Thoughts on DPL
- Thread starter S00CER1
- Start date
Keepers_Keeper
SILVER
Depends on your age group and interest in college play. It's not so much about the league or club, but about the coach and team. If your kid wants to maximize their playtime and visibility to college coaches, than ECNL is best, if your kid wants to play HS soccer too. But it is also about the club/team coach...most college coaches have tight relationships with club coaches. College coaches establish rapport and history with coaches more than the club they coached for (since they tend to move around).
IMO, coach should always come first. A good coach who has connections can help get your kid there regardless of platform.
If all things are equal and you're talking just platform, I would go ECNL.
Simisoccerfan
PREMIER
Really??? It actually the second season of DPL. Also its not over for another 5 months!
Keepers_Keeper
SILVER
I said ECNL is the better option (for college exposure) IF/AND they want to play high school -IMHO. I'm not as familiar with DP so I don't know for sure if DPL follows the same rules about not playing HS soccer. And again, the coach is so important. It's who-knows-who in soccer - relationships are key. College coaches will take calls from club/team coaches they know or go out of their way to attend a game to watch a player they recommend. My conclusions are based our ECNL experience which resulted in a 4 year full ride offer my HS sophomore ECNL player has at a D1 college in the southwest.
Congrats on the offer, that's amazing! You mention importance of the coach, so wondering how much playing ECNL mattered vs. playing for a particular coach? In other words, if coach was coaching your daughter's DA or NPL team, do you think she still would have had a strong chance of being recruited?
RedCard
GOLD
I agree on having a good coach comes 1st, but IMO the club DOC is a very close 2nd. You need a great DOC to get the good coaches and not afraid to release the coaches not up to par. A DOC who is approachable when needed yet not afraid of the out spoken parent. A DOC who puts the club's interest 1st and one that has a coach's back when needed. A great DOC will probably have more college contacts than the coach.
El Clasico
GOLD
Where do you coach? From that line of complete garbage, it sounds to me like you are a coach or a DOC yourself. "has the coach's back when needed"? A good coach doesn't need for someone to have his back. From my experience, it's always the sh*tty coaches that run to the DOCs looking for protection when they pull a weasel and screw over a child or parent.
If it's about playing in college, right now it's DA 1st, ECNL a close second and everything else is well down on that list. You really don't need any club coach help if you play for DA or ECNL, you just need to do the work to get the interest of the coach's Write (write letters to let them know your interest. they will already be at the event). If high school is important then it's ECNL, then any other league with maybe that coach that has connections. College coach's are concentrating their efforts on the 2 best national leagues in the country, not saying you can't get recruited elsewhere its just more difficult.
Keepers_Keeper
SILVER
In terms of priority (my opinion only - not looking for a debate!), the #1 factor is the athlete doing the work to research colleges, connect with coaches, etc. The #2 factor is the team coach, especially since the NCAA rules prohibit college coaches from directly contacting the athlete until their junior year of HS. Until that time, communication from college coaches needs to go through coaches or DOCs, not directly to the athlete. For this reason, personal connections between club and college coaches are important. The leagues that do this best are ECNL and DA, but that doesn't mean there aren't other league opportunities to be seen. I can't comment on DA/DPL since I have no personal experience in that area. Here are a couple examples why coaches are important in the college recruiting process/conversation.
Example 1: We had the same coach for SCDSL Flight 1 then ECNL. We were fortunate to be on an ECNL team when exposure/visibility for college coaches was most important. Personal example: our coach knew the assistant mens coach at my DD's college of choice. That men's coach was also a coach for a competitor team in our ECNL league. When we played that club, our coach asked the other coach to watch my DD and expressed her interest in his college women's team. That coach was impressed, put in a good word to the women's coach at the college, and the path unfolded from there. 3 months later she went to the college camp and received an offer. There were other connections - but suffice to say that our coach connecting with his friend/coach who had a connection to the college program was a key factor.
Example 2: Before our club was ECNL, there was a team that was very successful nationally. That coach and the team's success in other leagues (CRL, National Cup, US Youth Soccer Nationals etc.) led to almost the entire team being recruited to D1 schools (and now some of them are NWSL players). Granted this was before DA started when ECNL was still a young league, but in that case, the coach was a HUGE part of the process for the players being recruited.
To answer your last question, every player who wants to play in college has to do the work themselves to connect with college coaches. Their club coaches should be a resource, but the athlete (not parent) should own their own recruiting journey. If the player isn't playing in ECNL or DA, there are other ways to get noticed, such as college ID camps. That's a whole other topic tho
The best scenario (which we had) was a coach that had a connection to the college, and a venue (ECNL Showcase and games) for the college coach to see my DD in action. Had only one of those conditions been a factor (i.e. coach connection but no opportunity to be seen or vice versa), we may have the same fortunate outcome, but likely would have been a longer and more stressful journey. Sorry if the topic strayed from your original post about DPL. Just wanted to address your question about recruiting.
This is very helpful. Can anyone say when ECNL teams are formed? We are considering trying to move to an ECNL team but have 5 months of DPL left and are just getting over an injury with no chance in playing for at least another 6 weeks. Do we just request a tryout at that time or will it be too late (and then we won't be in the best shape). So looking at late March to mid April.In terms of priority (my opinion only - not looking for a debate!), the #1 factor is the athlete doing the work to research colleges, connect with coaches, etc. The #2 factor is the team coach, especially since the NCAA rules prohibit college coaches from directly contacting the athlete until their junior year of HS. Until that time, communication from college coaches needs to go through coaches or DOCs, not directly to the athlete. For this reason, personal connections between club and college coaches are important. The leagues that do this best are ECNL and DA, but that doesn't mean there aren't other league opportunities to be seen. I can't comment on DA/DPL since I have no personal experience in that area. Here are a couple examples why coaches are important in the college recruiting process/conversation.
Example 1: We had the same coach for SCDSL Flight 1 then ECNL. We were fortunate to be on an ECNL team when exposure/visibility for college coaches was most important. Personal example: our coach knew the assistant mens coach at my DD's college of choice. That men's coach was also a coach for a competitor team in our ECNL league. When we played that club, our coach asked the other coach to watch my DD and expressed her interest in his college women's team. That coach was impressed, put in a good word to the women's coach at the college, and the path unfolded from there. 3 months later she went to the college camp and received an offer. There were other connections - but suffice to say that our coach connecting with his friend/coach who had a connection to the college program was a key factor.
Example 2: Before our club was ECNL, there was a team that was very successful nationally. That coach and the team's success in other leagues (CRL, National Cup, US Youth Soccer Nationals etc.) led to almost the entire team being recruited to D1 schools (and now some of them are NWSL players). Granted this was before DA started when ECNL was still a young league, but in that case, the coach was a HUGE part of the process for the players being recruited.
To answer your last question, every player who wants to play in college has to do the work themselves to connect with college coaches. Their club coaches should be a resource, but the athlete (not parent) should own their own recruiting journey. If the player isn't playing in ECNL or DA, there are other ways to get noticed, such as college ID camps. That's a whole other topic tho
Sorry if the topic strayed from your original post about DPL. Just wanted to address your question about recruiting.
My suggestion would be to email the Coach of the team(s) you are looking at and open the dialogue with them.
Keepers_Keeper
SILVER
What age group and geographic area? San Diego? OC? Riverside/Temecula? Best thing to do, especially since your player is working through an injury, is to contact the coaches of the club teams you are interested in to talk about your situation and arrange times to practice with the team. Joining the team practice (an open tryout basically) is how most of the higher level teams work in the spring. There are also rules about when DA or ECNL players can be released and free to "tryout" for other clubs, which is why coaches tend to invite players to the practices instead of only recruiting players at official tryouts. If you have any footage or highlights of your player before the injury, definitely send it to the coach/clubs.
Buckyballer
SILVER
I'm an ECNL team manager - we've had girls coming out to look at our team since October (non-ECNL players). There have been new girls at our practices EVERY practice since then. We will have ECNL girls from other teams start to come out May 1st, which is the earliest girls from other ECNL teams can start looking. Our ECNL season will end after the playoffs in June. Most parents that want to come out contact the coach and ask if he will take a look. All contact info for So Cal teams is on the ECNL website.
Thank you, that's a great suggestion about the films. DPL requires games to be filmed so we have those. We are in OC.
Keepers_Keeper
SILVER
Ditto that - I could have written the same post
I'll also add that our coach went to many HS games both on the invitation of players interested in the club, and also to scout/recruit. That won't help the original poster since the player didn't play (and didn't specify age/birth year), but I wanted to mention it as another non-tryout mechanism that enables players to be seen.
Mystery Train
GOLD
I think it is wise to wait. If you could compare the rosters of most current U17 ECNL/DA teams today to the rosters of those same teams back in U13, there would be A LOT of different names. I wish I had the energy and spare time to do a full study, but I'd guess that most of those teams only retain 4-5 players from their 14-18 player rosters in the U13 days, if that. Some players move from one high level team to another, but I think there is a massive attrition percentage that either drop out of soccer completely or simply maxed out early and get by-passed. At least half of the ECNL/DA rosters in my kids' age range today are made up of names that weren't on the "elite" teams in back in U13. Her old club, which is now a DA club, doesn't have a single kid on their '02 DA team that was on their top team back when she was 12. Waiting is underrated, IMHO. If she sticks with it and matures and keeps the love of the game and is good enough, there will be plenty of opportunities on top level teams when she's older.