ECNL QUESTION

If we decided to ask for a release would dd be able to practice with another ECNL club/coach?

Reading through the ECNL handbook it does not address practice or needing a release to practice with another club. If she is on a ECNL roster she is not able to be added to another ecnl roster outside her club.

Functional242, there are two fundamental issues to be addressed.

1. Club release
2. ECNL waiver

1. You can get Club release anytime you want, so long as you have met all your financial obligations with the Club.  Actually, if you are current in your Club dues you can just walk away with no questions asked.

2. ECNL waiver is tough.  The player once rostered with an ECNL club is tied down for the season with that Club.  However, if you are in good terms with your Coach or DOC, you can ask for a waiver.  If you get a waiver, ECNL can release you from the roster and be able to roster with any other ECNL Club before May 1st, so long as the other Club has a roster spot in any of their ECNL teams (does not have to be her age group) and are willing to take you.

I wouldn't recommend practicing with another ECNL team if you don't have a waiver.  Your current Club can file a complaint against the other Club, and they may get sanctioned by ECNL.   Most ECNL coaches around very likely would not let you do that anyway. Too much risk.

I have a much more basic question which I'm sure has been discussed on here numerous times but I am too lazy to look. My DD plays for a non-ECNL club. Do the rules allow her to dual roster with her current team and an ECNL team?

Yes, my understanding is that any non-ECNL club girl may be picked up by any ECNL club at any time during the season. She is allowed to play for an ECNL club and still play LHGCL for her original club. That is, of course, assuming that all coaches are good etc etc etc. It's never that easy. Technically, it can be done.

DDdad wrote:Yes, my understanding is that any non-ECNL club girl may be picked up by any ECNL club at any time during the season.  She is allowed to play for an ECNL club and still play LHGCL for her original club.  That is, of course, assuming that all coaches are good etc etc etc.  It's never that easy.  Technically, it can be done.

Thanks for response. Yes, I was talking in theory of course.

What age group does ECNL start?

all4fun wrote:What age group does ECNL start?

age 5

If you are asking, it's probably already too late.

If you haven't started looking at ECNL clubs, watched some practices, and talked to multiple ECNL coaches by the time your dd is 7 or 8, you are really behind the other crazy soccer parents.

All joking aside...

ECNL currently starts at U14.

If your kid is an absolute stud, it will not matter if they play for one of the ECNL clubs prior to U14, any of the ECNL clubs will be happy to have them.

If your kid is borderline, being part of the club for at least the U13 year is a bit of an advantage (in these cases, the club/coach will tend to go with the devil they know vs. the devil they don't).

True ECNL starts at U14 to answer your question, but as others have eluded to... some coaches at the ECNL clubs will try to sell you on it early...

bwgophers wrote:If your kid is an absolute stud, it will not matter if they play for one of the ECNL clubs prior to U14, any of the ECNL clubs will be happy to have them.

If your kid is borderline, being part of the club for at least the U13 year is a bit of an advantage (in these cases, the club/coach will tend to go with the devil they know vs. the devil they don't).

I dunno BW...been hearing that for a couple years now. Is that what happened with the U14s last summer? What would you say was the % of u14 ECNL rostered players who were already on the club's top team at U13?

4-3-3 wrote:

bwgophers wrote:If your kid is an absolute stud, it will not matter if they play for one of the ECNL clubs prior to U14, any of the ECNL clubs will be happy to have them.

If your kid is borderline, being part of the club for at least the U13 year is a bit of an advantage (in these cases, the club/coach will tend to go with the devil they know vs. the devil they don't).

I dunno BW...been hearing that for a couple years now. Is that what happened with the U14s last summer? What would you say was the % of u14 ECNL rostered players who were already on the club's top team at U13?

Which part of my statement are you challenging? The part about the studs? The borderline players? or Both?

I don't want to get into "studs" or "borderline" players...everyone has their own criteria for evaluating players and it's all over the map especially when it's parents doing the evals. I'd rather look at the #s...how many and what percentage of players who made the roster had never played for the ecnl coach prior to the tryout? That would give some indication whether the coaches prefer to go with the devil they know....you could still be right and ALL those players are "absolute studs"...but I wouldn't touch that one with a 10 foot pole. I would expect very little roster turnover at u15 if that were the case though.

I don't know if it has anything to do with being a stud or borderline player. The big clubs promote from within to support players and coaches that have been in or developed within their programs. Hard to sell ECNL when you are pulling all your players from other clubs.

I would guess at least at the U-14 ECNL a heavy number of player came from within club. Now does that mean that it will stay that way. We will see!

Before I get into the numbers, note that I said for the borderline players, that it's a small advantage to play for the CLUB at U13, not necessarily that you have to be on the top team in the club playing for the U14 ECNL COACH at U13. Chances are if you are player within the club, the ECNL coach is more likely to have seen you in practices/scrimmages/games, and will also have feedback from other coaches in the club about you as a player, and will therefore "know" you better than a player coming from a different club.

At Sting, I believe the #'s are around 75% of the current U14 ECNL roster played on a Sting team at U13, with about 40% of the roster coming from Sting Flanny.

I believe somewhere around 75% of Texans U14 ECNL roster were on a Texans team at U13. I think there may be a slightly higher percentage that came from Texans Scott when compared to Sting/Sting Flanny.

I believe Solar is somewhere around 50% hold-overs from Bates U13 roster, maybe a little less (BigPoppy would have to confirm). I don't think the total Solar hold-over % is much higher than that, but as you know, Solar's #2 U13 team was at the bottom of D2, so they had a much smaller pool of quality '01 players within the club at U13 to choose from than either Sting or Texans did.

From what I know about FC Dallas and D'Feeters, both of those teams have a higher % of holdovers from their top U13 team to their U14 ECNL roster ~60-75%, with most of the remaining players coming from outside the club. Again, similar to Solar, FC Dallas and D'Feeters only had a single "strong" '01 team at U13, so their pool to fill out the ECNL roster from inside the club was much smaller than Sting/Texans. I do believe that Solar attracted/landed more of the top "free agents" in the '01's than FC Dallas or D'Feeters did.

Here is a numbers question for you...

Of the holdovers, how many are playing meaninful minutes in the ECNL games, as in starting and playing the majority of the game?

Well BW and Zizou would certainly know better than me...I stand corrected. I thought they had open tryouts and took the best players available.

Borussia wrote:Here is a numbers question for you...

Of the holdovers, how many are playing meaninful minutes in the ECNL games, as in starting and playing the majority of the game?

I would also like to see those numbers. A Venn diagram would be nice.

Yeah, from the little I know about the U-14 ECNL lol. Most the starters and players seeing extensive minutes were in the club pryor to ECNL.

4-3-3 wrote:Well BW and Zizou would certainly know better than me...I stand corrected. I thought they had open tryouts and took the best players available.

C'mon man.  That does happen for the most part.  

For the '01's, a large portion of the best players were already on the top teams at the ECNL clubs.  50-60% of those players stayed right were they were at and continued on to the ECNL team from their club.  Another 20-25% simply played ECNL musical chairs and ended up switching to the ECNL team at a different club.  The remaining 30-40% or so (keep in mind that the total % can add up to >100% because ECNL rosters are larger than U13 LHGCL rosters) are predominantly made up of the top players that came from other teams in the top 15 of LHGCL U13 standings (and even a couple of studs imported from one of OK's top teams).  The best players from Andromeda, Sting Guzman, DTFW, DT White, Tx. Spirit, Sting Hilton, Sting East, and Diamonds, (from what I know and have heard, an average of ~3 players from each of those teams - some more, some less) who wanted to take the ECNL plunge, pretty much all ended up on an ECNL roster.  I'm pretty sure you could throw Kicks Nation into that group as well, but I think they held on to the majority of their best players...  and you know as well as I do, that there's probably double digit players on the current Kicks SC roster, that if they walked up to an ECNL practice tomorrow and said that they wanted in, would be welcomed with open arms. Then there are about 25-30% of the players that were on the top team at the ECNL clubs at U13, that aren't on an ECNL roster at U14 for one reason or another.

From what I've been told, and consistent with my limited observations, typically, the top 15 or so spots on the ECNL roster are pretty clear cut, and those are the players that see the bulk of the minutes.  Usually, it's going to be pretty clear cut during tryouts who those kids are, and it won't matter where they came from.  They will stand out to the coach.  The last 5 or so slots on the roster is much more of a gray area, and when kids are fighting for those spots in tryouts, that's where I think kids that are coming from a team already within the ECNL club, and are thus more likely to have had more visibility to the coaching staff leading up to tryouts, will have a slight advantage over kids coming from a different club.  That seems pretty logical to me.

Sho'nuff wrote:

Borussia wrote:Here is a numbers question for you...

Of the holdovers, how many are playing meaninful minutes in the ECNL games, as in starting and playing the majority of the game?

I would also like to see those numbers.  A Venn diagram would be nice.

I feel reasonably confident about the roster composition #'s because I followed it somewhat closely and have had several conversations with people who would know on that subject.

I honestly can't comment on playing time. Someone like Zizou or Big Poppy would have more insight on that.

Just reading along nodding my head in agreement at most of your post BW...but this part gave me pause...

bwgophers wrote:...Chances are if you are player within the club, the ECNL coach is more likely to have seen you in practices/scrimmages/games, and will also have feedback from other coaches in the club about you as a player, and will therefore "know" you better than a player coming from a different club.

Maybe so, but if you're on a competing team and said coach has seen how you stack up to his/her current players in real-live competitive situations, coach probably knows plenty about you. From the anecdotal stories I've heard, coaches are not sitting around waiting to see who shows up to their ECNL tryouts...they seek out players they want to sign based on their perceived team needs...regardless what competing club the player is currently playing.

Now these may indeed be that "stud" group you're talking about, but I don't define stud so broadly. I think we're talking about players that will get significant minutes. Borussia's focus was on point. When we're talking about the 14 to 15 who get significant minutes, it looks to me the coaches care more about what players can do vs where they came from.

I've known this is how it works since u10, and here's why. As you know DD played academy for one of these ECNL clubs at U10. Several parents had older kids on the club's top team who were going through their first ecnl tryouts. They were LIVID the club was hosting open tryouts and bringing in all these "studs" from other clubs. They thought the top team was going to become the ECNL team. Heard the complaining first hand...I remember one comment specifically, "It's like they're trying to build an all-star team." So when a few months later a coach told me at u10, "We're a top 3 team and this is going to be the ECNL team which is very important for"....yadda yadda...I already knew the deal.

Now how do I square that with the oft repeated claim on the forum that your child will have an advantage if they can get to an ECNL club early...with the reason specifically given that coaches don't like "new" and like to stick with what they know...and the only non-club players a coach will add will have to be "studs"?

I don't think ECNL coaches operate any differently than any other coach who is trying to be as competitive as possible. If you're coming in to a team, you need to be better than the current player at the role you're trying to play. If you're only just as good, a coach has no real incentive to add you and change the status quo, unless they're trying to add bench depth....and some coaches don't want to recruit for bench until high school ages. You don't need to be an "absolute stud", you just need to be an upgrade in your ability to help that particular team.

I could be wrong, but from the outside looking in, I don't see the advantage for borderliners (i.e. non starters, few minutes) that was gained because they jumped on board early to an ECNL club/team...unless those borderliners jumped to the best situation for their player's development. Unless there is a perception that making the back end of an 22+ person ECNL roster is more valuable than making a non-ECNL roster and getting minutes, it's hard to see what they gained if they eschewed somewhere they would've gotten more time/minutes/development to instead play for a pre-ecnl team.

My conclusion from watching the u14s play out is pretty much exactly what I expected based on what I overheard those parents saying those many years ago...development of your player matters more than what team or club they choose before u14. I would smile more if I constantly read that advice being given on here from parents who have been through this....instead of the, "get to an ecnl club early so you can get the loyalty advantage when they sign ecnl rosters at u14."  No one ever includes that important caveat that the loyalty advantage is not redeemable when a better player shows up. ECNL or not...still works the same.

4-3-3...

I think you and I are actually really close to violent agreement on this.

You can go directly to the ECNL web site and see the full ECNL rosters for every team.  It also lists how many ECNL games each player on the roster has played in this year (although I'm not sure if the GP stat means that the player actually entered the game, or if it just means that they were on the 18-player active roster for the game).  Now, it doesn't give you any indication of how many minutes a particular player has played, but what you see is that for EVERY U14 NTX ECNL team, there are 16-17 players that are active/playing >80% of the games, and then there is a dramatic fall-off in games played for the rest of the roster, whether or not the roster has 20 or 28 listed on it.

Now, even then, it's likely that some of those 16-17 "core" players probably aren't logging much more than 10-20 minutes in many games, so you have a "true core" of 14-15 players that are doing the heavy lifting for the team.  I think we are all generally agreeing on that as well.

Both you and I have also clearly stated that if your DD is good enough to be one of those 14-15 "true core" players, it doesn't matter what club/team/coach she played for prior to U14.  The players, ECNL clubs, and coaches will seek each other out, and find each other when tryout time comes around.

Now, let's go back to the analysis of the rosters and "games played" numbers...  In addition to the 16-17 "core" players, you typically only see about an additional 5 players or so that are getting placed on active rosters more than 10% of the time.  So regardless of how many players are listed on the ECNL roster, in reality, the rosters are typically capped out at about 20-22 players.  I don't know how many of those 5 or so players are ECNL exclusive vs. dual roster (hopefully, for the kids' sake, they are dual rostered), but it's these 5 or so players + the 1-3 players may be "core" but not "true core" players, that I am talking about when I say "borderline" players.

This is where you and I may disagree a bit.  I contend that those 5-8 players are more likely to have been with the ECNL club at U13 or earlier, than to have shown up and made the team through an open tryout process.  Again, not necessarily the top TEAM in the club at U13, but in the club.  The differentiation between those players, and the better players on most U14 LHGCL D1 rosters likely isn't that large.  So there, if the coaching staff has more familiarity with those players from having seen/coached them on a more frequent basis, they will be more likely to give that kid a spot, than a similarly skilled kid who just showed up at tryouts (and who probably never really stood out if they played against the ECNL club at U11-U13).  Also, unless those families/kids think they can find a situation where they would be a "true core" player on an ECNL team at a different club, they are probably more likely to stay and accept a dual-roster position with their incumbent club.

My statement about the devil you know vs. the devil you don't, has NOTHING to do with loyalty.  It has everything to do with the level of uncertainty that a coach has about a player.  When it comes to the last few spots on ANY roster, unless the new player has a unique physical attribute (i.e. is 5'10" and can run and change direction like a gazelle) that makes the potential reward worth the risk of the roster spot, the coach is more likely to go with the player that they are more familiar with.

...and as you stated, none of this is a unique phenomenon to ECNL.