Five days of games with more than 100 college coaches looking on made it an exciting week for the Riverhounds Development Academy’s ECNL and ECNL Regional League girls teams from Jan. 6-10 at ECNL Florida.
The annual showcase is one of the year’s biggest, and many of the Hounds’ uncommitted players took the opportunity to impress a wide range of coaches from the Division I to Division III and NAIA levels. Among the D-I programs taking in the Hounds matches were North Carolina, Georgia, Notre Dame, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Syracuse, Navy, Kansas State, Iowa State, Penn State, Auburn, Northwestern, West Virginia, George Mason and Akron — though that list is far from complete, as the Hounds players enjoyed a change for exposure that only the ECNL forum can provide.
The full list of colleges attending the ECNL matches can be seen HERE, while the ECNL Regional League event’s attendance is available HERE.
While the purpose of the showcase is to help individual players get exposure to help them reach the next level, many of the Hounds’ teams also showed their collective quality.
The 2004/05 ECNL Girls side won all three of their matches, starting with hard-fought 2-1 wins over New Jersey’s PDA White and Carolina Elite of North Carolina, and ending with a 4-0 victory over Florida Krush. Kate Friday and Fiona Mahan scored in the opener before the team was able to grind out the opening win, while Ella Bulava scored from 30 yards out after setting up Lucia Wells for the opener against Carolina Elite. Mahan finished with three goals on the weekend, while Bulava got a second and Bella Vozar also scored in the finale.
Another member of the 04/05 ECNL team, Piper Coffield, was honored with selection to the Continental Tire ECNL National Selection game played on the night of Jan. 8, putting the Indiana recruit with an all-star group chosen from across the more than 60 teams in her age group.
Adding to the individual accolades, four players — Mahan, Sierra Dupre, Helena Walker and Caroline Liptak — earned a mention in SoccerWire’s “Players That Impressed” feature published last Friday, Jan. 13.
Dupre, Walker and the 2007 ECNL Girls team also came away as winners in two of their three matches on the weekend, while the 2004/05 Regional League team and 2006 ECNL side also posted some strong results in their three matches. A complete rundown of the matches over five days can be found on the Academy Results page.
After that strong five day stretch for the girls, it will be the boys’ turn to do the same with Regional League and ECNL matches coming up at ECNL Florida beginning this Friday, Jan. 20.
