ECNL and similar. My club is trying to convince me to take a team regional. I've never seen the value. Travel 8 hours to play 180 minutes of soccer in a weekend—no thanks. But is there a good reason for it?
I can’t yes or no. But I think these leagues (ecnl regional and DPL) are stupid. Plenty of completion within 50 miles for these teams.
You can always find competition locally, if you stop thinking inside the USSF box. No worthy competition in your league? Girls can play boys. Both can play older or high level teams. Many teams would not have to go outside their club, much less travel 8 hours. There is always tournaments as an option if you wish to test yourself against same level opponents..
I don't think there's a good reason for the players to do it - I don't think you're going to get more college exposure in an NPL/USYS than they get in state cup league & high school & ODP for the typical range of colleges your club currently sends players to. Plus you can't swing one of those useless self rebounding balls on a string without hitting someone hosting a "college showcase" in February around here, especially if your club has it's own bubble field. IF I had one player who was just head & shoulders better than everyone else taht I thought might be UNC/Stanford level, I'd look at getting her guesting with the local ECNL outfit if not trying out for them outright. From a career perspective, if you like the club, maybe it's important that they want to be a "regional" club so you have to be a "regional" coach. Finally, you could lose parents if there's competitive clubs nearby who do offer it and are sufficiently persuasive - "janey deserves to play on our NPL team, why don't you come to our tryouts..." which agin could reflect badly on you in the eyes of the club - "you keep losing players to RivalClub YSC, we can't have that"
I think this is unfortunately the pivot for a lot of parents. They want their kids to play on better teams. The further you travel, the better the team is right? As a coach, I can certainly understand the desire to play different teams and to be challenged in different ways. However, we are in a weird place where the better team usually means regional leagues and tournaments.