Is GDA going away?

[Unregistered]

Soccer Wire is now posting the rumor as well: https://www.soccerwire.com/resources...pment-academy/

It's going to be interesting

[Unregistered]

Bernie, Crossfire, and most importantly the parents and kids got robbed again. They lost their girl's monopoly ECNL franchise and they are going to lose their Tier 2 DA status. So the famed Crossfire will be like every other team in our area for top tier: ECNL for girls and boys. The best male players will go to MLS Sounders Academy. Haha. More expensive RCL Div 1 with travel. I have to chuckle with this bullshat. Back to pay to play. smh.

Go duck yourself US Soccer. Couldn't leave shat alone.

[Unregistered]

That is how it was intended to work. The best players all go to one spot and compete each other at the highest levels. It was the crossfires of the world that screwed it up by dividing the talent pool. If it goes all ecnl they need to just open it up. Sorry this regional crap they do here is just stupid.

[Unregistered]

Completely agree. The ECNL with 5 teams in Seattle doesn’t bring the best. It brings A-teams to a national league. As crazy as it was back when my daughter played, at least it took the best of the best. They could compete for a national title. The best a Seattle team will finish in competition and a .500

[Unregistered]

they can't kill girls da and leave boys da, not in the current environment what with a gender equity suit ongoing. either both go or neither

[Unregistered]

Bernie, Crossfire, and most importantly the parents and kids got robbed again. They lost their girl's monopoly ECNL franchise and they are going to lose their Tier 2 DA status. So the famed Crossfire will be like every other team in our area for top tier: ECNL for girls and boys. The best male players will go to MLS Sounders Academy. Haha. More expensive RCL Div 1 with travel. I have to chuckle with this bullshat. Back to pay to play. smh.

Go duck yourself US Soccer. Couldn't leave shat alone.

LOL, A little bitter are we. Bernie will be fine, my money is on him. If you think the "best" kids are at Sounders you really haven't been paying attention. The Sounders Academy does virtually nothing for local kids, very few are doing anything that isn't happening at Xfire. If you'd like to talk about the worst USL team in the nation, I am happy to.
US soccer is burning to the ground and we shall see what happens if the DA goes away. It will not be great for the MLS academies if that is what you are thinking.

[Unregistered]

boys development academy is a success, it has raised the level of boys youth soccer and produced many pros. girls da is a failure so far, however it still remains to be seen where it will go as the women's pro game continues to evolve as that is ultimately what drives the success of academy soccer -- professional opportunities and money. right now the aspirational outlet for girls is still college soccer and so ecnl continues to draw most top players. it will take years for this change to happen if it ever does.

some in us soccer probably want to kill gda even though they don't spend that much money on it, but due to optics they can't without also killing boys da which is legitimately the future of us men's soccer.

[Unregistered]

No the difference is girls want to lay for their high schools and boys don’t care. For girls soccer is the biggest high school with maybe basketball. Where as for bogs it is 5th or 6th. It won’t change and I would argue that the boys DA is working. I would say the acceptance of soccer and the continued additions of other cultures to this country has made boys soccer better.

It has never been that we don’t have the athletes. The girls are proof. It is that the top level athletic boys just don’t play soccer.

[Unregistered]

boys development academy is a success, it has raised the level of boys youth soccer and produced many pros. girls da is a failure so far, however it still remains to be seen where it will go as the women's pro game continues to evolve as that is ultimately what drives the success of academy soccer -- professional opportunities and money. right now the aspirational outlet for girls is still college soccer and so ecnl continues to draw most top players. it will take years for this change to happen if it ever does.

some in us soccer probably want to kill gda even though they don't spend that much money on it, but due to optics they can't without also killing boys da which is legitimately the future of us men's soccer.

I don't think you can compare girls vs boys DA in terms of results. The girls DA has been around what, 5 years? And the spending on the program has been paltry compared to the boys. The boys DA is well established and you have MLS teams pouring money into some academy teams. My kid is Sounders and they invest about 12k per kid annually. Other boys DA proograms are underfunded -- the entire system is out of whack on boys and girls sides. BOys DA may produce many pros, yet the US men can't compete internationally. I don't know the answer but to say the girls DA deserves to be cut when it hasn't produced the same results as the boys is ridiculous. We need better results overall. Whether the DA can deliver that or not, I don't know. We seem to be producing cookie cutter players that lack creativity.

[Unregistered]

see but boys don't care about hs soccer because they are focused on possibly going pro. that is still the difference. if women's pro soccer was lucrative and respected girls hs soccer would also be an afterthought

No the difference is girls want to lay for their high schools and boys don’t care. For girls soccer is the biggest high school with maybe basketball. Where as for bogs it is 5th or 6th. It won’t change and I would argue that the boys DA is working. I would say the acceptance of soccer and the continued additions of other cultures to this country has made boys soccer better.

It has never been that we don’t have the athletes. The girls are proof. It is that the top level athletic boys just don’t play soccer.

[Unregistered]

Totally disagree. The goal for football is the pros and for basketball and for baseball and yet all of them still play high school. They do 7 on 7 and Aau the other seasons but the still play high school so your point is incorrect.

[Unregistered]

You are missing the obvious. The reason boys DA was able to successfully mandate no HS play was that they paid for the vast majority of the league expenses including travel. Girls DA came in and said they were going to somehow be different from ECNL...but the only tangible way they are different is banning HS play. Girls from both leagues are still earning college spots on teams ranging from D1 to JC level. Both leagues cost a lot of money. Both leagues claim to be "the best." Both leagues require a lot of travel.

The top .1% of girls DA players are getting national team callups, and from what it appears, the callup system is skewed to mostly/only call up girls from GDA teams.

What that means is for the top .1% of players who want a national team call up, girls DA is a smart move. Think of the Mal Pughs of the soccer world. For them, giving up HS soccer is worth it if it helps them eventually get on a national team.

For the rest of us (which is every parent reading this), girls DA is asking us to spend the same amount of money, play in a league that is either a little better or worse than ECNL (depending on your bias), do the same amount of travel as ECNL, AND give up HS soccer. Why would anyone in their right mind do that?

If girls DA had started as "free" as boys DA is, they would have run ECNL out of business in a few years. But greed won. As usual.

[Unregistered]

Ok I see what you are saying but disagree the girls are not getting called up from DA they are getting called up from ODP and other Olympic development programs. That is a separate tryout. I would also argue that it is working on the boys side. We just missed the World Cup because we had no good players in that in between age. Which would have been when the DA should have shown It’s worth. Even now the top players are going overseas to continue playing. So DA is not working on either side. Also not working is the birth year experience. Kids are quoting the sport in large numbers. Reason is when they are young and learning to love the sport they are forced to play with older kids or younger kids and not all their friends. If a kid is special the scouts will see it and place him or her on the right team.

Stop trying to copy the rest of the world and do what works here.

[Unregistered]

You are missing the obvious. The reason boys DA was able to successfully mandate no HS play was that they paid for the vast majority of the league expenses including travel. Girls DA came in and said they were going to somehow be different from ECNL...but the only tangible way they are different is banning HS play. Girls from both leagues are still earning college spots on teams ranging from D1 to JC level. Both leagues cost a lot of money. Both leagues claim to be "the best." Both leagues require a lot of travel.

The top .1% of girls DA players are getting national team callups, and from what it appears, the callup system is skewed to mostly/only call up girls from GDA teams.

What that means is for the top .1% of players who want a national team call up, girls DA is a smart move. Think of the Mal Pughs of the soccer world. For them, giving up HS soccer is worth it if it helps them eventually get on a national team.

For the rest of us (which is every parent reading this), girls DA is asking us to spend the same amount of money, play in a league that is either a little better or worse than ECNL (depending on your bias), do the same amount of travel as ECNL, AND give up HS soccer. Why would anyone in their right mind do that?

If girls DA had started as "free" as boys DA is, they would have run ECNL out of business in a few years. But greed won. As usual.

How would you suggest that Girls DA clubs pay for everything? Democrats...

[Unregistered]

I guess I wasn't clear the first time I posted, based on the replies:

When I said boys DA is "working," I meant that they are capturing the bulk of the top talent in their respective markets. By no means does that mean boys DA is elevating the quality of our national teams. I personally don't think our men's national teams will ever by a contender in international play, because in our country soccer competes with football and basketball for top athletes. "Working" simply means that they are running a league that gets away with forbidding HS sports (because they pay for the kids to be in the league) and generally draws in the top players in a geographic area.

The girls DA is not "working" because there is no financial incentive to play GDA, it's not a higher quality league than ECNL (isolated teams aside, talking about the overall product), and they are trying to forbid players from HS sports. It will never work unless it's free, because the only way you get to dictate what kids do in their spare time is if you are providing a free, elite product. The way boys DA is.

Which brings me to the second, snarky response. I never said girls DA SHOULD be free or that I wanted it to be free. I said it won't succeed unless it's free. My personal opinion is I would rather pay for the league my kid plays in and allow her to have the freedom to play HS sports and participate in other extracurriculars that are an important part of a young person's life. She is able to do that at the same level of play in ECNL, and we are able to afford it. I would never trade my kid's or my family's personal freedom for free soccer, no matter what the quality is. My other personal opinion living in a capitalistic society is that when you have a product and the only way it can be successful is to give it away, it's not a very good product. That defines boys and girls DA for me. But thanks for jumping to conclusions and dragging politics into it because we definitely all need more of that in our lives.