Eastern RL is a second or third-tier league, but players can still reach Division 3, Division 2, or occasionally Division 1, especially if they move to ECNL. Girls get recruited by the end of junior year; waiting until senior year makes it much harder. Early outreach and the right coach matter more than just any college team.
Can you play college if you're playing Eastern RL? Girls soccer edition. So I'm a boy, so of course mostly boys listen to me, but girls soccer is something we help with all the time. We have probably 40% of our students are girls, and we have many girls playing college soccer at the Division 1 level. We just had a junior actually commit to the Grizzlers in Montana. So the question is here, can you play Eastern RL and play college soccer? The answer is you can definitely play Division 3 college soccer if you're playing Eastern RL. You could even play Division 2, and you might be able to play Division 1. Playing ECNL is really good because you're theoretically associated with an ECNL team, so that means at any point you could get promoted to the ECNL team, which is— helps you get more exposure to colleges. And playing ECNL has a good reputation in the soccer world. There's no MLS Next, so it's really just ECNL RL, ECNL, Girls Elite Academy, and DPL. And then there's NPL and E-64, but mainly it's those 3 leagues: ECNL, ECNL RL, and Girls Elite Academy, and then DPL and and we'll say NPL for simplicity. So if you're playing Eastern RL, that puts you in like the second tier, maybe you could say the third tier of the recruiting process for college soccer. What you need to understand though is girls get recruited really early. The girls soccer players need to— like, boys soccer players, I tell you to start in 8th grade. Girls soccer players have to start in 8th grade. And then if they start in 9th and 10th, you just have to understand that a lot of the girls are committed by the end of their junior year where boys are getting committed by the end of their junior year all the way into their senior year, talking like December. Girls, to get recruited your senior year is very difficult. So if you're a junior playing ECNL right now in March, I would tell you you're really far behind if you have not already had phone calls and visits scheduled. It's not to say it wouldn't be possible because they are still recruiting, because we have girls being recruited right now. But I have a girl right now, she's playing DPL and, you know, she's going through the recruiting process. Division 1 soccer is not realistic for this student, but they're getting a ton of interest from Division 3 schools and she's a really good soccer player and she's going to get to play college soccer because she's taking the right steps and because she has already like 4 visits scheduled. So the answer is eSNRL can definitely help you play college soccer, but you just have to You need to understand how you can talk to one school and then potentially leverage it against another school, or— and I should say, most importantly, find the right school for you. We don't want you to just pick a college soccer team just because. We want you to pick the right coach that you like, etc. If you're a girls soccer player playing ECNL RL and you want help, give me a call. Links in the bio.
