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Why are there not any Florida teams in ECNL? Year after year the Fla. girl teams dominate youth soccer in the Southeast in all age brackets. Also no Tennessee teams who have a couple extremely high end clubs like Brentwood in their state. Isn't it open to everyone, or did those clubs just turn it down?

I'm not an expert, and I don't work for the ECNL, but I'll take a crack at Florida.

Many Florida clubs, especially in South FL (Dade, Broward, Palm Beach) turn down R3PL bids because of the distance and cost of travel. Also, as you state, there are so many good teams at each age in South Florida, they feel they don't need to travel all over the southeast in order to get good competition.

I'm not 100% sure this is the reason, but I did ask a similar question to a Ft. Lauderdale soccer parent and that was their response.

Seems like a good point to me, remember the drive from Columbia to Jacksonville is shorter the the one from Miami to Columbia! Not to mention you get to go thru GA too!!

Doesnt most of the ECNL venues require most of the clubs to travel by air anyways?

CESA has played 8/9 ECNL matches thus far this year with no air travel. There will be air travel to Texas in March and Colorado in July.

Look for Florida clubs to be joining ECNL for 2011-2012.

DAH!!! What I meant to say was Miami to Jacksonville (what I said was a no brainer, which is what I must have been typing with)

Looks like I was wrong about Florida clubs joining for 2011-2012.