The ECNL Sales Pitch - Fact or Fiction

[Unregistered]

the players, and parents in many cases, deserve tons of credit, yet the club and team are a factor as well. the first question EVERY college coach asked when our child contacted them is where she played. when some learned she was not on a regional-national level squad, even though she played odp for years, they politely got off the phone as quickly as possible. my daughter ended at a d2 school she loves, and we learned the importance of the level of play and team as a first sort for our younger children. i know i sound like a broken record, but i have first hand knowledge to share. those claiming the team and level of play doesn't influence the development and potential college placement options are doing many of us a dis-service. sure, a couple exceptions get picked up from lower teams....but these are exceptions that likely would have developed and had better options at a higher level of play.

[Unregistered]

The only thing that smacks of fanaticism is your abject refusal to give ANY credit to the clubs in question. No amount of data would be enough for you, because your arguments are ENTIRELY about your own agendas. One week you are screaming for consolidation and the next you are condemning it. One week you cry foul that college commitments list are unfair and/or irrelevant, and the next they are key and you twist yourself in a knot to say that the commitments are too academic. The Scorps having the only team to win a regional doesn't count because the U19 year doesn't count. And if your club had "Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, etc" you would be the first person shouting that out in neon lights. Why can't you just be happy with your own choices and tip your cap once in a while? You are a joke and a complete charlatan.

You must either be a coach or have never been a player. One of the biggest problems with this whole system is the coaches/teams/clubs take way too much credit for things. Always keep in mind that nothing happens without the players doing what they do on the field of play. Coaches/teams/clubs don't exist never mind win without PLAYERS. When you look into the histories of most players you will find that there is seldom only one coach/team/club that could be identified as a major influence in their career so it is completely unrealistic to allow the last coach/team/club a player played for to grab all of the credit. Quite frankly in a lot of these cases the player only played for the coach/team/club the last year or two of their youth career and was well established before they even got there.

With the type of teams being talked about, usually the only big thing that the last coach/team/club did was recruit the player to perform for them. Usually the factors that lead to a college bound player joining a specific team are based more on pragmatism than anything else because players will join the group that has the right synergy to advance their career at the moment they need it. It has very little to do with what the club did years ago or what other teams in the club are doing in the same moment and everything to do with the specifics of the group and situation at that moment in time. The only credit the coaches/teams/clubs should get is creating a relatively few instances where the synergy was correct for a small select group of players to springboard to the next phase of their career. That is hardly the momentus event it is being portrayed as.

Clubs like the Stars and Scorpions like to boast about what they do for the college bound player as a means of attracting the next generation of player but the reality that no one seems to want to look at is every club's failures greatly out number their success. Take any graduation year and track it back to their beginnings in soccer. What you will find is that for every college commitment a club boasts they will have gone through as many as 4-5 other players who did not even get that far. Those are hardly the sort of statistics should impress the next generation and yet another reason why using commitment lists as a marketing tool are complete nonsense.

[Unregistered]

You must either be a coach or have never been a player. One of the biggest problems with this whole system is the coaches/teams/clubs take way too much credit for things. Always keep in mind that nothing happens without the players doing what they do on the field of play. Coaches/teams/clubs don't exist never mind win without PLAYERS. When you look into the histories of most players you will find that there is seldom only one coach/team/club that could be identified as a major influence in their career so it is completely unrealistic to allow the last coach/team/club a player played for to grab all of the credit. Quite frankly in a lot of these cases the player only played for the coach/team/club the last year or two of their youth career and was well established before they even got there.

With the type of teams being talked about, usually the only big thing that the last coach/team/club did was recruit the player to perform for them. Usually the factors that lead to a college bound player joining a specific team are based more on pragmatism than anything else because players will join the group that has the right synergy to advance their career at the moment they need it. It has very little to do with what the club did years ago or what other teams in the club are doing in the same moment and everything to do with the specifics of the group and situation at that moment in time. The only credit the coaches/teams/clubs should get is creating a relatively few instances where the synergy was correct for a small select group of players to springboard to the next phase of their career. That is hardly the momentus event it is being portrayed as.

Clubs like the Stars and Scorpions like to boast about what they do for the college bound player as a means of attracting the next generation of player but the reality that no one seems to want to look at is every club's failures greatly out number their success. Take any graduation year and track it back to their beginnings in soccer. What you will find is that for every college commitment a club boasts they will have gone through as many as 4-5 other players who did not even get that far. Those are hardly the sort of statistics should impress the next generation and yet another reason why using commitment lists as a marketing tool are complete nonsense.

So according to you the players get the credit when they make it and the clubs get the blame when they don't. huh?

[Unregistered]

yikes. you must have studied straw man arguing in college...

none of us are saying college bound players don't work hard. none of us are saying some don't play for multiple clubs. none of us are saying strong talent doesn't migrate to the strongest teams during the key showcase years. none of us are boasting that ONLY stars and scorps can produce these players. none of us are saying every player in an ecnl club, from the ecnl team down to the 3rd or 4th squad will play in college.

what we are saying is that there are advantages to playing and practicing for as strong a team, playing as strong a schedule as possible. d1 college coaches my daughter spoke with and met, agreed.

this team does not have to be an ecnl squad. historically, stars and scorps have fielded the strongest new england teams in whatever league they competed, be it r1, red bull or ecnl. this does not preclude talent congregating in upcoming years at mps, aztecs, stars west, nefc, or some other non-ecnl club creating a r1 alternative similar in strength to the u19 stars rovers in their prime, or the amazing penn strikers team mentioned earlier.

just because some of us give coaches, clubs and the competitive level of play credit, doesn't mean there isn't any left for others whom are deserving.

[Unregistered]

You must either be a coach or have never been a player. One of the biggest problems with this whole system is the coaches/teams/clubs take way too much credit for things. Always keep in mind that nothing happens without the players doing what they do on the field of play. Coaches/teams/clubs don't exist never mind win without PLAYERS. When you look into the histories of most players you will find that there is seldom only one coach/team/club that could be identified as a major influence in their career so it is completely unrealistic to allow the last coach/team/club a player played for to grab all of the credit. Quite frankly in a lot of these cases the player only played for the coach/team/club the last year or two of their youth career and was well established before they even got there.

With the type of teams being talked about, usually the only big thing that the last coach/team/club did was recruit the player to perform for them. Usually the factors that lead to a college bound player joining a specific team are based more on pragmatism than anything else because players will join the group that has the right synergy to advance their career at the moment they need it. It has very little to do with what the club did years ago or what other teams in the club are doing in the same moment and everything to do with the specifics of the group and situation at that moment in time. The only credit the coaches/teams/clubs should get is creating a relatively few instances where the synergy was correct for a small select group of players to springboard to the next phase of their career. That is hardly the momentus event it is being portrayed as.

Clubs like the Stars and Scorpions like to boast about what they do for the college bound player as a means of attracting the next generation of player but the reality that no one seems to want to look at is every club's failures greatly out number their success. Take any graduation year and track it back to their beginnings in soccer. What you will find is that for every college commitment a club boasts they will have gone through as many as 4-5 other players who did not even get that far. Those are hardly the sort of statistics should impress the next generation and yet another reason why using commitment lists as a marketing tool are complete nonsense.

btdt, you truly are remarkable. You make a straw man (again). No one said the clubs in question should get all or even most of the credit. The suggestion is that they get some credit. You distort everything. Don't all of your critiques apply to NEFC (and MPS) as well??? You also grossly distort the facts, but we shouldn't be surprised. Some of those teams had core groups going back to U10 and U11. And you NEVER answer questions you can't answer if the answer would result in anything remotely positive and these clubs. Like are you saying no players should play for these clubs? Or will you outright say they have had not had good results relative to the competition. You are proving over and over again how truly fraudulent you are. Oh, and btw, NEFC isn't that much cheaper whe you rail about folks "spending a small fortune". And let's factor in your national event costs too.

[Unregistered]

National events for the players are free. All costs.

[Unregistered]

National events for the players are free. All costs.

Huh? My kid has been to nationals twice and there is a small stipend from Mass Youth Soccer which might cover the coach's travel and hotel. Everyone else has to pay for travel and hotel and even worse there are not enough rooms for all the families so some familes have to stay elsewhere and pay two hotels - one for the family and a partial room for their kid.

NT is free but that is not the same as national events.

[Unregistered]

yikes. you must have studied straw man arguing in college...

none of us are saying college bound players don't work hard. none of us are saying some don't play for multiple clubs. none of us are saying strong talent doesn't migrate to the strongest teams during the key showcase years. none of us are boasting that ONLY stars and scorps can produce these players. none of us are saying every player in an ecnl club, from the ecnl team down to the 3rd or 4th squad will play in college.

what we are saying is that there are advantages to playing and practicing for as strong a team, playing as strong a schedule as possible. d1 college coaches my daughter spoke with and met, agreed.

this team does not have to be an ecnl squad. historically, stars and scorps have fielded the strongest new england teams in whatever league they competed, be it r1, red bull or ecnl. this does not preclude talent congregating in upcoming years at mps, aztecs, stars west, nefc, or some other non-ecnl club creating a r1 alternative similar in strength to the u19 stars rovers in their prime, or the amazing penn strikers team mentioned earlier.

just because some of us give coaches, clubs and the competitive level of play credit, doesn't mean there isn't any left for others whom are deserving.

.. and no is taking that away from either of them. The thing that is being contested is the boasts that these historical facts are going to be replicated. The issue is there are actually very few young players in either club right now that have the same potential as the players on their commitment lists and the reason that both of these clubs are constantly talking about this issue is as a means to attract the next generation of player who does have that level of talent to join them. One of the big problems both of the clubs have is there is no actual reason for a younger player with true college potential to join either club right now because they don't actually have many of the other the pieces required to create the same sort of synergy that helped launch their older players. If you could be objective about the situation you would see that after the older teams age out neither one of those clubs really have a whole lot of high level D1 players in their stables and all of this debate is really about convincing it to move.

[Unregistered]

I interpreted national events to mean national team events. If you are referring to US soccer clinics, tournaments, showcases, ID2 then there is a cost to the player

[Unregistered]

I interpreted national events to mean national team events. If you are referring to US soccer clinics, tournaments, showcases, ID2 then there is a cost to the player

I'm not the poster who asked the question about national event coasts but why would he/she mean NT events? Not every NEFC player is on the NT are they? But they do go to national events such as Disney Casl, etc, right?

[Unregistered]

.. and no is taking that away from either of them. The thing that is being contested is the boasts that these historical facts are going to be replicated. The issue is there are actually very few young players in either club right now that have the same potential as the players on their commitment lists and the reason that both of these clubs are constantly talking about this issue is as a means to attract the next generation of player who does have that level of talent to join them. One of the big problems both of the clubs have is there is no actual reason for a younger player with true college potential to join either club right now because they don't actually have many of the other the pieces required to create the same sort of synergy that helped launch their older players. If you could be objective about the situation you would see that after the older teams age out neither one of those clubs really have a whole lot of high level D1 players in their stables and all of this debate is really about convincing it to move.

you're in conflict trying to argue all sides.

i explained that a non-ecnl, regional strength team might emerge if enough key, impact players are enticed another direction. this didn't pan out 13 to 14 last year, when stars and scorps strengthened their teams, but i accept for discussion sake it might in the future. i wouldn't bet my kids college savings...but it might.

the biggest issue is eastern mass needs to consolidate talent to support at most one regional level team on its own. draw in top talent from neighboring states and it's 2. if the crazy farmers out west can learn to get along maybe....maybe...maybe...mass can support 3 teams.

it's crazy to think the all state and regional level talent can stay disbursed with no drop in the overall competitiveness of the states top teams. u19 set a high bar, and provided a blueprint for younger ages to follow....or not.

i hope they stay disbursed, because it will be fun to compare college placement in the various ages 5 years from now.

[Unregistered]

.. and no is taking that away from either of them. The thing that is being contested is the boasts that these historical facts are going to be replicated. The issue is there are actually very few young players in either club right now that have the same potential as the players on their commitment lists and the reason that both of these clubs are constantly talking about this issue is as a means to attract the next generation of player who does have that level of talent to join them. One of the big problems both of the clubs have is there is no actual reason for a younger player with true college potential to join either club right now because they don't actually have many of the other the pieces required to create the same sort of synergy that helped launch their older players. If you could be objective about the situation you would see that after the older teams age out neither one of those clubs really have a whole lot of high level D1 players in their stables and all of this debate is really about convincing it to move.

You are misinformed. There are more than a handful of players on the u14-16 teams that will, in the end, make similar commitment lists.

[Unregistered]

.. and no is taking that away from either of them. The thing that is being contested is the boasts that these historical facts are going to be replicated. The issue is there are actually very few young players in either club right now that have the same potential as the players on their commitment lists and the reason that both of these clubs are constantly talking about this issue is as a means to attract the next generation of player who does have that level of talent to join them. One of the big problems both of the clubs have is there is no actual reason for a younger player with true college potential to join either club right now because they don't actually have many of the other the pieces required to create the same sort of synergy that helped launch their older players. If you could be objective about the situation you would see that after the older teams age out neither one of those clubs really have a whole lot of high level D1 players in their stables and all of this debate is really about convincing it to move.

btdt, bottom line....how many years in a row do these clubs have to have impressive commitments results for you to grudgingly tip your cap? Their stables, as you put it, are dry???
And these clubs don't develop any of their other players??? If you think NEFC is now the dominant club and the place to be, just say so (assuming none of your arguments somehow don't apply to NEFC). Just don't keep grossly distorting the facts on these clubs you keep panning ad nauseum.

[Unregistered]

btdt, bottom line....how many years in a row do these clubs have to have impressive commitments results for you to grudgingly tip your cap? Their stables, as you put it, are dry???
And these clubs don't develop any of their other players??? If you think NEFC is now the dominant club and the place to be, just say so (assuming none of your arguments somehow don't apply to NEFC). Just don't keep grossly distorting the facts on these clubs you keep panning ad nauseum.

you might want to reframe your arguments because you are not actually talking to btdt

[Unregistered]

You are misinformed. There are more than a handful of players on the u14-16 teams that will, in the end, make similar commitment lists.

You are missing the point. No doubt that they have a couple of very very good players on a couple of their various teams. What they don't have is a younger team that is comparable to one of their older teams that is loaded with D1 talent at every position. After the rising Scorpions U18 team neither club has been able to piece together what anyone would consider a juggernaut team.