ECNL Tryouts as a defender/age change
This years tryouts seem to be much more intense because of age change. My daughter is U16 (birth year 2011) and is coming from being a 5 year ECNL starter as a defender. Long story short…her club loses their badge, she tries out for another ECNL team and makes it.
Year progresses, she is told “we already have our starting defenders and backup defenders never play here”…so she is forced to switch positions. Gives it her best but is not comfortable after being a defender for 5 years.
Anyway, she is not offered a spot back on the ECNL team and then we find out she will not be offered a spot on the RL team either because they are bringing an entire new club (EDP level) in to form the RL team along with their coach. So basically, they took my money for a year and made my kid a practice player.
So, onto tryouts…every ECNL coach tells me the same thing…we aren’t looking for defenders. We have all our starting defenders already. And because of the age change issue we have basically 75 kids trying out for like 2 spots on the RL team.
I definitely feel like my kid really got shafted because she is a good player but when she tries out she is immediately lumped into the “we already have this kind of player” on our team…
Have gone from being 5 year starter on ECNL team to not being able to even get an RL offer.
Have gotten 3 offers from GA, and lower level EDP clubs but the quality of play is so much less. Is this typical? Through no fault of my own, we were forced to find a new club when mine folded. Unfortunately every new club we try out for is full of politics, players who have been there for years etc.
I suppose I could just take the low level spot, but I feel like I am giving up. Not sure what to do. My daughter feels like she is an ECNL player (and was an ECNL starter for 5 years) and now cannot find a team