Longtime youth soccer scout Jerry Penkala – owner and operator of JTF Academy, a well-known college recruiting management service – has shared the op-ed below with SoccerWire, after hearing the same sentiments expressed and repeated by dozens of college coaches in private conversations over the course of the past two seasons.
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I have been in the recruiting landscape for 20 years and have made hundreds of D1 college coaching friends all across the country. I talk to many of these coaches weekly, and the overwhelming consensus is that the recent recruiting landscape has changed more (and become more challenging for both recruits and college coaches) in the past 2 years than it has over the past two decades combined.
Why?
There are many opinions on this question, but simply put, the ongoing rivalry between the ECNL and Girls Academy is directly to blame. Having the top two national leagues competing directly with each other for club membership, and increasingly holding dueling showcase events in different regions of the country, is taking a toll on college coaches and the overall recruiting process.
As someone who has been on the front lines of recruiting and understands the extremely difficult rollercoaster that recruits go through each year – as well as how these massive recent changes have negatively affected college coaches’ efforts to find recruits that fit their programs – I have seen these current issues with recruiting coming for the past couple years.
The Battle for Elite Clubs
Over the past few years, the ECNL and Girls Academy have been in a battle of attrition for membership of the country’s most elite clubs. This rivalry was already in place since the inception of the GA back in 2020, following the shutdown of the U.S. Soccer Development Academy.
Upon the formation of the GA, the upstart league was able to retain an overwhelming number of the U.S. Soccer Girls’ Development Academy clubs, which made up the bulk of its membership. However, slowly but surely, some of the best clubs that started in the GA have trickled back to the ECNL.
In the past couple weeks alone, four high profile GA clubs have been announced as new ECNL Girls members for the 2024-25 season: Nationals SC (MI), Colorado Rush, Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals and South Shore Select (MA).
[SoccerWire Editor’s Note: Through our other reporting, we are aware of several other top clubs in the GA that have applied to move to the ECNL but been denied – for now – due to the ECNL’s geographical saturation within certain metropolitan areas.]
To put it into perspective, the GA held its in-season Champions Cup Finals last week, and three of the six age group champions are members of those aforementioned departing clubs: two from Nationals SC (U14 and U16) and one from South Shore Select (U19). Colorado Rush placed 2nd at the U19 level.
While the GA remains a clear cut No. 2 on the national landscape with plenty of future NCAA Division 1 players and undoubtedly some future professional players in its ranks, there’s no denying the pattern that is taking place, with top GA clubs continuing to join (or re-join) the ECNL.
This has resulted in the GA adding clubs to its own ranks while the ECNL also expands in other ways. According to the hundreds of college coaches I speak to weekly, this process has added thousands of new recruits to an already overcrowded recruiting landscape. For some, it has made the process of scouting and evaluating potential recruits entirely unmanageable.
To reiterate, the GA is STILL a high-level league with plenty of talented players, even with some of their top clubs leaving. In fact, this is the heart of the issue. While it’s clear that the ECNL is ‘winning’ the battle of attrition, the GA continues to hold significant marketshare, while college coaches are stuck in the middle.
The Showcase Scheduling Duels
The biggest and most constant complaint I hear every single day from college coaches is the dueling showcase scheduling between the leagues. According to these coaches, it’s almost as if both leagues are trying to ‘see who blinks first’ when scheduling showcase weekends.
Both the ECNL and GA know when the other league has their major showcases scheduled each year, yet continue to either overlap those showcases on the same exact weekend (sometimes in exact opposite parts of the country) and/or schedule the showcases on back-to-back weekends. With GA events including a day off during their showcases, that can mean that only 4 days separate ECNL and GA showcases on back-to-back weekends.
The result of this scheduling?
- College coaches are forced to either skip one of the two events, or split their coaching staff up to attend both events, which in either case, severely affects scouting/evaluating coverage.
- This lack of coverage means less time for recruits to be seen. I’m sure every recruit/family has noticed that the average time a college coach spends at a game is currently 20 min to a half, at most. Again, too many recruits to see, and not enough time during a fully-attended showcase. With the staff either completely missing an entire event or splitting a staff up, it only affects the recruits even more.
Less Room For ‘Recruiting Magic’
The overall result of both factors mentioned above is the same – the good old days of a college coach having time to ‘magically find’ a recruit they did not already know about before the showcase (and know about from someone they trust based on past recruit recommendations) are largely gone.
With coaches only having 20 minutes a game to scout ANYONE (and that is typically the players they already know all about), and having to run from game-to-game, recruiters have fewer opportunities than ever to ‘work their recruiting magic’ at showcase events, with less time to freelance and find hidden gems.
While playing for a big name club can help drive college coaches to the sidelines of particular games – opening the door for more recruiting opportunities for players on those teams – even that isn’t a panacea for many players in an overcrowded recruiting environment. College coaches simply do not have enough time to sit down and watch an entire game because of the thousands of recently-added recruits, even if your particular club is ‘loaded with talent’.
I have asked college coaches directly if there is a way to ‘fix’ these recruiting issues, and so far all I ever hear back is “We are just trying to keep our head above water with how overcrowded and unmanageable recruiting is currently.”
A ‘Two-State Solution’?
Personally, I think the only way to correct things is for the ECNL and GA to consider the bigger picture and show some degree of cooperation in order to benefit the players, their families and the college coaches who want to see them play.
At a minimum, having the top two leagues in the country coordinating with each other at least enough to make attending both leagues’ major showcases a reasonable pursuit for college programs, would be a great start.
