Riley · U15 girls · Montclair, NJ
The
Roadmap
U15 girls · ZIP 07042 · 2026-27 season ahead
Where Riley plays today, where the ladder goes from here, and the exact clubs, dates and decisions in front of your family this year.
21 chapters, in 6 parts
Read the first page, then jump. The parts run the way the season does: where he stands, what is near you, what it costs, the plan, the long roads, and the reference at the back.
Every page carries the six level colors down its right edge. The rungs a page is about are printed solid and the rest are ghosted, so you can find the part of the ladder you care about by fanning the pages.
Where things stand
Where the kid plays today, and where that sits on the six-level ladder.
- 01The one-page version
- 02Riley today
- 03The ladder, and where Riley is on it
The one-page version
Level 1, the national top, and by your read one of the stronger players on the team. Level 1 is the top of the club ladder, so the work now is game minutes and role, not the next rung.
Fall rosters are set and the season is starting. The next open tryout window is next spring and summer. Line up STA and Players Development Academy on the options pages for next spring and summer. A short email now asking when U16 tryouts post keeps the window from slipping past you.
Skipping rungs. The families who regret a move usually jumped two levels for the badge instead of one level for the minutes. One rung, real minutes, re-assess in a year.
There is no rung above this one, so a move is about minutes and fit, not level. 2 clubs play the same level within 19.5 miles, the nearest 13.5. Worth a look only if minutes are the problem.
NOT YETAt 15, a harder team environment beats more solo reps. Spend the money on the better club season.
SKIPEmail STA and ask when U16 tryouts post, so you catch next spring and summer. One guest training night then tells you more than any website.
Riley today
Riley plays for PDA in Elite Clubs National League. We could not match that club to our catalog, so the club-specific pages in this report are thinner than usual. The league placed her at level 1, which is what the ladder and options pages are built from. The find-out page has the one line that fixes this for next time.
For the 2026-27 season most clubs move age groups to a school-year window, August 1 to July 31, in place of calendar birth year; a club can also stay on birth year, so confirm which window yours uses. Under the August 1 window, born January 2011, Riley is in the group of kids born Aug 1, 2010 to Jul 31, 2011, labeled U16. The birth-date window is the fixed part; the label is what varies from club to club, so match a team on the dates it covers, not the U-number on the flyer.
An early-2011 birthday made Riley one of the oldest under birth-year groups. The Aug 1 window adds kids up to 5 months older, so the built-in edge shrinks. If she looks suddenly average, the curve changed, not the kid.
The ladder, and where Riley is on it
ECNL, MLS NEXT, NPL, EDP, town travel: every league in the country sorts onto these six rungs, and here is where Riley's sits.
This placement is structural. It comes from plays in Elite Clubs National League (level 1), plus your read of where Riley sits on the team and what clubs near you accept from that profile each cycle. It isn't a judgment of her touch or speed, which only a tryout can give you. There is no rung above this one. The work now is minutes and role inside the level, not a move up it.
Your options
The clubs near you, sorted into the real choices, and their tryout dates.
- 01The clubs worth a look, level 1 and up
- 02The realistic moves, compared
- 03Cedar Stars Academy - Bergen, every team
- 04STA, every team
- 05Players Development Academy, every team
- 06Getting U16 tryout dates
The clubs worth a look, level 1 and up
Riley is set for The national top (level 1) this fall, so this map drops the rungs below it and shows every club that fields a team at that level or higher within your drive, grouped by level and nearest first. The top of the ladder is here even when it means a longer trip, because that is where the ceiling is.
Levels come from league memberships, the way the sport itself defines them. Distance is a straight line from ZIP 07042 to the club's town, so clubs in one town share a figure and real driving time is longer, much longer across water. † Montclair United Soccer Club lists EDP Soccer (level 4) on its own site; Bloomfield Soccer Club lists EDP Soccer (level 4) on its own site. Levels here come from independently confirmed league play, so these show at their confirmed level. Ask the club directly to confirm the higher one.
FloorThe realistic moves, compared
Four ways this could go: stay, step up close to home, make the real jump, or reach. Each club below says which one it is and why it is on this page.
- about 22 min by our straight-line estimate (9.8 mi), inside your stated limit
- a level-1 team to try out for (GA) this cycle
- its level-1 league carries real college recruiting traffic
- a level-1 season typically runs well past the budget you set; ask about need-based aid, which most clubs have and few advertise
The nearest club at Riley's current level. Not her club today, so this is the like-for-like option: staying at this level, in reach, if the question is fit rather than a rung.
- about 30 min by our straight-line estimate (13.5 mi), inside your stated limit
- a level-1 team to try out for (GA) this cycle
- its level-1 league carries real college recruiting traffic
- a level-1 season typically runs well past the budget you set; ask about need-based aid, which most clubs have and few advertise
A team at level 1 (GA), 13.5 miles and about 30 minutes away. It plays the level Riley plays now, in a different club. A reason to move is fit or minutes, not a higher rung.
- about 43 min by our straight-line estimate (19.5 mi), inside your stated limit
- a level-1 team to try out for (ECNL) this cycle
- its level-1 league carries real college recruiting traffic
- a level-1 season typically runs well past the budget you set; ask about need-based aid, which most clubs have and few advertise
A team at level 1 (ECNL), 19.5 miles and about 43 minutes away. It plays the level Riley plays now, in a different club. A reason to move is fit or minutes, not a higher rung.
The realistic moves, compared
Ask each club the question on its card, then the minutes question: which team would Riley actually make, and how much would she play. Ask to guest-train with that exact team, and watch one of its practices, not the top team's. Look that team up on its league's standings page to see the level for yourself. Get the all-in yearly cost in writing before any offer. The parent playbook page holds the ten questions that sort clubs fast.
Cedar Stars Academy - Bergen
On your shortlist. At U16, Cedar Stars Academy - Bergen runs 1 girls team: pre-professional. The girls ladder tops out at pre-professional (Girls Academy), from U16. Records shown are the 2025-26 season's.
teams total
national-level teams
The ruled column is U16, the age group this report is about.
STA
On your shortlist. STA fields 14 teams, national elite down to state & premier. Records shown are the 2025-26 season's.
teams total
national-level teams
regional / premier teams
The ruled column is U16, the age group this report is about.
Players Development Academy
On your shortlist. We don't see a girls U16 team for Players Development Academy in the league tables we index. At this age their teams may play in a league we don't track yet, so ask the club directly. Higher up we do see 1 girls team. The girls ladder tops out at state & premier (EDP League), at U17. Records shown are the 2025-26 season's.
teams total
national-level teams
regional / premier teams
The ruled column is U16, the age group this report is about.
Getting U16 tryout dates
Fall rosters are set and the season is starting. The next open tryout window is next spring and summer. No club near you has posted U16 girls dates we can confirm yet. Most post between January and March. The find-out page has the one-line email that gets them today, and this page shows what the session itself will look like.
Expect 60 to 90 minutes: warm-up, small-sided games, maybe a scrimmage. Coaches sort kids into groups quickly and watch decisions more than tricks. A quiet kid who passes well and moves into space reads better than a loud one who dribbles into traffic.
Decisions come fast, usually by email within a week, sometimes a verbal offer on the spot. Offers often come with a 48-to-72-hour deadline. That's a pressure tactic, not a rule. It is okay to ask for a few more days, and okay to say no.
Plan the calendar so the current club's evaluation comes last. By then you will know what else is on the table.
- Ball, water, both light and dark shirts
- Arrive 20 minutes early, registered online the night before
- Tell her one thing only: play simple, talk on the field
- Parents stay off the touchline and let the coaches run it
- Afterward, ask her if she had fun before you ask anything else
What it costs
The money and the hours, priced rung by rung. General guidance from national patterns, labeled as such on every page that uses it.
- 01The money and the time
The money and the time, plainly
Registration is the visible number. The right column is what families report it grows into.
Level 1 deserves its own sentence. On the girls side the top rung is ECNL and Girls Academy, and those clubs are pay-to-play: there is no funded academy tier for girls the way MLS academies fund boys. So budget for the top of the ladder to cost more than the rung below it, not less. Ask every club about need-based aid, which most of them have and few of them advertise.
The plan
The next twelve months in order, the years after that in outline, and the one rule change every club family is living through right now.
- 01The next 12 months
- 02The long view: 15 to 18
- 03The age-group change, decoded
The next 12 months, by season
"Hi coach, my daughter Riley is a 2011 central midfield. We're looking at U16 options for fall and would love for her to join a training session before tryouts if you allow guests. Thank you."
Three sentences. Send it to the age-group coach, not the info@ address, if the website lists one.
She stops wanting to go. The plan serves the kid, never the reverse
She is dominating at the new level by spring. Ask about the club's higher team before the next window
She is buried on the bench past week 6 and the coach has no path. The closer, lower-pressure clubs on the options page are the right-sized correction
The long view: 15 to 18
Three of the next six years contain a real decision. Here's which ones, and what the others are for.
Film and coach emails start to matter now, and they are still free to make. Anyone charging four figures for exposure at 15 is selling to you, not to her.
The age-group change, decoded
After a decade of calendar-year age groups, US youth soccer is switching how teams are formed. If your kid has been in the game a while, the labels you knew are about to stop matching the kids on the field. Here is the whole change, from the official decisions.
From the 2026-27 season, U.S. Soccer's Path Forward lets each league and club pick one of three windows: calendar birth year, an August 1 to July 31 school year, or a September 1 to August 31 school year. US Youth Soccer, US Club Soccer and AYSO chose August 1, which is why most clubs land there. 2025-26 is unchanged. Which window your club picks decides which kids play together, so ask before you register.
ECNL (boys and girls), Girls Academy, USYS National League and NPL adopt the school-year window. MLS NEXT's top division keeps the calendar birth year to stay aligned with the international game; its Academy Division switches.
Some clubs name the new group after its oldest members, others after the school-grade cohort. Both names describe the same birth-date window, which is why one club says a kid "repeats" a U-number and another says they moved up. Always check the birth-date window, not the label.
The national decision sets the registration window; team formation stays with clubs and leagues. Many clubs let existing rosters stay together where the league allows it. Whether yours will is a club question, not a rule.
Born January-July, so every cutoff in use lands on the same answer: U16 for 2026-27. Whichever cycle the club picked, the group is kids born Aug 1, 2010 to Jul 31, 2011. In practice: check which window her fall team is built on before reading anything into the U-number.
Teammates match school grade: same classmates, same graduation year, fewer "trapped players" cut off from their grade group
Aug-Dec kids, who were always the YOUNGEST under birth-year groups, become the older half of the new window
8th and 12th graders stop aging out of their friends' teams mid-school-career
Recruiting timelines line up with grade, which is how college coaches already think
One-time shuffle: rosters built on birth year get split or re-formed, and a kid can lose teammates through no decision of your own
Jan-Jul kids, who were the oldest of their birth-year groups, now share the field with kids up to 5 months older
During the transition the same group is called different U-numbers by different clubs, so labels mislead for a year or two
A kid chasing the MLS NEXT track lives in BOTH systems at once: birth year there, school year everywhere else
Which window is the fall team built on: Aug 1 school year or calendar birth year?
Is the current roster staying together, and if not, how are you re-forming teams?
What do you call Riley's new group, and what birth dates does it actually span?
If we ever look at MLS NEXT, how do you handle the kid playing across two systems?
The long roads
High school, college and pro, each with its real numbers attached. A twelve-year-old decides none of this yet. Read it now anyway, because the sales pitches arrive years before the decisions do.
- 01High school soccer
- 02The college road
- 03The pro road, told straight
- 04The college picture
High school soccer, and the rule to know early
In this report because Riley is in 10th grade. This decision lands around this year.
At some point Riley picks a high school path, and one league rule shapes it, laid out in the table below. Playing for your school is a real and underrated experience, the kind teammates still talk about at reunions.
The trade is not athletic prestige vs sentiment. Plenty of college players, including D1 players, played high school ball alongside level-2 and level-3 club soccer. The trade is schedule: club seasons at level 2-3 run through fall, and high school soccer is a fall sport in much of the country (though a winter or spring sport in Texas, California and much of the South, and split by gender in a few states, so check your own state association), so the two negotiate. Clubs at those levels are used to it.
ECNL players play high school soccer. The top of the girls ladder does not ask you to choose
Club seasons run through fall, and the school season is fall in most states. Clubs at these levels are used to sharing
No conflict. Many kids play both
Nothing, except know it is coming. Your club's level does not force the choice, so the question is only whether the two schedules fit in one fall.
The college road, with numbers attached
In this report because your family said college soccer is the goal.
of US high-school soccer players reach a college roster, all divisions combined (NCAA, NAIA and junior college)
About one in nine can sound slim until you see how many doors that is. Roughly 1,428 women's college programs field rosters every fall, most of them nowhere near a TV camera, many of them excellent educations.
College coaches do not scout level-5 town leagues. Of the leagues available at clubs near you, ECNL, ECNL RL and GA carry real recruiting visibility. That is the concrete link between the options pages and this one: a higher-level team is where coaches are already looking. At this point in the timeline, though, being seen matters more than moving: film and direct contact with coaches do more this season than a club change.
One reframe for the spreadsheet: a partial D1 scholarship averages a few thousand dollars a year. Strong grades plus D3 merit aid routinely beats it. The reason to chase the higher level is the soccer and the doors, not the tuition math.
The recruiting clock
No college contact happens yet, and nothing is behind. The league a kid plays in now is what gets them seen later, so this is a ladder decision, not a recruiting one. Core-course grades start to count soon.
Coaches can watch but cannot contact a player yet. The work: play at a visible level, keep a short highlight clip current, register with the NCAA Eligibility Center, and go to ID camps at schools that fit.
Division I and II coaches can start calling, texting, emailing, and making verbal offers. A verbal commitment is not binding, which cuts both ways.
Official and unofficial campus visits open on August 1. Junior year is the busy stretch: take visits, keep playing where coaches actually watch, and narrow the list. Most commitments land between now and senior spring.
Offers get finalized and signed. If junior year stayed quiet, D3 and NAIA recruit later and more flexibly, so senior year still holds real options.
The pro road, told straight
In this report for context. The nearest is 10 miles from your door, so the question will come up at your sidelines.
of youth club players ever sign a professional contract
The American women's pro path runs almost entirely through college, in the three steps below. Cedar Stars Academy - Bergen (10 mi) and STA (14 mi) sit at the top of the girls ladder near you. They are not funded academies, and there is no girls equivalent of one: college coaches, not club scouts, are the audience at that level.
What it means for a 15-year-old: nothing to do. There is no form to fill in and no fee that buys the outcome, whatever a camp tells you. College coaches find players who are visible at the top of the girls ladder. The plan in this booklet, play at the highest level where she gets real minutes, is the same plan whether the ceiling turns out to be a varsity captain's armband or something further.
One warning, since the question comes up at sidelines: any program charging thousands and marketing itself with the words "pro pathway" is describing your money's pathway. Nobody sells a way in.
How many college programs exist
women’s college soccer programs in total, across all five divisions
players is the Division I roster cap at schools that opted in to the House settlement
The dates and the money
Before that date a D1 soccer coach may not call, text, DM, or email your player, and may not make an offer. A "recruiting interest" email that arrives in 8th or 9th grade is camp marketing, not recruiting. Division II is different: it removed its communication limits in 2024, so a D2 coach may call or write at any age, though in-person contact and official visits wait until June 15 before junior year. Division III uses no recruiting calendar at all.
From August 1 before junior year, a D1 program can host your player on an official visit (the school pays) and talk recruiting during unofficial visits. Campus tours before then are fine, but the coaching staff cannot be part of them in a recruiting sense.
D1 eligibility takes 16 NCAA-approved core courses with a 2.3 core GPA. Ten of the 16 (seven in English, math, or science) must be finished before the start of senior year, and those ten grades are locked, no retakes after that. Division II requires the same 16 cores at a 2.2 GPA, without the ten-course lock.
Adopted June 23, 2026: D1 players who enroll no later than the academic year after their 19th birthday get five years of eligibility, replacing redshirt-year mechanics and season-counting. Enroll later than that window and eligibility starts burning. It applies to players first enrolling in fall 2027 or later; fall 2026 enrollees get whichever of the old or new rules treats them better.
D1 schools that opted in to the House settlement carry at most 28 players on a soccer roster, men's and women's alike, starting 2025-26. The old scholarship caps (9.9 for men, 14 for women) are gone at those schools: they may now fund anyone on the roster, though almost none fund all 28. Current players whose spots the cap would have cut are grandfathered as "designated student-athletes" and do not count against the 28. You may see 32 quoted on recruiting-service sites; the settlement table says 28.
Soccer is an equivalency sport: a coach splits a scholarship budget across the roster, so most offers cover a slice of costs, not a full ride. Division II caps the budget at 9 equivalents for men and 9.9 for women; NAIA at 12 and 12. A "full scholarship" conversation in soccer should make you ask exactly what percentage is on the table, in writing.
D3 programs award no athletic money at all; families combine academic merit and need-based aid instead, which at many private D3 schools ends up larger than a partial D1 offer. D3 also fields more soccer programs than any other division, so it is where most college soccer actually happens.
- 1NCAA Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete (recruiting rules by sport and division), ncaa.org/student-athletes/future/guide-college-bound-student-athlete
- 2NCAA Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete (visit rules), ncaa.org/student-athletes/future/guide-college-bound-student-athlete
- 3NCAA Eligibility Center, Division I and II academic requirements, eligibilitycenter.org
- 4NCAA, "Division I adopts age-based eligibility model," June 23, 2026, ncaa.org/news/2026/6/23/media-center-division-i-adopts-age-based-eligibility-model.aspx
- 5House v. NCAA settlement roster-limit table (Soccer: 28 M / 28 W); NCAA D1 "Q&A: Implementation of the House Settlement," June 13, 2025, ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/governance/d1/legislation/2024-25/June2025D1Gov_PhaseThreeInstSetQuestionandAnswer.pdf
- 6NCAA DII bylaws (financial aid limits); NAIA scholarship limits by sport, naia.org; pre-House D1 caps per the House settlement table
- 7NCAA Division III financial aid rules, ncaa.org/sports/division-iii; program counts from the NCAA sports-sponsorship file
The field guide
The reference half: what the extras cost, the ten questions that sort clubs fast, what this report could not know, and where every fact in it came from.
- 01Beyond the club
- 02The parent playbook
- 03What this report could not know
- 04Glossary + sources
Beyond the club season
Somewhere around U10 the flyers start: ODP tryouts, college ID camps, private trainers, futsal leagues. None of them replaces the club season, and a couple genuinely add to it at the right age. Here is each one, what it runs, and when it starts making sense for Riley.
Small-sided soccer on a hard court, five a side with a low-bounce ball. A kid touches the ball far more often than in a full 11v11 game.
The cheapest skill work in the sport. If the club doesn't run a winter program, most town futsal leagues take individual signups.
State-association tryouts that feed a state training pool, with camps and interstate events. US Club Soccer runs a smaller invitation-only version called id2.
Real coaching against strong kids at a modest price. Its old role as the college scouting path has mostly moved to the league ladder, so treat it as training, not a ticket.
A camp on a college campus, run by that program's own coaching staff.
Worth money at a school Riley could actually attend, ideally after emailing the coach so someone is watching for her. The mass-market multi-school versions mostly sell hope.
One coach with one kid or a few, working a specific gap: first touch, weak foot, goalkeeping.
It amplifies a motivated kid and does nothing for a dragged one. The tell is who asks for the session. If Riley asks, try it.
Pickup with mixed ages, and a ball against a wall for twenty minutes. Watching a full match and following one player instead of the ball teaches more game sense than most paid sessions. None of it shows up on an invoice.
Extras add to a season; they never replace one. If the budget forces a choice between a private trainer and the right team with real minutes, take the team. Game minutes are the training nothing else supplies.
The parent playbook
One thing the data cannot do is keep this fun, and fun is the engine of everything in this booklet. The kids who keep playing are usually the ones who feel the game is theirs. The whole contract fits in two lines: before the game say "have fun, play hard". After it say "I loved watching you out there". Save the tactics talk for the car ride, and only if she starts it.
What this report could not know
Here's what we couldn't pin down for Riley, each with the fastest way to find it out. The first two change the decision most.
How good is she, really?
Two tryouts or guest sessions at two different levels. That's the whole test, it costs a tryout fee at most, and it answers most of this report's open questions.
"PDA" against the catalog
We couldn't match the club name you gave to our catalog, so its level isn't placed. Send us the club website and the report updates; or check the club's own site for which leagues it lists.
STA’s real all-in U16 cost
Our catalog knows league cost tiers, not club fee sheets. Ask for the number in writing before any offer.
The actual tryout dates
No verified dates for your shortlist yet. One line to each club: "when are U16 girls tryouts?" Their answer usually arrives within a day.
Whether she wants this
Ask directly, without selling: "want to try out at a couple of bigger clubs, or stay with your friends another year?" Both answers are good news. 15-year-olds know.
The words this report used
Teams are built by calendar birth year. 2011-born kids are U16 in the 2026-27 season under those rules, regardless of grade
This report's single scale for where teams sit, from pro academies (1) to rec (6). Defined by the league a team plays in
The Elite Clubs National League, the top of the girls club ladder. Level 1. Players still play high school soccer
The other national girls league, launched in 2020. Level 2 on this report's scale
The National Women's Soccer League, the US women's top flight. Since 2024 there is no college draft: players sign as free agents
National-elite boys leagues (level 2). On the girls side, level 2 is Girls Academy and the ECNL Regional League
Competitive regional leagues (level 3) where college visibility starts. From 2026-27 the two merge into the National 1 League (N1)
A multi-state league operator whose divisions sit around level 4
The state-run travel leagues at level 5, where most club players play
A tournament whose real product is the college coaches on the sideline. Matters from U15
A club-run session for evaluating prospective players, often a soft tryout
Practicing with a team you do not belong to. The single best low-stakes evaluation tool
The US model where families fund club soccer. The reason this report has a money page
Nothing in this report is paid placement. No club can buy its way onto the options page.
Most of what this booklet does is name things: Riley plays, the options are mapped, and the next step costs one email. Whatever this season decides, in ten years she won't remember the league acronym. She will remember playing, and that you were there.
10,995 clubs you can look up · 93 leagues, sorted by level · Catalog and tryout data as of 2026-08-13 · 33 pages