TVOR<< My 2 cents on this topic would be this.... which other sports consider their "non-high school" counterpart as superior to the high school game.>>

I believe that if you look into other sports you’ll find a lot of clubs that are superior to their high school counterpart. I personally know a Track & Field club coach that mirrors the environment that we have in soccer. He pulls together the best players in a region and takes them to exclusive track meets primarily for competition with “the best of the best”. He tells me that college recruitment is primarily done at these meets where only clubs are represented, rather then the college coachs going to HS meets.

This is the last year that club teams will be able to scrimmage college teams in all sports. While this is an unfortunate decision by the NCAA it was brought about because of recruitment violations brought on by AAU Basketball. Some AAU teams were putting together fantastic teams and charging admission for the scrimmages with college teams. They then distributed the proceeds to the players… an obvious violation of NCAA intent of keeping players non-professional (I hope this doesn’t start a distraction of the debate of “should college players be paid”).

Face it, if you’re a college coach do you want to drive 2 hours to watch 1 potential recruit playing with 21 mediocre players or would you go to a club tournament where you could watch that same player playing against real competition… and maybe getting the names of some potential recruits that you hadn’t heard about? This isn’t just true for soccer, it’s happening in all the sports you mentioned with the possible exception of Football. And clubs can provide a “funnel” of players for a college where a HS might have a collegiate quality player only sporadically. This provides the club and college a relationship that is mutually beneficial.

Like it or not you’re going to continue to see more emphasis on club sports then HS.