I'm with the thought process. Traveling to play teams that are exactly the same or worse than teams 30 minutes to an hour away makes no sense.Let me tell you what the upside is for the Southern California Blues. NO MORE TRAVEL!! I know one of the Founders and I can say they never wanted to do the travel leagues. The Grooming Develop Academy (GDA) forced all the girls to travel across the country to beat up on teams and if they said no, they were kicked out, especially the ones who went to public school. Blues was 100% a no and even tried to persuade the fools at the top of GDA that it was not healthy for the kids and super expensive for the average family in Socal at big meetings. They were told to fu*k off and pay up or lose their business.
GA allows players to play HS now. They realized the mistake DA made and arent following in their footsteps. However the GA schedule does make playing in HS nearly impossible. (Which is probabaly the plan)
I guess if Blues did GA + participated in all the local SoCal ECNL Club tournaments theyd get the same results as they're getting now in ECNL. Also it would be easy to roll through Southwest GA except for 1-2 teams. Wins = easier to recruit players.