Feel has nothing to do with it. Once someone can reliably understand which number is larger or smaller when looking at two different ones, they're 90% there. The rest is ignoring bias that keeps otherwise capable individuals from actually believing what they are seeing.
If you say so. Primary goal is to provide and grow a top soccer league for youth here in the US, and make some money while doing it. College placement may certainly be one of the goals.
I'll take your word for it, seems reasonable. Probably helps to divide each of the last numbers by 4, which is roughly how many open spots to be expected for each year. Using the above numbers, it comes out to 4,675 per year. I'd guess that the number is actually a little larger for freshman spots, as more would drop out over time in college, but that's just a guess - not tied to any real data. It takes some estimations, but if there are 2.5M kids playing soccer in US from ages 13-17, cutting it evenly means ~500k 17 year olds, or 250K 17 year old girls. Even if that's high or low, it does mean that 4.6K out of 250K go from playing soccer at all, to actually playing D1/D2/D3, which is less than 2%. Whether that is halved or doubled, it's still a very small selection of kids that get that college soccer opportunity. (link:
https://sfia.medium.com/soccer-participation-in-the-united-states-92f8393f6469)
This may be how GA sees it. It's not how ECNL sees it, and it's not how math sees it. Unless high level is intended to reference something other than one team being likely to beat another team, or the top teams of one club beating the top teams of another club.
Mostly agreed, here. No team/club/league means a guaranteed D1/D2/D3 slot, and no team/club/league automatically disqualifies a talented player from obtaining a D1/D2/D3 slot. But that does not mean the chances are equal across the board. And at that point, it's where "feels" should be discounted entirely once again. Questions that remove the ambiguity include: What percentage of players on League X championship teams get D1 spots. What percentage of players on League X winning teams get D1 spots. What percentage of players on average League X teams get D1 spots. What percentage of players from club X get D1 spots. Someone with years of ECNL experience has a higher chance of both having the necessary skills and having the necesssary exposure than someone who plays with their YMCA team down the street. Every other league is somewhere between that rec experience and the top leagues in the country - and no, recruiters won't look at each for a 10% quota of the top players in every league and every geography. Some are more equal than others...
But none of this is terribly relevant for the discussion on promotion/relegation. While it can work great in top leagues, it can be successful all the way down the chain as well. Doesn't have to be, but it can be. From an NPL standpoint, a team that does well in NPL3 in the fall gets to play somewhat more challenging teams in the spring, and is given a bump to NPL2 the next season. A team in NPL1 that does poorly in fall has a legitimate potential to lose their spot and go back to NPL2. This level of promotion/relegation may not be directly related to finding the very top talent in the US - but it's quite relevant to the kids that are going through it. It's the same reason we all want tournament seeding to be as even and fair as possible, but this type of movement does it over time rather than all within one weekend. If terrible teams are backstopped such that they never have any risk of being booted, it's not good for that team, that club, or the league. If amazing teams are winning easily every time they put on their cleats and they have no opportunity to play increasingly challenging opposition until they find peers - kids on those teams are being shortchanged and might not ever reach their potential.
