DrewDawg said:
Baltimore Celtic took some of the kids from the Baltimore Bays. My son's friend plays keeper for their U17 team which is in Tulsa right now playing for the national title. That club, although new, has 4 teams in the nationals.
I've heard various stories about Va Rush. An article last year, about the Rush kids returning to their HS teams said this:
Yeah, Baltimore Celtic is where Steve Nichols (the main Bays guy) went. The new consortium in the DA called "Baltimore Armour", but apparently isn't as strong as Celtic. But Baltimore Celtic doesn't want to play in the DA and Baltimore Armour has John Ellinger (who is like a stereotype of a USSF insider) involved. So Armour is getting a crack at being Baltimore's DA representative. We'll see how they do next season.
The word I heard from coaches and parents is that the USSF was pushing for no tuition and Beach FC, where my kid plays, wouldn't agree to that. They are making bank doing what they always did and had no incentive to change.
Who knows--I do know the Richmond Kickers poached one of the really good players from down here and he plays for them on the weekends at no charge but it's not for Richmond United. He plays for a Kickers team, but I would assume they are doing that as a farm team for the USSF program, so playing and practicing with them might get him visibility.
[SIZE=11.9999990463257px]VB City FC plays in the NPSL and they are starting an Academy program. Boys started last year, girls this year, but it's rudimentary now and only operates in the summer. They explained that they the hope is eventually it would be a functioning year-round program with no tuition, but admitted that at this point, the club can't afford that, so it's like the other clubs--if you can pay, you can play[/SIZE]
Huh. Well, I certainly don't have any sources on the ground.
EDIT: All that said, this is America, and we love our rankings and polls.
This site: https://home.gotsoccer.com/rankings.aspx has rankings all the way down to U11 teams.
Uh oh, my son's team just fell to 16th in the state: http://home.gotsoccer.com/rankings/results.aspx?Level=State&Gender=Boys&Age=17&Region=1&State=VA
It's crazy.
[SIZE=11.9999990463257px]Thanks for posting that, I've never heard of that website. The opening page, which classifies meaningless youth tournaments into seven tiers, each with ranking points involved, is......an example of misguided focus, to say the least.[/SIZE]