me the issue with the DA isn't the rules everyone complains about. It's the fact it is brand new and everyone has to make rapid adjustments and break habits that have been ingrained since these girls were 5 and 6 years old. Keepers and defenders are being taught to play out the back now. Mids have to have a better understanding of how the game works and not just send the ball long or carry the ball up when they can't necessarily beat these players anymore. Forwards actually have to make multiple type of runs. Outside backs are now wing backs that travel up and down the field and have to know how far they can go or they will get caught out of position. It's just more sophisticated than what they are used too and it takes time to learn and get good at.

In comparison my son plays DA U12. Even when we play the weaker teams, the ball isn't flying around the field. They are connecting passes and always attempting to. They aren't just kicking the damn ball and hoping someone else gets it. If that is what is going to happen to the girls ON ALL LEVELS, it's a great thing for soccer in the US.
 
I had a club player before there was a Legends and unfortunately you have a player that is significantly younger than mine. Your experience is much more recent than mine so I wouldn't expect you to know the history. Please point out to me a player who spent most of their club career with Legends (especially the recruiting years) that is having success post high school....
I can't and perhaps you are right that any improvement would have been more recent. I predict that 2020 grad I was talking about will have a great college career though.
 
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