ISO Winter Competition
Our ECNL league schedule is heavy in the fall with 11 games through the first weekend in Nov, dead in the winter, then picks up again mid-March with 8 more games, finishing the weekend before Memorial Day.
With 14 teams in the conference, we’ll play each team once (13 games) then play 6 teams (Sporting IA, Sporting BV, KC Athletics, Greta Elite Academy, SLSG Navy, and SLSG Green) a second time (home and away) for a total of 19 games.
In terms of other competition we are budgeted for the following:
1 ECNL National Event
ECNL National Playoffs
Jefferson Cup
2 additional events
ECNL National Event
This was just solidified this week, and we’ll be heading to Phoenix (AZ) the first weekend in April.
The team list is as follows:
Arsenal FC
Connecticut FC
Crossfire United
D'Feeters SC
Dallas Texans
De Anza Force
Eagles SC
Eastside FC
FC Dallas
FC Portland
Heat FC
Kansas City Athletics
La Roca FC
Legends FC
Minnesota Thunder Academy
Mustang SC
MVLA
Ohio Premier
Oklahoma Energy
Pac NW
PDA Blue
PDA White
Phoenix Rising
Pipeline SC
Pleasanton Rage
Real Colorado Athletico
Real Colorado National
Real So Cal
Rebels SC
San Juan SC
Seattle United
Slammers FC
Slammers FC HB Koge
SLSG - Navy
SLSG - White
SUSA
Utah Royals AZ
World Class FC
ECNL National Playoffs
I don’t know much about this process/format yet. Looking at last year’s playoff brackets, it looks like 2 teams qualified from the Midwest Conference - SLSG Navy (MO) and Eclipse Select (IL).
2022 Jefferson Cup
We attended this event last spring and had a solid competitive experience. Tough place to get to though. With no direct flights to Richmond (VA), many families had connecting flights in Atlanta, making it a 11+ hour adventure door to door.
I flew into DC, then battled unbelievably horrible traffic for 4 hours trying to get 100 miles south to Richmond.
This difficult travel day is wearing on the players, and clearly impacts performance. Not ideal, but the event provided what ended up to be a very positive experience for us last year.
Additional Budgeted Events
This leaves 2 events to add in.
Looking at our calendar, it seems natural to try and fit something into the Jan/Feb months. This would give me an opportunity to see how the team is performing coming out of the Dec/Jan winter training months, and allow me to make any needed training adjustments for the next month+ before the Jeff Cup and our spring season.
But this travel comes with expenses to families, families who have already committed significant dollars to give their girls the opportunity to experience this development environment.
Yes, we’re already budgeted for these additional events, but there is still air fare, car rental, hotels, meals, and other mixc expenses that come along with weekend tournament travel, not to mention the time commitment.
The other alternative would be to look to pick up 2 local events in the summer. If we don’t qualify for the ECNL National Playoffs, we won’t have much going on at all after Memorial Day Weekend. Actually, we’ll have nothing going on from a competitive standpoint. Just training, then tryouts.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s a good thing.
We train during the week, and families have a majority of the summer weekends free.
Relatively unheard of when it comes to competitive soccer in MN.
Regardless, I spent the last few hours researching possible winter events on GotSoccer. There are plenty of events to choose from. This issue is finding one that will give us a solid competitive experience.
Leading contenders at this point are SC del Sol’s President’s Day Tournament (AZ) the weekend of Feb 18-21, the Las Vegas Mayor’s Cup (NV) the weekend of Feb 25-27, Disney’s Presidents Day Soccer Festival (FL) the weekend of Feb 19-21, and the Michael Brown Winter Classic (TX) the weekend of Jan 22-24.
Need to do a little more research, looking mainly at the U13 age groups these events had last year to try and judge strength of competition.
I’m leaning to the Mayor’s Cup in Vegas right now for a couple reasons. Easy to get to with plenty of direct flights from MPS, cheap air fare, diversity of competition with team from NV, CA, AZ, WA, OK, and CO attending last year, and a possibility of max games (5).
