Just curious.....how many mediocre Academy training sessions have you been to?
While I appreciate your honesty, we just have to flat out disagree. My experience over the last couple of years tells me that Academy training and Academy league play is night and day different from club training and Region 3 play. There are exceptions.....out of the what, 10 R3PL East teams in the 93 boys.....I felt both CESA Premier and Florida Rush would be solid competitively in Academy. Not great, not awful. Solid teams. I didn't see one other team in that age group that I felt could consistently compete at the Academy level on a day in day out basis. Again, I'm not talking about getting stoked up to scrimmage an Academy team that may or may not be as motivated to play you. I'm talking playing 30+ games. Two teams out of 10.
We're not even talking HS at this point. We're comparing Academy to R3PLE play. No doubt....that there are a handful of HS programs in this state who boast similar levels of play. I loved watching the Northwestern boys teams from a few years ago with Enzo and Alex and Ricky and Dennis and Shawn and crowd. Great team!!! But the only other team in the region who could stay within 5 goals was Fort Mill.
Academy is inherently better than HS for developing players. If you really don't believe that....
