ECNL Schedules Posted

http://www.eliteclubsnationalleague.com/schedules/78817208/78817269.html

Not seeing a few players on NTX teams that played last year.

The games scheduled for February 13th-15th fall right in the middle of the SPC (Southwest Preparatory Conference) high school championship tournament in Houston. Will affect ECNL players at Hockaday, Greenhill, ESD and others. All these schools have several ECNL players.

This has been out for at least 2 weeks, is this still 'prelim' schedule?

Pretty sure the Tapps schools (Ursuline, Bishop Lynch, Nolan etc.,) will be in their play-offs that mid February weekend of the ECNL showcase in South Texas. Very poor timing on the ECNL side.

dallas 1968 wrote:Pretty sure the Tapps schools (Ursuline, Bishop Lynch, Nolan etc.,) will be in their play-offs that mid February weekend of the ECNL showcase in South Texas. Very poor timing on the ECNL side.

ECNL does not schedule events or games around HS sports. That is up to the individual clubs to schedule their games or events participation with minimum conflicts to local HS events.

That makes no sense at all. ECNL leadership, not the clubs schedule the 'showcase tournaments'. This unnecessary conflict will create a big problem and many girls, possibly dozens, will be affected. SPC for example has scheduled their winter sports championships in mid February for many years for the simple reason that their spring sports have to start very soon after and nearly all their players, both boys and girls have to play multiple sports as the schools do not, generally have enough 'athletes' to go around.

ECNL should have scheduled this particular showcase on a different weekend. As they obviously don't give a rats ass about school sports or the girls playing them chances are it never crossed their minds.

You really don't get it do you? ECNL is a national organization and you seriously want them to plan events around TAPPS.Talk about entitlement. Luckily the ECNL clubs have plenty of players ready to step in so the SPC players can skip this event.

ECNL should have scheduled this particular showcase on a different weekend. As they obviously don't give a rats ass about school sports or the girls playing them chances are it never crossed their minds

Wow! Really? High School soccer is basically rec soccer for most schools and the recruiting doesn't come from there.  So really, school sports doesn't really cross ANYONE's minds.

High school soccer is far from 'rec soccer' in many cases and a few high school teams would be more than competitive with several ECNL teams. Too many of you have been drinking the 'ECNL Cool Aid'. Some ECNL 'coaches' are very verbally and mentally abusive, loudly sarcastic and belittling to their players and if you have watched many ECNL games you will have noticed this first hand.

Last season Hockaday lost 4-3 to Sting '99 in a highly competitive contest. A few weeks later ESD destroyed Hockaday 3-0 in the SPC championship match. Both schools have several ECNL players.

Ursuline, Bishop Lynch, Coppell, Highland Park, Nolan, Plano West, Hebron and many others are far from 'rec teams'.

The ECNL is not all that and they should take into account the high school schedules.

dallas 1968 wrote:High school soccer is far from 'rec soccer' in many cases and a few high school teams would be more than competitive with several ECNL teams. Too many of you have been drinking the 'ECNL Cool Aid'. Some ECNL 'coaches' are very verbally and mentally abusive, loudly sarcastic and belittling to their players   and if you have watched many ECNL games you will have noticed this first hand.

Last season Hockaday lost 4-3 to Sting '99 in a highly competitive contest. A few weeks later ESD destroyed Hockaday 3-0 in the SPC championship match. Both schools have several ECNL players.

Ursuline, Bishop Lynch, Coppell, Highland Park, Nolan, Plano West, Hebron and many others are far from 'rec teams'.

The ECNL is not all that and they should take into account the high school schedules.

Although your example intrigues me... Hockaday with a team full of ECNL All-Stars including some of the top Seniors in the nation was actually upset by a team of Sophomore Sting Players in the "game" scrimmage you mentioned.  But back to the point, ECNL has had the Event the same weekend for least 3 years in a row... It is a bigger deal for the Dallas teams this year, because it is down in Houston... But ALL of the HS teams you mentioned are dependent upon the ECNL players.... NOT the other way around... For every good HS team, you have 3 decent teams and 10 bad teams... The local TAPPS or whatever group is fully aware of the conflict and yet they do not budge... ECNL cannot concern itself with the 1000s of HS Events each year... However good ECNL is or isn't

So last year the conflict was for TAPPS State Finals and I hope I don't offend anyone here but it was pretty clear that Ursuline and Bishop Lynch would play for the title as both were loaded with ECNL players. Moving an ECNL National event as said above, is a non-starter. Besides the fact that they do not care about HS soccer, they were coordinating hundreds of teams from around the country. TAPPS was coordinating 2 teams. They could easily have moved the game to the the following week and had it in Dallas but to them, HS soccer and their schedule is the most important. To ECNL, it's not even a discussion. As it turned out, ECNL was snowed out and we played in Waco and it all worked out. We did make sure that TAPPS was aware this year and they agreed to adjust accordingly as of the 22 starters for the finals, I think 15 were ECNL players. It would have been very sad to have a State title event with some of those missing.
As for competitiveness, HS and ECNL are not close. Again, I'm not looking to get flamed here but Bishop Lynch finished as the number 9 HS team in the entire US. (Coppell was #1, congrats). Our team was loaded with ECNL players from U15-U18 and was senior heavy. I can assure you that any North Texas ECNL team from U16 or above would have beaten us. Any U-18 ECNL team would have toyed with us. And that goes for Ursuline, Coppell, Southlake, etc. You can't expect a mixed bag of 6-8 ECNL players from 9th grade to 12th grade who practice together 2 times a week for 3 months to compete with an ECNL team other than maybe U15 simply because they are smaller. After U15, the ECNL teams are simply deeper, bigger, faster, smarter and more coordinated. And the number of HS teams that even have the 6-8 ECNL players is not that many. Truly and apples and oranges comparison. HS is fun but the next scout I see at a HS game will be the first. The girls know it's for fun and most treat it accordingly.

soccersounder wrote:

dallas 1968 wrote:High school soccer is far from 'rec soccer' in many cases and a few high school teams would be more than competitive with several ECNL teams. Too many of you have been drinking the 'ECNL Cool Aid'. Some ECNL 'coaches' are very verbally and mentally abusive, loudly sarcastic and belittling to their players   and if you have watched many ECNL games you will have noticed this first hand.

Last season Hockaday lost 4-3 to Sting '99 in a highly competitive contest. A few weeks later ESD destroyed Hockaday 3-0 in the SPC championship match. Both schools have several ECNL players.

Ursuline, Bishop Lynch, Coppell, Highland Park, Nolan, Plano West, Hebron and many others are far from 'rec teams'.

The ECNL is not all that and they should take into account the high school schedules.

Although your example intrigues me... Hockaday with a team full of ECNL All-Stars including some of the top Seniors in the nation was actually upset by a team of Sophomore Sting Players in the "game" scrimmage you mentioned.  But back to the point, ECNL has had the Event the same weekend for least 3 years in a row... It is a bigger deal for the Dallas teams this year, because it is down in Houston... But ALL of the HS teams you mentioned are dependent upon the ECNL players.... NOT the other way around... For every good HS team, you have 3 decent teams and 10 bad teams... The local TAPPS or whatever group is fully aware of the conflict and yet they do not budge... ECNL cannot concern itself with the 1000s of HS Events each year... However good ECNL is or isn't

Look, I certainly appreciate your thoughts (and that of the other posters) although a couple of your points do not stand up to scrutiny. Hockaday regularly started 5 freshmen last season (I can name them if you like) along with 4 seniors, including Mimi Asom. So this 'balanced out' when they lost a close one to Sting '99's sophomores. Last season there was no conflict with the SPC Championships regarding ECNL so your point of them having the 'ECNL event the same weekend for the past three years' is factually incorrect, as the SPC Championships were February 12th-14th and neither of the 2 finalists (Hockaday and ESD) were missing any players due to an ECNL conflict.


Also remember this: The parents of the private school girls are not spending a fortune so their daughters can get a 'soccer scholarship' to West Texas State, Sam Houston State or East Podunk U. like most of their public school club teammates. Mimi Asom's academic scholarship to Princeton a case in point. Fact is, ECNL should take the SPC Championship weekend and TAPPS play-offs into account when scheduling their 'showcase' tournaments in Texas. We will just have to 'agree to disagree' on this one.

its always entertaining when parents post on things that they really don't have a clue about. Although, it can be somewhat sad when they try to tell those that do understand the process that they don't know what they're talking about and really have it all wrong.

Gunners wrote:its always entertaining when parents post on things that they really don't have a clue about. Although, it can be somewhat sad when they try to tell those that do understand the process that they don't know what they're talking about and really have it all wrong.

Please explain, if you can. Your generalizations really make little sense although seem fairly typical on these threads.

As soccersounder alluded to, there are literally thousands of high school conflicts (soccer etc) over the course of the year . The thought that ECNL should alter their events for any high school conflict is ludicrous, but your admonishing them for not taking TAPPS (and its relative handful of schools) into consideration goes WAY beyond ludicrous.

DDdad did a very good job of explaining the relative competitiveness of high school to ECNL. I suggest you reread his post, as you still don't seem to understand.

Finally, it's great that the private school kids will have better opportunities than their private school teammates. Having said that, I have no idea how it's at all germane to the topic at hand, unless that's just your way of "scoreboarding" the public school system and the kids/families that attend them.

To expand on this, ECNL actually does quite a good job working with school schedules. Anyone can look and see that the teams do a good job in loading the schedule heavy in the fall. If you look at the national events, most are on three day weekends or in school breaks to minimize the impact. There are going to be some conflicts and if they were to schedule around anything it would be public schools as that is where most of the players are playing.

DDdad wrote:So last year the conflict was for TAPPS State Finals and I hope I don't offend anyone here but it was pretty clear that Ursuline and Bishop Lynch would play for the title as both were loaded with ECNL players.  Moving an ECNL National event as said above, is a non-starter.  Besides the fact that they do not care about HS soccer, they were coordinating hundreds of teams from around the country.  TAPPS was coordinating 2 teams.  They could easily have moved the game to the the following week and had it in Dallas but to them, HS soccer and their schedule is the most important.  To ECNL, it's not even a discussion.  As it turned out, ECNL was snowed out and we played in Waco and it all worked out.  We did make sure that TAPPS was aware this year and they agreed to adjust accordingly as of the 22 starters for the finals, I think 15 were ECNL players.  It would have been very sad to have a State title event with some of those missing.
As for competitiveness, HS and ECNL are not close.  Again, I'm not looking to get flamed here but Bishop Lynch finished as the number 9 HS team in the entire US.  (Coppell was #1, congrats).   Our team was loaded with ECNL players from U15-U18 and was senior heavy.  I can assure you that any North Texas ECNL team from U16 or above would have beaten us.  Any U-18 ECNL team would have toyed with us.  And that goes for Ursuline, Coppell, Southlake, etc.  You can't expect a mixed bag of 6-8 ECNL players from 9th grade to 12th grade who practice together 2 times a week for 3 months to compete with an ECNL team other than maybe U15 simply because they are smaller.   After U15, the ECNL teams are simply deeper, bigger, faster, smarter and more coordinated.  And the number of HS teams that even have the 6-8 ECNL players is not that many.  Truly and apples and oranges comparison.  HS is fun but the next scout I see at a HS game will be the first.  The girls know it's for fun and most treat it accordingly.  

I haven't watched as many ecnl games as some in this thread..but I've watched a few...and quite a bit of high school. I was at the coppell vs pw playoff game last spring...couldn't tell any difference in level of play from ecnl games ive watched, reffed or seen online. Maybe DDad can say ANY u16 or above ecnl team would always beat Lynch since he's close to the program, but it's borderline propaganda to suggest ANY u16 ecnl team would beat ANY high school team. And using topdrawer national HS rankings to support the argument usually means you are reaching.

4-3-3 wrote:I haven't watched as many ecnl games as some in this thread..but I've watched a few...and quite a bit of high school. I was at the coppell vs pw playoff game last spring...couldn't tell any difference in level of play from ecnl games ive watched, reffed or seen online. Maybe DDad can say ANY u16 or above ecnl team would always beat Lynch since he's close to the program, but it's borderline propaganda to suggest ANY u16 ecnl team would beat ANY high school team. And using topdrawer national HS rankings to support the argument usually means you are reaching.

I totally agree with this. SOME high school teams are very well coached and SOME ECNL teams are poorly coached (Sting '99 and Solar Chelsea '99 come readily to mind). I think several high school teams would be more than competitive with some ECNL teams.

Generally (certainly at the private school level) the high school facilities are far better than ANYTHING any ECNL team offers. They have stadium dressing rooms, on site medical trainers, fully equipped weight rooms staffed by qualified personnel, excellent grass fields (ESD's two grass fields are second to none and Greenhill's new fields are right there in terms of quality of playing surface) lighted field turf fields, team rooms for video work and tactical preparation which often feature dry erase boards, drop down screens, internet hook-up and the rest.

The high school girls do NOT have to bring their own water and soccer balls to practice and, in case of poor weather can play futsal in one of the schools gyms. NONE of the ECNL teams come close to matching this and if they did then why do they spend so much money RENTING the high school facilities when their own fields are soaking wet, like they were this last spring ? Heck, at least one ECNL league game was re-scheduled on the field turf of a local private high school, just to get it in.

Wow... Had I known that all my kid needed was a Mark Cuban dressing room I could have saved her all the sweat, tears and training.

dallas 1968 wrote:

4-3-3 wrote:I haven't watched as many ecnl games as some in this thread..but I've watched a few...and quite a bit of high school. I was at the coppell vs pw playoff game last spring...couldn't tell any difference in level of play from ecnl games ive watched, reffed or seen online. Maybe DDad can say ANY u16 or above ecnl team would always beat Lynch since he's close to the program, but it's borderline propaganda to suggest ANY u16 ecnl team would beat ANY high school team. And using topdrawer national HS rankings to support the argument usually means you are reaching.

I totally agree with this. SOME high school teams are very well coached and SOME ECNL teams are poorly coached (Sting '99 and Solar Chelsea '99 come readily to mind). I think several high school teams would be more than competitive with some ECNL teams.

Generally (certainly at the private school level) the high school facilities are far better than ANYTHING any ECNL team offers. They have stadium dressing rooms, on site medical trainers, fully equipped weight rooms staffed by qualified personnel, excellent grass fields (ESD's two grass fields are second to none and Greenhill's new fields are right there in terms of quality of playing surface) lighted field turf fields, team rooms for video work and tactical preparation which often feature dry erase boards, drop down screens, internet hook-up and the rest.

The high school girls do NOT have to bring their own water and soccer balls to practice and, in case of poor weather can play futsal in one of the schools gyms. NONE of the ECNL teams come close to matching this and if they did then why do they spend so much money RENTING the high school facilities when their own fields are soaking wet, like they were this last spring ? Heck, at least one ECNL league game was re-scheduled on the field turf of a local private high school, just to get it in.

I'm curious where you think those players where developed? At their ECNL clubs or do you think it was their high school coaches? Although judging by past responses, I already know the answer to that one.

dallas 1968 wrote:

...SOME ECNL teams are poorly coached (Sting '99 and Solar Chelsea '99 come readily to mind).

Interesting. So do those guys do a poor job with all their teams, or just the 99's?

Given many select players (especially ECNL and D1 LH) avoid high school soccer because of the risk of injury, I sincerely doubt most Hogh School teams could compete with LH D2 teams let alone ECNL. To say that a school can compete with the best kids across North Texas from every school district is ridiculous.

dallas 1968 wrote: The high school girls do NOT have to bring their own water and soccer balls to practice...

Really?  Are you really making that argument?

the7wolf wrote:Given many select players (especially ECNL and D1 LH) avoid high school soccer because of the risk of injury, I sincerely doubt most Hogh School teams could compete with LH D2 teams let alone ECNL. To say that a school can compete with the best kids across North Texas from every school district is ridiculous.

But ridiculous does keep with the theme of the entire post, there's consistency there. Gotta give em that.

the7wolf wrote:Given many select players (especially ECNL and D1 LH) avoid high school soccer because of the risk of injury, I sincerely doubt most Hogh School teams could compete with LH D2 teams let alone ECNL. To say that a school can compete with the best kids across North Texas from every school district is ridiculous.

But remember, they don't have to bring their own water, so there's that!