This is why my ask was more general. I want too see clubs that have top teams that have multiple age groups that are doing good. I want too see clubs that have their second teams in meaningful leagues - not just using them as $$$ to pay for their top teams.
There are many clubs with 1 or 2 great teams but the rest of the program is terrible - at least on the girls side. In fact that may be more normal than not. My guess is you have a core which has been together for a long time and then other top players fill in the blanks. That does not equate in any way to player development IMO.
What is player development exactly? I posit that players develop by being challenged by other good players every day in practice. A team ranked #1 in IL is going to have good players. If I am a wing and am going up against the best outside back in IL each practice. I am going to get better. That is player development. If my kid needs to do more technical work I look to supplemental training, not club training. And the old adage of all the badge teams just recruit and dont develop is WAY overstated in my opinion. I know coaches at Inter, Galaxy, Eclipse and FCU. They are all good coaches. Could Evo or Libertyville have good coaches? Of course they can. But they cant challenge each other on the pitch in practice the same way a Galaxy 08 or Eclipse 11 team can. While college scholarships are not the only arbiter of development, there seem to be a lot more from teams ranked 1-5 than 10-50 in IL at least. So someone thinks these girls are getting development.
Anyone hear of or have their child get I cities to the NISL Midwest Select Games tournament? Wondering what it is and how kids ended up on the invite list. https://www.midwestselectgames.com/
I believe this is NISLs annual version of an "all-star" type game with claims of potentially getting scouted for a youth national team through the ID2 program. Just my opinion, but you have better odds going the traditional ODP path for a shot at nationals (which isn't saying much). Selection for the NISL games comes from coaches' recommendations of teams participating in NPL or the NISL league, or you have participated in a NI Select program (fall, winter, spring) and they retained your information. We occasionally receive invites from a fall 2023 program we participated in but have yet to attend. From what participating parents have said, It seems to be the typical money grab event with a poor turnout in talent.
Might not be the same thing. A friend’s daughter received an invite who played in IWSL last year and is in ECNL this year. She’s never had any direct connection to the groups you mentioned. And it’s free to participate, so likely not a money grab.
I hope everyone had a fun weekend of soccer. We were in SoCal, playing at the ECNL San Diego event. This was held at San Diego Surf's main location, the Polo Grounds in Del Mar. I'm sure there are nicer places to play youth soccer - but there can't be many of them. 20+ grass fields, probably taken care of better than any we've ever been on (other than a few of the training fields that overflow moves to). Sunny, breezy, and low 70's all weekend. The kids got to see three teams they've never seen before, had two strong games and one that they'd probably wish to do over. Look, I read the first comment as a snarky attack on how the app (any app) could provide any useful info without having hyper local knowledge. I memed a hyper specific question. The response validated my interpretation - it in fact was another dumb attack on the app. This weekend's games went entirely as expected with the app, identifying the strong teams from across the country we'd be facing, and those that the team shouldn't have trouble with. I do think that the app could improve from a geography standpoint. Right now it's just full USA, or by entire state, as the only two options. I've suggested a few times they should add zip code as a field on the club entity. This way someone could do queries like, "tell me all 2012B teams within 10/20/30/50 miles, and rank them". Or they could ask to rank the strongest clubs within 50 miles. I think it would be very helpful, especially in geographies like the Northeast, or even the midwest, where large cities are often close to a state border, and it's common for people to cross state lines for employment, school, or hobbies. The data would never be completely clean, and there are plenty of very large clubs where adding a single zip code doesn't tell the whole story if they have affiliates all over - but I do think that it could still be useful to many, in many different scenarios.
My daughter is in a similar spot. We reached out to her current coach and learned he nominated her to receive an invite. Our club is not affiliated with NISL, so simply didn't trust it. I assume same circumstances played out for your friend's daughter.
Odd, because it’s definitely the same but it she didn’t have to pay a dime. Even travel expenses are covered. Oh well. Good luck to those attending.
I'm curious whether anyone knows about Campton United 2012 girls. They had a successful team last season at the level they were playing, went to the national round of the President's Cup, rated in the top 10 in the app, I forget where but in that cluster just under the top 5 that are top ECNL/GA teams. Now the app shows only spring and summer games for them. One of my kids plays for a team in the same cluster, so I've been waiting for Campton to surface from the depths of renaming and not enough games under the new name to see how this year's team compares. But they haven't. Surely they've had enough games this fall that they'd show up by now. They don't even show up as recent opponents to any of the teams rated above them. I did a moderate amount of googling, but all I find is a Campton 2012/2013 blue team (Campton's naming convention seems to make their top teams red.) And some social media from months back congratulating them on last season's success. The app does show two 2011 red squads for Campton, that seem truly separate given that they've had games in different competitions on the same day several times. Did Campton move their 2012s to 2011 to make sure they were challenged?
Just adding that the thing I like most about the app isn't the ratings. With many teams playing in multiple competitions, sometimes including more than one league, and the standings/results sites for the various leagues and tournaments making it hard to find all the games for a given team even just in that competition, the app is the easiest way to learn about upcoming opponents. At a click you can see most of their recent results.
I know nothing additional other than by looking at the same app you are, but it is curious. For 2011G, Campton shows 3 distinct squads, all called "Campton United Red". You can see in the data sources how Campton has chosen to separate them. It seems likely that there could be quite a bit of overlap in rosters - especially because they are ranked 45th, 50th, and 51st in IL for 2011G. For 2012G, it's quite a bit different. Only one squad with enough games to show a rating, called Campton United, yet rated pretty highly (10th in state). The last time the club entered a team called "Campton Red" in any tournament was 9/24.
Yes - it looks like their Navy team went to 2012G/2013G for this season, while in all prior seasons they were just 2012G. This has put it as a "new" team, and this new entity has just slightly too few games to show a rating yet, but my guess would be it will pop up in the next few weekends after 1-2 more games. The fact that results are showing Green or Red already in the game history illustrates that there already is a rating behind the scenes, it's just not quite solid enough to show as of yet. Campton could also instead decide that this really is the same team, and pull this data together with the older 2012G data into one team entity, and it would likely show a rating immediately.
A team that lost to Chicago Blast Gold, 2012 Blue, can’t be a genuine continuation of the team that beat Elmbrook Aspire, Wheaton Utd Aspire and Elmhurst City Surf just a few months ago, 2012 Red. (Despite the fact that the name apparently didn’t include “red” in their registrations, they refer to that 10th ranked/ no games in 3 months team as Red in social media last year.) I wonder whether they lost several players to ECNL and GA teams and brought the remainder up to fill a second 2011 roster. Also, how do you pull up teams that aren’t yet ranked in the app? Did you just happen to find 2012 Blue in a list of some other team’s games or is there a direct way to pull that up?
Campton United 12G is definitely a distinct team from Campton Navy 12G. The only question is whether the new Navy may as well be the old Navy rather than starting anew. To flip between ranked teams and unranked teams, just use the pull down menu to toggle. With either, when you click ADD SOURCES, it searches all existing data sources that are still accessible, both those already connected to teams and those that aren't. There's a large set of data that no longer shows as an Unranked team, if they haven't played in an extended time. But that data is still there if you search for it.
Actually after looking more closely at the 2011 red source snapshots you posted, I think I get it. The last screenshot is for a team that last played in the spring, so that’s not a real 25-26 team. The other two are for 2011 red and “2011 red high school”. So the second team must be an 8th grade team with 2011s and 2012s. Sort of an early start on how things may shake out next season.
Sounds reasonable. If it were me, I'd pull the few "HS" data sources to their own team, and all the remaining RED sources to that same existing Red team. That's likely closer to reality, and then one of the teams would have HS in its name. But from a rating/ranking standpoint, they are so close anyway it really doesn't matter.
US Club Soccer putting a lot more resources into their id2 program. Seems like they are pulling in more ECNL scouting into the mix. They had a select game in St Louis and it appears they’ll have a team made up of the RL girls in this event. Interesting opportunity for the non-badge leagues to have their best stack up vs local RL girls. That’s always a debate. The ECNL 13’s are pretty stacked in Chicago. Eclipse, Inter, Rockford and Evolution all doing really well both NL and RL.
1974’s RL is beating Inter and Rockford (RL), so they’re also doing well. It’s stacking up to be an exciting weekend of soccer for sure.