Looks like a bit of shuffling the conferences in GA. I see that it’s Aspire but I had not seen an announcement for Wisconsin United. 5 Wisconsin teams would be beyond over saturation. Did GA add them, or are they just in Aspire.
I don’t see GA’s post on Instagram anymore and Wisconsin United has nothing either so maybe they accidentally leaked it by posting the conferences and now hope no one noticed.
Could happen but people would have said the same about the 2008 Eclipse Girls who I believe were national finalists about 4 years ago. This year they were not even .500 AND lost convincingly to Raptors (another sub .500 team), despite having several P4 commits + a couple mid-majors. I am NOT disparaging or denying their talent, but a lot can change in a few years, girls who were dominant at 13 may have the talent gap narrow considerably on them by the age of 17.
FCU has done some heavy recruiting for the 2013s. Final tryouts were this weekend, and there were still tons of bags from solid clubs.
Their announcement is on GA’s Instagram post from April 9th for their Aspire badge. I haven’t seen anything for a GA one.
You're not wrong! You have to go down to the 2012G's or younger to find a top team out of the top 10 nationally at Solar. Yes, they have many teams - but it's still not something that even Surf or Koge can claim at the moment.
So, as you go through You are spot on. While I dont have the specifics, there is certainly a perception that Eclipse (and FCU to a degree) have a reputation as a talent aggregator and not a developer over the last several years. They recruit early maturing girls who were developed at other clubs vs developing their own through their youth ranks. Now, the question is can they continue to develop those girls or do other clubs start catching up as the Eclipse girls revert to the mean maturity wise. Both the 2007 and 2008 Eclipse teams were ranked very high in age groups at younger ages but did not retain those rankings at the older ages. Right now FCU/Inter are well ahead of the 07s and Galaxy has a stranglehold on the 08 group.
This is the latest break down I saw on cities. There are lots of great soccer hotbeds in the US but if you want to play D1 soccer move to Dallas or the LA/Orange County area (data from Class of 2026) 😀 pic.twitter.com/re8uvn2irD— ECNL/GA/Recruiting/College Soccer (@ImYouthSoccer) April 27, 2025 🚨As we cross 1400 players verbally committed to D1 programs does the league you play in matter. IT SURE DOES! #ECNL #GirlsAcademy pic.twitter.com/iNTqUPHBpx— ECNL/GA/Recruiting/College Soccer (@ImYouthSoccer) April 27, 2025
It’s almost like it is conducive to be able to play outside in good weather 12 months a year. I wouldnt know anything about that I wish ImYouthSoccer would show the data in a few different ways. I think there is an 80/20 rule in place. Meaning 80% of D1s come from the top ~20% of clubs.
🚨 Top 107 ECNL and Girls Academy Clubs (2026 D1 Commits)- 977 D1 Verbal commitments - 90 #ECNL Clubs- 17 #GirlsAcademy ClubsCheck to see if your club made the list.Does this data surprise you? pic.twitter.com/KOwYqgZYDw— ECNL/GA/Recruiting/College Soccer (@ImYouthSoccer) April 16, 2025 This is from April 16th. There has been a bunch new in that span. The inside the link, it has the breakdown by clubs.
There are anomalies. Indy, Kansas City, St. Louis and frankly even Milwaukee are having decent recruiting numbers for their size. I would have thought that Miami, Orlando, Austin, Las Vegas, Portland, etc.. would have been much higher.
Slightly disagree here. K.C. and St Louis are two major soccer hotbeds. The Indy Premiere class was very very good, so that threw Indy's numbers up. Without going on about Milwaukee (don't wanna get yelled again)... Those numbers are about right. This data is for '26s. The class of '25 was just a bit bigger because Wave had a insane class come through.
I personally enjoy that the north South corridor of Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri have a pretty well balanced distribution between leagues.
My understanding is that Wisconsin United got Aspire and not GA. Then 56rs got GA but haven't been had an Aspire announcement yet.. My opinion is WI United got screwed but they should do very very well in the aspire league playing 2nd teams
Here are the counts of Illinois players at in-state schools, based on current websites, some last year’s roster and some 2025: Northwestern 5 DePaul 10 Loyola 9 U of I 12 UIC 9 SIU-C 2 SIU-E 5 ISU 7 EIU 8 NIU 9 WIU 4 That’s 80 D1 women players from Illinois. But there are surely many Illinois women playing in other states. The first few I pulled up were IU - 1 UMich 1 MSU 1 St Louis 4 Ivies 8 (Yale 3 Dartmouth and Brown 2 Cornell 1) Mizzou 1 Wisc 3 The overall total figure is clearly well over 100. Which may be consistent with 37 this year depending on how high over 100. There are 300 schools I didn’t look at.
The numbers i was referencing are from the I am youth soccer account on X and instagram. There are several posts in this chat referencing this source. A couple just above the post here. If the data is incorrect then apologies.
I’m not saying you’re incorrect. My numbers are rostered players, with four recruiting classes that factor in. I do wonder what the D1 total is but def don’t want to go through 350 college rosters. There is obviously a proximity factor. Kids may have reasons to accept an Ivy offer but there probably aren’t many on the rosters of directional state universities outside the midwest. So I don’t know how to extrapolate. I looked at three Carolina schools and found nobody from here but wasn’t sure which other NC/SC schools were D1. That’s when I gave up.
No worries, I was trying to be helpful to and provide the best insight I could provide. You are doing the same thing. You are probably right, the number does seem low, but I this the best data I could find.
From my understanding ... Madison has to put a 2nd team in GA-A team within two years ... they will not have one this year.
Your data is pretty interesting too. One thing that's funny as you look at college sites is that half of them show the player's high school and the other half the club. Most show hometown. Princeton didn't have either without clicking into each player profile, now that I think of it. I wasn't wilingso my Ivy sampling is one school low.
There’s 5 players from Illinois on Wash U’s roster. https://washubears.com/sports/womens-soccer/roster they were the DIII champions last year.
Question here, besides the Fire what are everyone’s experiences or thoughts with the other area non-affiliated MLS Next academies as far as player development and coaches? Sockers, FC United, SC Wave and Bavarians United? I hear that the turnover is high at Wave and FC United at all age groups. And how often do this programs send kids to actual MLS academies for trial? I know Bavarians has shown on their social media kids moving on to Fire do all the other ones as well?
I'm not as familiar with Sockers or FC United and but I know Sockers has had a great rep in the past ... as for SC Wave and/or Bavarians ... Bavarians would be the better spot for sure - especially with all the administration and coach turnover (not to mention the player turnover) the past year.