For youth soccer players targeting college recruitment, ECNL Regional League offers more showcases and coach exposure than NAL, which is better for Division II and III schools. The speaker emphasizes realistic self-assessment: a strong video won't overcome skill gaps, and Division I recruitment requires matching your actual level to your goals.
What is better, ECNL RL or NAL? Technically speaking, on certain parts of the East Coast, NAL has a very big foundation. So if you ask which teams are better, there's a very good argument to tell you that NAL teams would beat many of those ECNL RL teams. However, who is better does not matter unless you guys want to play for the best club team and 25 years from now you want to go, well, I played on a really good club team when I was in high school. Then stay on the better club team. But personally, my job, I don't care about any of your club teams. The only thing I care about is that you play college soccer. And I'm telling you now, ECNL is quite good about having showcases where college coaches can attend. NAL, on the other hand, it's really limited. They don't have as many events. And this is because ECNL as an organization has done a good job hosting events in which college coaches can easily come and watch players regardless if you're playing ECNL or NAL. NAL, you should be aiming for Division III and Division II schools primarily. You can absolutely email and message Division I schools with your video and see if you get genuine interest and go to their ID camps. But for those of you that will feel frustrated that they didn't even watch you at their camp if it's a D1 school, honestly, you're being a little bit ignorant. It's— you're not their top players and you're not competing with the other kids at the camp on— while most of you think so, you're really competing with kids nationwide. And the kids who chose to come to camp that weekend are a group of kids and there's 3 to 5 of them that the coaches are actually there to see. The rest of you might impress them and there you go, you got your chance. So then I would tell you to go to your dream D1 school because it's your dream school. But don't go to 5 Division I camps if you're not at the level. I just want to tell you a brief story of a student we have. They're very good, but I've watched their video a number of times. We fixed their video, they made it the best I could, and they're not Division I level. I don't know what to tell you. He's just not Division I level. So they should not be going to Division I camps unless it's their dream school. Now I'm just one opinion. I'm not the one who's going to be coaching them, so maybe that D1 coach tells the kid, you know what, we think you're the level. It could totally happen, which is why the camps are great. And you guys hate on the camps because you feel like they're just money grabs, but if it wasn't for the camp, you would never even get a chance to be seen. All you really want to do is do your best to have them see you before, so when you actually go to the camp, it's worth your time. All of that is to say, I would play Eastern RL instead of NEL if it was me, because there's opportunity to then play ECNL if you're in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade. By 11th grade, it would really depend on which team gets more exposure. If you want more help playing college soccer, give me a call. Links in the bio. Talk soon.
