It’s taken seven years, but the ECNL’s rapid rise from fledgling girls league to full-on U.S. youth national team farm system has been marked with a near constant upward trajectory. Each year, as the league added and pruned and refined and molted, it grew.

Over those seven years, the ECNL’s largely been unchallenged at the top of the mountain. Those days, it would seem, are nearly at an end.

The ECNL kicked off its first matches of the 2016-17 season last weekend, a monumental one in its relatively short history. It marks the terminus of the days when the ECNL was the only major girls youth soccer talent producer in the U.S. The recent announcement that U.S. Soccer was adding a girls Development Academy to pair with the boys league it started in 2007 rippled through the national landscape with varied reception.

On one hand, U.S. Soccer could bring its unmatched resources to bear on the girls development landscape in a way no other entity could. That would mean, theoretically, more investment and the potential of greater returns down the line.

On the other, the ECNL could quite rightly front the idea that the girls game didn’t need a dramatic alteration like the boys side did 10 years ago. The fact that the DA announcement came on the heels of the full U.S. women’s team winning the 2015 World Cup lent some credence to the notion. Further, U.S. Soccer would segment the development landscape and force teams to choose between leagues for their future. Whether or not that was a positive thing, only time could tell.

But that’s now the reality. The ECNL is embarking on its final season without a major competitor, as U.S. Soccer’s venture puts the final touches on its prep work before firing up for the first time at this juncture next year.

And as far as the ECNL is concerned, the current model isn’t one that needs breaking.

“I don’t think female soccer in this country has ever been in a better spot,” ECNL president Christian Lavers said. “If you look at the number of young players and their impact in college, the size of that impact and the quality of that impact is bigger and better than it’s ever been.”

U.S. Soccer has been steadily adding teams to its roster for next season, most of which already compete in the ECNL. It’s gone through expansion spasms of 25, 28 and most recently the 22 clubs it added in August to bring the current total up to 75. That’s roughly the same number of clubs in the ECNL, with a few outliers like a few new NWSL academy ventures that didn’t exist before.

Just about all of the ECNL’s heavy hitters announced they’d be joining U.S. Soccer’s league next year. That includes college player conveyor belts like PDA, So Cal Blues and Real So Cal. The latter two produced Ashley Sanchez and Mallory Pugh, the top recruits in the 2016 and 2017 classes and arguably the two most impressive feathers in the league’s developmental cap. If they had come through five years later, it’s entirely possible they’d have opted for U.S. Soccer’s league considering their aspirations to move through U.S. Soccer’s youth pipeline.

What that means for those clubs who’ve opted to join up with the Development Academy isn’t exactly clear yet. Lavers says the ECNL is still figuring out how it will classify those clubs who seemingly have feet in both camps, and whether they’ll need to choose one or the other or are simply allowed to have different teams compete in both leagues (assuming the club had designs on that kind of setup). By Lavers’ reckoning, not everyone is even certain what they’re signing on for yet with the U.S. Soccer-run Development Academy.

Meanwhile, in the midst of all this, the ECNL announced its foray into the boys side of things with the ENPL, a joint venture with US Club Soccer that will kick off the same time the U.S. Soccer-run girls Development Academy first opens its doors in 2017.

As for fears that the two leagues wouldn’t have any communication in the ECNL’s final solitary year, those have become reality. Lavers said there’s been no communication between the two entities as U.S. Soccer is setting up its venture. At all.

“We have not had any communication with the Federation or their staff,” Lavers said.

For now, the ECNL is trundling on with business mostly as usual. Its leagues will kick off as they normally would, will play matches as they’ve been accustomed to and move through the postseason much like they have for the past eight years. It will continue to pump out its youth national team players, will keep its league structure and look to fill the gaps as it always does.

But it’s impossible to avoid the hulking bear on the horizon threatening to change the order they’ve established. Whether that’s for the better or worse, the only thing that stretches before elite girls soccer development in the U.S. right now is the great unknown.

“Our focus is on us and on what we control and what we believe in,” Lavers said. “In that process we’re planning for 2017 and any changes that are going to occur. There will be some changes, but we’re kind of working through that internally right now on what those are going to be and how we’re going to handle it. It’s a difficult situation for a lot of people. The vast majority of people in the country are very happy with what’s happening with their players and teams and feel like it’s working. But we’re going to continue to operate our platform, because we feel like it’s done a lot of good and we’re going to continue to do that.”