Elite Clubs National League

The Elite Clubs National League (ECNL) is a national youth soccer developmental league in the United States. It was founded in 2009 as a girls' league and added a boys' league in 2017.

Competition format
The ECNL is divided by age groups from U-13 through U-19, and into nine (girls') or ten (boys') regional conferences of nine to 16 clubs. Clubs play regular season matches within their conferences, and top teams and wildcards can qualify for a post-season national round-robin champions' league competition. Winners of the group stage compete in a finals tournament for the title of national champion.

ECNL clubs also compete in tournaments that invite clubs from other leagues, such as the Surf Cup operated by Surf Cup Sports, itself a licensee of several ECNL clubs.

Operation
The ECNL is a nonprofit organization composed of member clubs, with an elected board of directors that approves budgets, competition rules, and the admission of new members.

Broadcasting
ECNL matches have been nationally broadcast by ESPNU and ESPN3. ECNL matches are also streamed on Hudl.

Player costs
Costs to ECNL players can vary widely between clubs. Coaches not near ECNL clubs criticize the costs of playing for the league as a barrier for development in the sport and a factor in reducing the racial and economic diversity among elite United States soccer players. Since its founding and continuing as of June 2015, the estimated average cost to play for an ECNL team was $3,000 to $10,000 per year.

Conflicts with high school soccer
The ECNL doesn't prohibit its club players from also playing for high school soccer teams, and its season doesn't overlap with high school seasons. However, players and clubs alike reported challenges with players attempting to play for both, including scheduling conflicts, costs, injury risks, and strains on players' performances. The highly competitive nature of club soccer in the United States, and at times specifically the ECNL, is a subject of debate among high school athletes. The ECNL also facilitates collegiate coaches and scouts having access to recruit players, including those who haven't started high school, by accommodating them at ECNL tournaments.

Sponsorship
The ECNL girls' league has been sponsored by Nike since 2010. The partnership includes Nike retail presences at girls' ECNL events and national training camps held at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.

In March 2019, the ECNL announced that PUMA would sponsor the ECNL boys' league.

Oversight
The U.S. Soccer Federation designates US Club Soccer, a non-profit national association member of the federation, as overseer of the ECNL's girls' and boys' leagues as well as other youth leagues in the United States.

Foundation
The ECNL was founded as a girls' soccer league in March 2009 during a meeting of 40 founding clubs. Its founding was inspired in part by frustrations experienced by clubs and coaches with older volunteer-driven organizations, such US Youth Soccer and the American Youth Soccer Organization, in favor of a more professionalized approach.

Christian Lavers is a league founder, and served as both president and CEO of the ECNL, executive vice president of US Club Soccer, vice president of US Club Soccer management services client C2SA, and owner and club director for Wisconsin ECNL club FC Wisconsin. Lavers also served as director of sport and chief soccer officer of top-flight women's professional club Kansas City Current in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL).

Expansion
The ECNL expanded to 52 clubs in 2010 and 66 in 2011. The organization created a boys' league in 2017, adding 57 founding clubs.

By 2019, the ECNL girls' league had 94 clubs and boys' league had 90 clubs. After the shutdown of the U.S. Soccer Development Academy in 2020, the girls' league expanded to 113 clubs and boys' league to 131 clubs.

Public filings indicated that the league's revenue grew from $500,000 in 2010 to $3.4 million in 2019.

Competition with Development Academy
In 2017, the United States Soccer Federation announced the launch of a 74-club girls' academy within the U.S. Soccer Development Academy (DA) organization, in addition to its boys' academy. This program competed directly with the ECNL, which launched its own boys' academy in the same year and brought the ECNL and DA into direct nationwide competition for youth soccer clubs.

The Development Academy prevented players from playing high school soccer, while the ECNL allowed it.

In 2019, top boys' and girls' clubs from the DA, all-star teams drawn from the ECNL and other domestic youth clubs, and youth clubs from FC Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, and Manchester City F.C. competed in the second International Champions Cup Futures Tournament, staged by Relevent Sports Group alongside their senior professional 2019 Women's International Champions Cup. The tournament took place from December 11 to December 15, 2019, at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

COVID-19 pandemic
U.S. Soccer closed the DA on April 15, 2020, citing financial difficulties related to the pandemic, and some of the former DA clubs joined the ECNL.

The ECNL scheduled the start of its first season during the COVID-19 pandemic for August 1, 2020, for clubs in jurisdictions that allowed youth sports.

In September 2020, ECNL medical director Drew Watson organized a nationwide study of member clubs to track the spread of COVID-19 among players returning to practice and better understand the potential risks of transmission. The study encompassed 90,000 players and reported a positive case rate of 310 per 100,000 children.

In a separate study, Watson suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic had also increased rates of anxiety and depression reported by athletes.

2021 abuse scandal
In a Washington Post report published February 2022, several former players of ECNL founding club Chicago Eclipse Select accused its coach Rory Dames, who also served on the league's board of directors, of sexual harassment and verbal abuse of youth players, and other abuses of power. The report also alleged that Dames hired a coach for Eclipse who had previously been sanctioned by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for sexual harassment of youth players. Dames denied the allegations through his attorney. The report followed a separate media report alleging similar behavior by Dames in his role as head coach of senior NWSL pro club Chicago Red Stars, which became part of the 2021 NWSL abuse scandal and led to two separate investigations into alleged abuses within the league, including Dames. US Club Soccer disqualified Dames from coaching in November 2021 following the NWSL reports. Dames also resigned as president of Eclipse Select.

The Report of the Independent Investigation to the U.S. Soccer Federation Concerning Allegations of Abusive Behavior and Sexual Misconduct in Women's Professional Soccer, an independent report by Sally Yates commissioned by U.S. Soccer in 2021, noted that other ECNL club administrators were associated with other abuse allegations, either directly or indirectly. The report included complaints of a "fear-based" environment made by players against Aaran Lines for his tenure as head coach of the Western New York Flash, and the report also noted that Lines had remained a member of the Flash organization as director of its ECNL team. The Yates Report referenced an unnamed coach who had been sanctioned by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for making "sexually explicit remarks to high school players" but was allowed to be hired as director of coaching for an unnamed ECNL team. The report also covered the founding and coaching directing of ECNL club Albertson Soccer Club by Paul Riley until April 2020, who was also accused of sexual and verbal abuse of professional senior players during his tenures coaching in multiple leagues. The NWSL club North Carolina Courage subsequently fired Riley, and U.S. Soccer subsequently suspended Riley's coaching license.

In January 2023, the NWSL permanently banned Riley and Dames from coaching in the league as a result of its joint investigation with the NWSL Players Association.

Allegations of systemic gender bias
In a report published by the Washington Post in November 2022, 24 current and former ECNL coaches raised concerns about a systemic lack of advancement opportunities for women working in ECNL, as well as discrimination and harassment. The report noted that 90 percent of directors of coaching at 129 ECNL clubs were male, and included claims by former Scotland and United Kingdom international Ifeoma Dieke, who had worked for an ECNL club and alleged that the league's exclusion of women from leadership roles was "a systemic problem". The ECNL and several of the clubs named in the report responded by denying the allegations or dismissing the complaints, and the league's chief operating officer Jennifer Winnagle stated that more than half of the league's front office staff was female. US Club Soccer responded to requests to comment with a statement indicating pride in the work of US Club Soccer and its member organizations for female youth soccer.

Girls
From 2017 to 2022, 70 percent of players selected in the NWSL Draft to play in the United States's top professional women's league were ECNL club alumni. , more than 60 percent of rostered players in the combined Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten Conference, Big 12 Conference, Southeastern Conference, and Pac-12 Conference of NCAA Division I women's soccer were ECNL alumni.