My kid doesn’t play for the club but sereno took over a lot of clubs in Arizona and went under the Rsl AZ name before they went DA. If they wouldn’t have taken over so many clubs i think it would have been a disaster because they never did a good job getting players to go to the club. It seems like with the new coaches and large pool of players they have access to now I think they will be the dominant club in Arizona going forward
The big change for Sereno was getting Brent Erwin.
For years Sereno was hands down the best club in AZ. Then they basically rested on what they had accomplished while other clubs in the area became more aggressive, improved, etc.
Take ECNL. In AZ you had del Sol and Sereno.
- del Sol was aggressive in recruiting and over time became the club to go to.
- Sereno over time had a weaker pool of players to pull from and generally promoted from within to their ECNL teams.
- The result? Sereno ECNL was very weak. This weakness started to translate to their state teams as well. The perception was the club was not that good.
The club brought in Erwin 3 yrs ago.
- He started getting rid of coaches who were just mailing it in.
- He started getting some very good coaches who were previously at other local clubs, plus recruited good coaches from outside of the state.
- Immediately the ECNL teams started bringing in girls from outside clubs during the tryout time period.
- He worked the deal whereby the club got backing from the MLS club RSL in Utah. That coincided with the girls side getting DA.
- At the same time Sereno joined up with Legacy (a big club in the SE Valley area of the Phx metro area).
- This then made the club more attractive to more coaches.
- The club then merged with a couple of other local clubs.
- In the past couple of months the club was awarded boys DA. Last year and this year the boys did rather well in boys ECNL.
Currently?
- It is easily the largest club in the state.
- The large player pool will help them put out quality teams at all levels.
- del Sol over time should be a bit worried. Previously with Sereno being passive, del Sol got the best players. That ship has sailed and RSL for most will be the first choice for DA. Being partially subsidized by the MSL and NWSL club helps on the price side make things much more attractive vs del Sol.
- All of the above has certainly changed things in AZ.