MakeAPlay
DA
Kool aid drinker here
Middle school parent and so we are taking our "highly subsided scholarship DA offer" to play locally, four days a week at 1/4 of the cost of our previous club. Travel not included.
Great coach, lots of new girls, lots of movements.
I do not know one 03 or 04 who didn't sign with a DA and chose ECNL OVER DA. The ECNL teams will be weak for sure at 04 level. I think based on what I personally know that the local teams (Notts, Rebels) for example would be fielding a much stronger team than an ECNL. The costs are not being released for that ECNL league and a lot of parents I know would like to know how much the ECNL at the 03-04 level will be now that they are not "elite"
Older parents please help wasn't it 6-9 k?
The most that I spent was $4500 for U16 and U17 about $3700 for U15, U14 was about $3600 including ECNL nationals in Chicago and the Nike Manchester Invitational in Portland (do they still do that?). U10-U13 was $1900. I think that I saw somebody post that if they saved all of that money that it would pay for 3 years at UCLA. That is pretty false. I spent $24k in club fees and travel for my player. UC schools with tuition, fees, books, room and meal plan are about $27-$30k a year. Let's assume that I got 100% return on that money over the 10 years (don't forget that the stock market crashed in 2008 and just got back above those levels in the last year) that is $48k or about a year and a half of tuition. That doesn't even cover a year at Stanford or any out of state public or private school. I can tell you that the money invested in club soccer in my player's case was a fraction of what her scholarship is and I am spending less for her to go to a top university than I spent per year while she was in ECNL. FYI most of my cost for ECNL was travel. Team fees were about $2k. From what it seems with DA, travel will still be a cost that families will still incur although it seems that they will only be traveling once a year unless they make the playoffs.
We will see.