On the traveling note, it's very unnecessary, especially for socal kids. That's our problem, we've added all these extra cost into soccer development and scouting - airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, eating out.As soon as you get those top level coaches and organizations to stop charging so much money for their services ... I will be right behind you. I am sure they will voluntarily cut their pay and start training kids for free once you explain that to them. The fields and all the other support groups will be right behind them. Actually if you could just get the airlines, hotels and car rental places to not charge so much ECNL/GA/MLS would be affordable. Lets ask them for a special "grassroots" soccer rate and see how that goes.
There's no handouts being asked for here. There's an access issue because scouting is being done mostly through a very expensive league. This can easily be cured if the expensive league would create a pathway for teams to get access to these local scouting events. In fact, they can even make money by throwing a local tournaments and the top two winners get into the champions league regional showcases too. It's a win win but for the fact that rich clubs local clubs.
As for the MLS comments - that's for the pro and we don't have that on the women's side. Even if we did, we're discussing access to college scouts, not pro teams. In relationship to pro teams too, why not create our own pathway that might be better than the Europeans selling children, I mean athletes?