Looks like Albany is gone. Maryland, Fredericksburg, and Virginia Beach have been added. http://www.uslsoccer.com/standings/33769235.html
I know that Maryland moved down from USL2 and Fredericksburg is new. But is VA Beach new? I thought they played last the last couple of years since the Mariners went under.
Why is there such disparity between the number of teams in each division? The Great Lakes Division, for example, has 9 teams, while the Northeast Division only has 5. The PDL should try to even out the divisions, though admittedly at first glance most of the groups of teams make some sense.
At this level, it's all about costs, and trying to keep them down as low as possible. The divisions are grouped as they are in order to minimize travel costs as much as they can. To give you a frame of reference: the longest possible road trip in English soccer is Carlisle United-Plymouth Argyle, a round trip of 778 miles. In the PDL Heartland Division this year, the round trip from WSA Winnipeg to Springfield Demize is 3,160 miles. Even in the 5-team Northeast Division, Ottawa Fury to Western Mass Pioneers is still a round trip of 726 miles - and that's considered close! Excessive travel can be a franchise-killer.
All of that makes sense. However, road trips are a lot no matter how far they are. Some teams would have to make more trips than a team in a smaller division. Or, you could have to play someone far away on the road twice.
You play the same amount of games no matter the amount of team in your division. Everyone plays a total of 16 games (8 home and 8 away).
As for the fury as i understand it they will be a home and home with each team in there division plus a home and home with toronto/hamilton/london.
The reason for all the drop outs in the East is because of Ottawa. It is too far a trip, plus most clubs can't get their foreign players in or out of Canada so they show up to games with maybe 11 or 12 players. During some seasons, teams were forced to travel there twice. If USL would have come to their senses and dealt with this, PDL in Northeast would have many more teams. That trip just became too costly and not worth it.
soccerall If you say we should just have teams are close your not going to have many more teams you will have far less.
Albany, Rhode Island, Vermont in and out and in and out. Answer is to form a Canadian Division. Simply not cost effective to go to Ottawa with a short handed team (since, again, most teams have players who cannot get in and out of Canada).
Vermont took a year off and re-diverted the funds to redeveloping their stadium at the Collins-Perley Sportsplex. Nothing to do with having to travel to Ottawa. You seem to have a rather bizarre anti-Canadian beef about this. Southern California teams have to travel over 750 miles to get to Utah - significantly further than the 450 miles from Providence to Ottawa - and no-one's complaining there.
Having a canadian division makes no sense the travel would very heavy and teams would have to fly.Even if you had a ontario division the travel would be heavy it is a massive prov land wise and travel would not be 2 hours your looking at in some cases 10 hours if not more for some teams.
former LI RoughRider player update... http://www.bigapplesoccer.com/sections/youth2.php?article_id=29705
PDL & U20 Try Out Information The GPS Portland Phoenix PDL team makes it's return this coming May, and in preparation for the new season we are proud to announce that we are holding open tryouts. Here is the details of the event: Date - Saturday 22nd March Time - 10am to 12noon Venue - Deering Memorial Field Age Group - U17+ (There is no age limit for players who wish to tryout) In addition to the PDL side we will also be running a U20 team that will play in a U20 New England conference. For more information on this program please contact the team coach directly (Josh Thornton) on jthornton@gloablpremiersoccer.com To register for the event, click below to register. Please note there is a registration fee of $10 Click Here to register
Thread dead for two years. A link of interest to .00001% of the populace, barely relevant to the original topic. Yep. Yep. That's how you do it.