NPL - What's the Story?

Can anyone shed some light on what role NPL will have on North Texas Soccer?  I'm seeing several teams posting tryouts for their NPL team only and these are teams that are in LH.  Are coaches now breaking out into two separate teams?  One person told me that NPL will be the new Lake Highlands.  It's all pretty confusing and with the new year coming up I want to make sure that what I'm hearing from coaches is true.

NPL was originally started for the smaller clubs that didn’t have ECNL to get some “elite” play. Understand I’m under no illusions after playing in it last year that’s it’s a watered down ECNL. The bigger clubs now have jumped all over it and see the benefit in the league. My team plays in both and last fall scheduling worked perfectly as LH games were canceled we still got to play in NPL as we played at Gateway Park Turf fields. Eventually, I’m sure, the NPL team will be its own entity but for right now we do both and that suits us

The NPL is National Premier League, a collection of Regional leagues run by US Club.

The local regional league is the Red River, comprised of teams mainly from NTX, OK and AR.

Independent clubs like Fever, LP and WSA will place their top teams in NPL. Clubs affiliated with DA/ECNL will place teams further down the pecking order in NPL after they've filled their DA/ECNL, FDL/ECRL slots.

A team can play both LHGCL and NPL.

I'm not "in the know" anymore but when our team played NPL many of the teams, especially from Liverpool (RIP) were a collection of players from numerous teams in the area and outside. They were not necessarily a collection of all-stars either. I know the former Texas Spirit and other teams (Kernow Storm, City FC) also pooled players in order to meet NPL club requirements (boys teams, girls teams, etc).

All that said, during my limited experience I did not find the competition at a level that made a "travel-league" worth the price. I would have rather saved the bucks and stayed Lake Highlands. Of course some of those teams playing NPL are not LH but are US Club teams that did not qualify or fell out of LH.

I was not a big fan of travel leagues. I'm not saying they are bad or wrong for every kid or family. Just not worth the "investment" for ours.

Each to their own, I suppose.

What's the difference between club based and team based?  Do they play in the same leagues or different leagues, and is one supposedly higher than the other?  Some clubs look like they have both.

The club based Division is for “supposedly” for the clubs who field teams in “nearly” every age group and gender. The team based is as it says individual teams who do their own scheduling hence if you look team based tends to play less than club based.
I’m hearing that club based will provide 3 and team based 1 for the final 4 but again only hearing that and it might not be the official word until written in stone

There hasnt been much buzzz in the marketing war room this year so NPL is like the the new girlfriend of the month.

Triumph FC wrote:The team based is as it says individual teams who do their own scheduling.

What could go wrong?

Here is a link to the 2018-2019 Model for Red River NPL.

https://cdn3.sportngin.com/attachments/document/d773-1819812/Red_River_NPL_-_League_model__2018-19_.pdf?_ga=2.149986165.2119906601.1557764867-439560117.1557764867

The story is more money and this is the league for it. It was ridiculed for years now it's the gravy train. Choo Choo.

NPL should be called the "No Play League". Think Lake Highlands is unorganized NPL makes them look like they have there $h!t together. If games get cancelled due to weather or conflict it is very difficult to get them rescheduled and they tend to wait until the last minute. This is the 2nd season in a row we haven't completed our full NPL schedule because they couldn't get games rescheduled.

rustynail11 wrote:NPL should be called the "No Play League".  Think Lake Highlands is unorganized NPL makes them look like they have there $h!t together.  If games get cancelled due to weather or conflict it is very difficult to get them rescheduled and they tend to wait until the last minute.  This is the 2nd season in a row we haven't completed our full NPL schedule because they couldn't get games rescheduled.

NPL had our age group reach out to the teams we needed to play to setup the reschedules, Worked like a champ working directly with the other teams we had our games wrapped up by mid March.

We called it the Never Play League. We even played a game with zero refs. I knew not to add it to my calendar until the 3rd reschedule, at that point I thought it might happen. We didn't get all of our games in either. LH was way more organized compared to NPL. I heard it is supposed to get better next year.