Valley Surf Soccer Club is proud to announce its inclusion in the ECNL Regional League – Golden State Conference, a move that solidifies the club’s position within a structured, vertical pathway fully aligned with the ECNL platform. With this expansion, River Islands ECNL first teams, ECNL RL second teams, and youngest pre-ECNL age groups will now compete within a consistent and unified player development model, ensuring that athletes receive a seamless progression of competition and opportunity at every level.
What is the difference between the ECNL RL – Golden State Conference and the ECNL RL – Norcal Conference?
The ECNL RL – Golden State Conference is uniquely structured within the ECNL Regional League platform, serving a distinct purpose that varies from the ECL RL – Norcal Conference. While both leagues provide competitive opportunities, the Golden
State Conference is designed exclusively for ECNL member clubs, ensuring a seamlessly aligned pathway within the ECNL development model.
As a second-team league for full ECNL clubs, the Golden State Conference operates within the same competition calendar and developmental structure as a club’s ECL first teams, allowing for fluid player movement and real-time performance based advancement. This continuity fosters a highly competitive and development-driven environment, where players are consistently tested at an elevated standard of play.
However, what sets the Golden State Conference apart is its exclusive competition against ECNL member clubs – programs
with a long-standing presence at the highest levels of youth soccer.
To reiterate, the Golden State Conference is composed entirely of clubs that are already embedded within the ECNL pathway as full ECNL member clubs, ensuring a consistent, nationally recognized level of competition. This structure solidifies Golden State as the premier competitive environment for ECNL-affiliated programs at the Regional League level.
The Norcal Conference consists of clubs that have qualified through Norcal Premier but are not full ECNL member clubs. It operates under Norcal Premier’s governance, whereas the Golden State Conference falls under ECNL governance.
Valley Surf is excited to embark on this next chapter, leveraging the ECNL RL – Golden State and NorCal Premier led ECNL RL, as both are essential tools in strengthening our ECNL player pathway and reinforcing our status as one of the premier clubs in Northern California.
This means Valley Surf’s ECNL RL pathway now reflects the same model as the nation’s top-performing ECNL club conference alignments, ensuring that players develop in a controlled, competitive environment with clear opportunities for advancement.
Key Features of the ECRL:
The ECNL is a national youth soccer league founded in 2009 for the purpose of providing the highest level of competition and the best developmental environment for American youth soccer players, as well as an identification program for identifying players for US Soccer Youth National Teams. The 2009-2010 season was the ECNL’s inaugural season.
The ECNL was founded by clubs throughout the country based on the belief that elite player development in the United States needed a structure that would reduce the total number of games on the schedule and increase the number of meaningful, quality games. The ECNL sets forth a vision that provides a clear path to that goal: a national competition schedule and a national identification program linked to that competition, and an organization in which best practices in player development can be shared throughout the country.
The ECNL was formed with one driving purpose: to improve the developmental environment for elite soccer players.
In order to accomplish this, the ECNL has several specific objectives:
Within the last two years, more than 55 ECNL players have signed USL Academy contracts to train and compete professionally within their club or with a club affiliate while still also playing youth soccer. ECNL clubs like North Carolina FC, Pittsburgh Riverhounds, Louisville City, and more are using those contracts to provide youth players training and games with professional players while still maintaining their NCAA eligibility.
Beyond those 55 athletes who have signed USL Academy contracts, 40 more ECNL players have signed full professional contracts in the past two years. Graduates from ECNL clubs have gone on to MLS, USL, Liga MX, Serie A, Bundesliga and more. Players such as Jackson Hopkins (VDA to DC United), Jimmy Slayton (FSA to Hartford Athletic), Marck Cruz (San Diego Surf to Chivas de Guadalajara), Giovanni D’Agostino (Arlington Soccer to FC Bologna) and Evan Rotundo (San Diego Surf to FC Schalke 04) have paved the way for others to make the same jump as they have, and serve as role models for the next generation of ECNL athletes. As the league continues to grow, the representation of players from these clubs in the best soccer leagues in the world will only expand.
