Champions League

Teufel Hunden wrote:Are your scheduled games "official" CHL games or scrimmages? I have heard that to get things going (and relieve some of the anxiety), some clubs are playing games, but these are not actually official or CHL sanctioned. Please correct me if I am mistaken (I really hope I am wrong for the sake of all players and parents).
I guess you guys cannot / will not share your schedules in order to not to reveal your allegiance whether it is an official schedule or not.....

It still amazes me that so many players were absorbed by a league that is yet to exist with the promise to get a particular player closer to an ECNL / DA future opportunity. When tryputs come along, all players (and existing ECNL players) still need to try out. There are no guarantees. Many players (and parents) were sold that their player will have the opportunity to train with ECNL and even be "called up". As I have stated in other threads, this may be true for 2 or 3 players, but the great majority will probably stick around with their original team or even dual rostering with the LH D1/D2 team if the club has one. Good luck to you and your daughters.

(a) Can't speak for other teams, but every player on my daughter's Champions League roster is dual-rostered on an existing team within the club, playing in LH.

(b) As I read through this thread, why are so many clamoring for information about the league and yet slamming it at the same time? If it is such a bad deal, why does everyone want to know details and to see a schedule?

Probably cause not everyone is on a team that dual rostered.

sleestack - I don't think no one is slamming the league. Some of us just want to know how it will operate. With the so called league not publishing rules and bylaws by now, questions come up on how it will be managed and how the players will be "promoted" or "demoted" from and to LH and in some cases ECNL teams within the same club. You are the first person to indicate that all CHL players are dual-rostered with club's LH teams.....my only complaint is that this new movement (JDL / CHL) drained the talent pool from LH for years to come, that being said, if we knew (or if I knew) more about the league (rules/ bylaws / mission etc.) maybe the perception would be different...right now it is mere speculation. Regarding rules and bylaws, as you know, one thing is to have these regulations on paper and another is how it really happens. On the same note, once the league gets going, I will be very interested if players and parents get what was promised by the league. Very subjective I know, nonetheless, good for discussion.  On the subject of schedules, I just want to go see some of these teams play. Having attended a LH D1 and a LH D2 games this past weekend, it reinforced the fact that the LH league is a shadow of itself from as recent as a year ago. So again, no league slamming. I hope all players and parents get what they were promised which I hope is a great soccer experience.

I hate it. Great! Lets all pack up our back packs and travel 300miles for 1 game..... 1 game. Oh by the way, we need to fork out 30 bucks each for the coach's premium.

I think it would be better plan 3 or 4 teams for a weekend of friendlies. Make it worth the trip

Teufel Hunden wrote:Are your scheduled games "official" CHL games or scrimmages? I have heard that to get things going (and relieve some of the anxiety), some clubs are playing games, but these are not actually official or CHL sanctioned. Please correct me if I am mistaken (I really hope I am wrong for the sake of all players and parents).
I guess you guys cannot / will not share your schedules in order to not to reveal your allegiance whether it is an official schedule or not.....

It still amazes me that so many players were absorbed by a league that is yet to exist with the promise to get a particular player closer to an ECNL / DA future opportunity. When tryputs come along, all players (and existing ECNL players) still need to try out. There are no guarantees. Many players (and parents) were sold that their player will have the opportunity to train with ECNL and even be "called up". As I have stated in other threads, this may be true for 2 or 3 players, but the great majority will probably stick around with their original team or even dual rostering with the LH D1/D2 team if the club has one. Good luck to you and your daughters.

I'm not going to outwardly advertise my DD's club/team affiliation, but it's also not a particularly big secret, and anyone who does a little forensic work on my posting history can figure it out fairly easily.

Lonestar Austin is bringing team(s) up to Dallas the weekend of 9/10-9/11, and we have been told that we will have 1 game on each day.  We were told by our coach that 1 of those games will be an official TCL game, and the other will be a friendly.  Not sure if we are playing 2 different Lonestar teams, or if we are playing the same team twice.  We are scheduled to play an official TCL game against FC Dallas on 9/17, and we are traveling to San Antonio on 9/24-9/25 to play official TCL games against Lonestar SA and SA Classic Elite.

All of us have different reasons for making the choices we make.  I'm not going to bore you and everyone else with the detailed reasons behind our decision.  I will say DA had ZERO factor in our decision.  Proximity to ECNL and potential ancillary benefits as it relates to college recruiting were viewed as potential benefit, but were viewed with an appropriately skeptical eye, and were not the primary factor in our decision.  Track record with our club, coaches, and team, and continued alignment between the goals of the coaches/team, and our DD's long-term goals, was absolutely paramount in our decision.

I have been, and still am, highly confident that we have made a good decision for the upcoming soccer year.  This is based on our experience with our club and coaches over the past 4+ years, and the consistency of information I have been getting related to the formation of the new Composite teams and TCL, from multiple sources with the NTX soccer community.  Whether or not TCL acutally happens, I have no reason to doubt that our club and coaches will manage to get our team the appropriate amount, and level, of competition and visibility in support of our DD's long-term goals.  With that said, at this point, I have no reason to doubt that TCL is coming together, albeit a bit slower than many of us would probably have liked.

Now, again, I only speak for myself.  I'm happy with the decision we made, and happy with everything we've seen so far.  Others may not be, and come next April/May, who knows, I may not be as well.  But so far, other than the details and schedule of TCL coming together a little more piecemeal and little slower than what I would like, everything has met or exceeded our expectations.  Sorry if that's not the case for others.

bwgophers - Thank you for the taking the time to share your experience. It does help (me at least) to understand a little better on how things are moving along with TCL. I wish you and your daughter the best for this year.

Gosh this got complicated. My sense and cents for what they're worth.

The ECNL clubs recognized that DA is coming and that they will lose ECNL players to it, well most of their top ECNL players will play DA if they can. They also realized that with age pure otherwise talented players were jostled out of an ECNL spot they might have earned.

Ironically they have decided to expand rather than contract the opportunities they can present to their team members by creating what looks to me like a shadow ECNL framework. Those are "composite" teams.  Meantime back at the younger age groups JDL seems to = Pre-ECNL.  

When the ECNL teams play the Composite teams play. The ECNL and Composite players practice together relatively often. Composite players play some ECNL games and play the Composite games.  ECNL players not getting a lot of minutes play Composite games to have match practice and hopefully get good enough to have more minutes.

It's not a terrible idea but does pull more kids into the ECNL Clubs since it leverages their ECNL position to have joint training and some mobility between teams. If you're outside the ECNL clique then it's got to feel like LHGCL got nudged down a peg. When DA comes the DA Clubs will probably pull a lot of their Composite players into ECNL but allow some DA players to dual-roster. They'll pull more LHGCL into composite which will really tick D1 LHGCL off, not unreasonably. LHGCL gets to administer the tier between D1 and ECNL.

Everybody is unhappy but not enough to pick up their ball and go home. Now I need to start Labor day weekend early. This is hurting my head. More practice with more kids at different levels and more competition should drive more development. Did anyone notice that High School Football coaches in North Texas earn on average 100,000 of our tax dollars? Now that's worth a thread.

Looks like the shell of the site is up now...no schedules, yet, though: http://www.texaschampionsleague.org

newbiefornow wrote:Gosh this got complicated. My sense and cents for what they're worth.

The ECNL clubs recognized that DA is coming and that they will lose ECNL players to it, well most of their top ECNL players will play DA if they can. They also realized that with age pure otherwise talented players were jostled out of an ECNL spot they might have earned.

Ironically they have decided to expand rather than contract the opportunities they can present to their team members by creating what looks to me like a shadow ECNL framework. Those are "composite" teams.  Meantime back at the younger age groups JDL seems to = Pre-ECNL.  

When the ECNL teams play the Composite teams play. The ECNL and Composite players practice together relatively often. Composite players play some ECNL games and play the Composite games.  ECNL players not getting a lot of minutes play Composite games to have match practice and hopefully get good enough to have more minutes.

It's not a terrible idea but does pull more kids into the ECNL Clubs since it leverages their ECNL position to have joint training and some mobility between teams. If you're outside the ECNL clique then it's got to feel like LHGCL got nudged down a peg. When DA comes the DA Clubs will probably pull a lot of their Composite players into ECNL but allow some DA players to dual-roster. They'll pull more LHGCL into composite which will really tick D1 LHGCL off, not unreasonably. LHGCL gets to administer the tier between D1 and ECNL.

Everybody is unhappy but not enough to pick up their ball and go home. Now I need to start Labor day weekend early. This is hurting my head. More practice with more kids at different levels and more competition should drive more development. Did anyone notice that High School Football coaches in North Texas earn on average 100,000 of our tax dollars? Now that's worth a thread.

The big clubs are not concerned about DA. All of them have already recieved invites into DA

You guys will curse the day your league administrators and clubs agreed to work with ours down here in STX. This kind of crap is standard procedure around here.

At least the south has schedules up. That's the only dates I know where DD is playing is the ones on USC's schedule.