Noticer
SILVER
Believe what you want but I have one child that identifies as a girl and plays for non-socal based Lonestar. So, there.
GA & ECNL need to merge, or play nice.
- Thread starter Surf Zombie
- Start date
Ewww gross
I take it you’ve decided we’re done arguing about GA vs ECNL, and now need to argue about whether it’s ok for parents of XY athletes to register them in girls’ events?
We had that argument already. About 10% or 20% here said it’s ok. Most felt it was inappropriate.
What's going on here is that Noticer thinks that they're in with the biggest crowd that comments here. (Girls ECNL Parents)
Now that they're in with the crowd they're going to try an push the boys can be girls nonsense.
GA might have been accepting of boys playing on girls teams but I think you're going to find that ECNL (or should I say ECRL in Lonestars case) will not be.
Noticer
SILVER
My daughter is not a boy.
Those words no longer have the clear meaning they once did.
If your kid is XY, then most people, including me, feel her participation in a high level girls' league is not appropriate.
Good luck to your kid.
youthsportsugh
SILVER ELITE
In Northern CA and some other parts of the country there is USL W that seems to pull some really good college talent, some playing in USWNT camps along with power NCAA teams. The games draw fans and are highly competitive giving the girls another avenue to continue playing the game they love and want to get more film out there for professional teams to see.
shirivelli
BRONZE
Yeah, there are just way too many ECNL and GA clubs in Northern and Southern California as below. These leagues must do their due diligence and vet out the underperforming clubs to keep the leagues competitive. Many of these clubs are just using the ECNL or GA club status to attract paying players, despite having subpar players and matches. When a team needs to drive 2-3 hours for ECNL or GA matches, and some of these teams are consistently losing by 5 points or more, it does not make sense.
That's an expensive suggestion, at least for norcal.
If we drop the bottom five teams, then we have to add five out of area teams. Do we go back to the days when everyone buys plane tickets to Denver and Boise for league games?
That adds up fast.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
One of the hypothetical possibilities is that if the bottom 5 clubs/teams left ECNL, there would be equivalently competitive local teams here already. And yes, that might be true for many leagues - the top of the "2nd tier" is often interchangeable with the bottom of the "1st tier". But the reasons those clubs/teams are in ECNL and the others are in NPL, EA, E64, whatever - is not only because of exactly how competitive the team is - the parents are committed to paying X dollars for everything that goes along with the existing expectations and requirements, including any national travel necessary.
shirivelli
BRONZE
No, there is no need to travel to Denver and Boise. Good teams just play each other twice a season instead of once. Clubs earning ECNL or GA act just like college professors getting tenure. There should be some repercussions for not delivering quality. This is how things work, except for tenured college professors and ECNL/GA clubs.
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
It's a nice thought, but it's not realistic. There are bad teams / bad clubs in just about any league you could imagine. Envisioning one where all teams were great, competition from the top to the bottom was great, and nobody had to worry about an exceptionally good team or an exceptionally bad team, is science fiction. It doesn't exist anywhere, not ECNL, GA, or any other soccer organization in the country.
One of the ways some leagues (both professional and youth) deal with this, is promotion/relegation; booting the bottom teams to a lower level, and bringing the top teams up - once per year. It certainly provides reasonable incentive for the clubs in the pro leagues overseas, and it has its advantages in some of the youth leagues where it has been implemented here. But there are an obvious long list of downsides to this approach as well; it's been tried and failed here quite a bit as well.
I wouldn't agree that there are no repercussions for not delivering quality either, although it might be at a slower pace than some would want. If a team blows, and the club blows, it's going to have a hard time recruiting and retaining as time goes on, and eventually it would be expected to be bad enough that the club either bows out or merges/reorganizes with another. It's not the national organization telling them "you're out", it's a natural business consequence of not serving their paying customers over time.
Norcal ECNL teams already play each other twice per year. If you double it, you’re playing the same team 4x per year.
It helps to remember that Norcal doesn’t have more than 3-4 good teams per age group. If you stay local and only play the “good” teams, you’re not going to have much variety.
Relegation is a real dilemma. If you think recruiting and “stealing” players is vigorous now, imagine what it would be for teams facing relegation in the youth game. In the pros it’s not a big deal because winning is everything. And clubs get compensated with movement of players. It would be interesting to bring in compensation to youth soccer, but laws would have to be changed in this country about child labor, My prediction is that it will eventually go that direction. It’s been happening over the years. Girls going to college today are essentially pro in that they can get paid for modeling and endorsements and still be college eligible. In the old days, one couldn’t even get free gear from a Nike, unless it was through the college.
The real reason relagation doesn't work for youth clubs is if they're participating in GA or ECNL. This means there's 5-6 teams of 18-20 or revenue from 110ish players a league would be missing out on if they relegated a club.
ECNL is smart in how they deal with non performing clubs . They force underperforming clubs to merge with performing clubs. This is what you saw recently with Sharks becoming LegendsSD. In this case the better performing club will likely bring up the non performing club a reasonable amount. More importantly the league doesn't lose any paying customers.
I think we'll see many more mergers as time goes by. This gets rid of the dead wood, keeps the money flowing, and makes it near impossible for a club to leave the league.
Does ECNL deal with low performing clubs?
For almost every age group, the bottom 4 teams in Norcal are Davis, Marin, Santa Rosa, and Rage. Only 3 exceptions.
It's been that way for a while now.
I kind of wonder whether Sharks and the VA merger are the exceptions, and the general rule is to keep marginal clubs to avoid breathing life into GA.
I believe mergers are going to happen more and more.
Everyone gets what they want.
1. ECNL keeps the paying customers.
2. Low performer doesn't get booted + leadership gets to keep getting paid.
3. High performing clubs who would normally be pressing the league for a second ECNL team get what they want but in a different way.
4. It becomes impossible for top clubs to leave ECNL if they have multiple locations.
Our highest levels of professional soccer in this country do not have pro/rel
RandomSoccerFan
PREMIER
There is Pro/Rel for several NPL leagues, including in NorCal. It's done at the team level rather than the club level. A team doing well in State Premier can get moved to NPL. For ages with NPL1,NPL2,NPL3, the top and bottom teams move in the appropriate direction for the next season. The top bracket in NPL has now been renamed ECNL-RL, and there is that same Pro/Rel from NPL1 to ECNL-RL.
It doesn't matter whether the parent club is ECNL or not, a team can make it to ECNL-RL no matter their affiliation. However, there is no formal pro/rel from ECNL-RL to ECNL(NL); it's just implied that if it were ever the case that a club had a bunch of teams in ECNL-RL and were doing well, of course they would be a good candidate to be added to ECNL at one point.
infographics on the pro/rel process described above are right here.