what-happened
GOLD
I think Murrieta will benefit from being in the GA. The GA is challenged in socal in general but they are well run, advocate well for their teams, and put on top notch events. Parents will have to take many things into consideration. One thing they can be mostly certain about is that the GA appears to be very well run.BINGO! The players in the Valley should rally around GA in Murrieta and they'll put it on a par with every "big" club in the Southwest because of the talent pool here. The quicker everyone sees this the more benefit it has to ALL the players, people need to let their local tribal club guard down and come together.
Travel will be an issue for some. The issue in SOCAL will always be why travel far when you have talented teams close by. It's a good issue to have but problematic if you are in a league with very few local teams. Travel to Vegas and AZ for cross conference play may be tough to swallow for many. The Vegas GA teams are good, the AZ teams are very good. The teams that may be suspect are the NM teams. We will see how that pans out. They've seemed to produce very good players in small numbers, always guesting with the AZ clubs (RSL/SC Del Sol). We will see if they can field two teams.
From having two players in each league over the last few years, the SOCAL talent is better in ECNL, the GA , for now, is better run. With that said, plenty of talent in socal and many players in the GA will still have the opportunity to play at the next level. Best of the best certainly lies in some of the bigger ECNL clubs but not everyone is best of the best and can play there. There are plenty of players to be found.