It’s good to be back home after spending eight days in suburban Chicago at the ECNL National Championships. I wrote a lot of articles about a lot of matches, but there are a number of things I noticed that I’m hoping are worth sharing.

1. Heat is more uncomfortable if everyone around you is talking about it.Throughout the week the temperatures and humidity is high, but the ability of the North American suburban populace to deal with this seems to be an all-time low. It’s summer people. This is what happens. I’m not talking telekinesis here, but there is principle of mind over matter that can certainly help deal with the conditions. If the players can run up and down in a field for 80-90 minutes in these conditions, I can handle sitting in a chair and watching.

2. The ECNL National Championships have arrived in terms of the event itself. The past two years, first in Seattle and then in Denver, the soccer at this event was very, very good, but spectacle of it was well behind their competition. Now Jay Howell, Sarah Kate Noftsinger and company have added some razzmatazz to the proceedings. There was a real buzz about the place for both the younger and older age groups.

3. ECNL continues to progress and improve, but must continue striving. There are some common denominators among the more successful clubs and these tend to be about training standards. Teams are doing well because the players on them are being developed into better players. Clubs have standards for coaching and this is reflected from the younger age groups (including pre ECNL) on up.

However, I see a lot of the same clubs putting their teams into the national finals, and a lot of other clubs stuck at lower competitive levels. The skill and tempo of a non-championship flight game was often noticeable immediately in contrast to the rest of the games going on. While the occasion may account for some of that, I think there is still a great need for comprehensive reform of player development in girls’ soccer, and the leadership of ECNL needs to lead the way with this.

4. Could parent behavior be improving? The short answer is “probably not” but at least in the case of the fields and matches I was at over a week’s time, there were far fewer incidences of the typical referee-baiting going on. I hope this is because clubs are cracking down on parents from exhibiting this type of behavior, but it’s hard to say.

There is still room for improvement mind you. One family member was ejected for shouting out to an assistant referee that he was pathetic (the official, not the fan). The whole foul, non-foul debate still seems to have a way of driving certain parents into a frenzy, especially late in close games.

5. Can coaches and referees get along? While it seemed a somewhat better area for the fan-referee relationship, the coach-official dialogue seems to have gotten worse. Coaches here seemed to feel quite free to really let referees have it, often in a personal way.

The league is run by coaches, which is definitely a strength, but it may be that some extra attention should be paid to self-policing in this area among the coaches. The frequent disputes certainly don’t do anything for the quality of the games or the overall soccer experience.

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of Rob's observations.

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