Build a League Worth Believing In
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Episode Summary
Todd Merkow sits down with Christian Lavers — founder and president of the ECNL (Elite Clubs National League), former Director of Coaching and Methodology at FC Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin finance and soccer alumnus, holder of both an MBA and a law degree, and father of four young children ages four through eight. The ECNL has grown from 40 clubs and roughly 2,000 players at its founding in 2009 to more than 120,000 players across both genders today, making it one of the most significant structural forces in American youth soccer. Christian is also the host of the ECNL podcast Breaking the Line, which Todd recommends without hesitation to any sports parent — soccer or otherwise.
The episode opens with Christian's own origin story: a Midwest kid who played baseball, hockey, basketball, and soccer before narrowing his focus to soccer around age 14. His father — a lawyer who coached hockey and lacrosse — went and got a National Soccer Coaches Association license when his kids fell in love with the sport, a commitment Christian says he didn't fully appreciate until much later. His mother was the loudest fan in the stands and had to actively manage her own emotional investment in the games. The family culture was simple: if we're going to commit the time and resources to this, you're going to work hard. There was no pressure beyond that.
Christian played at Wisconsin as a Division I player — by his own description, very far on the end of the bench — and learned firsthand what it meant to compete at that level. He was planning to go into finance after graduation when a coaching job offer changed the math. He was slicing bagels at Einstein's for $6.25 an hour when someone offered him a couple thousand dollars to coach a soccer team. He did the math, took the job, and fell in love with coaching almost immediately. He went back to get his MBA and law degree simultaneously — a four-year joint program — while continuing to coach, because he couldn't find a clear career path in the sport and hoped things would make themselves clear over time. They did.
If you're going to make a coaching point, the first question should be: is this for your benefit or for theirs?
The founding of the ECNL is one of the most instructive stories in the episode. In 2009, US Soccer launched the Development Academy for boys, and Christian and a group of coaches looked at the girls side and saw the same unmet needs: better average quality of game, more training opportunity, more chances for the best players to compete against each other. Nobody else was going to do it. They wrote a five-year business plan, pitched it to a group of clubs, and launched. By 2015, when US Soccer announced a girls Development Academy and told clubs to choose sides, the ECNL faced an existential moment. Christian is candid: if that hadn't happened, they probably wouldn't have looked inward and asked what they really stood for. The pressure forced a re-examination of purpose and vision that ultimately made the league stronger. They chose to compete. Most people told them they were not very intelligent to try. They believed what they were doing was better for the player, and they stayed the course.
The coaching philosophy section is rich. Christian's framework is to coach to the top of the group — not the middle, not the bottom — with the belief that the rest will be pulled along. He distinguishes between a recess environment and a fun classroom environment, and says the goal is to match both: competitive and information-rich at the same time. On parent communication, he has moved across the full continuum over his career and landed firmly in the camp that if you're not engaging parents and helping them understand what to look for and how to interpret what they're seeing, you're making a big mistake. The younger the players, the more true that is.
The difference between five hours of sleep a night and eight hours of sleep a night is a huge amount of anxiety and depression in kids. That's data-driven, research-driven stuff.
The ECNL's institutional investments are the most surprising part of the episode for parents who think of the league only as a competition platform. Two and a half years ago, the league launched the ECNL Coach Education Center — a partnership with The Coaches Voice out of England — and now requires every coach in the league to complete five hours of annual online coach education. They are, to their knowledge, the only organization in the country with that requirement. About a year ago, they launched the ECNL Center for Athlete Health and Performance in partnership with Dr. Drew Watson, a sports medicine pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin. The center does original research using the league's scale and data — research that is rare in youth sports because most data exists for adults, not kids. One recent study examined the relationship between sleep and anxiety and depression in young athletes. The finding: the difference between five hours of sleep a night and eight hours of sleep a night produces a dramatic difference in anxiety and depression outcomes. Christian uses it in presentations now. The prescription is simple, data-driven, and free.
We want to be a sport-driven business — not a business in sport. The decisions of where we invest money are first and foremost decided by coaches asking: where does the sport need to be better?
The episode closes with a rapid-fire round that includes Christian's favorite soccer memory — getting obliterated in every game at a tournament in Toronto at age 14 and not caring at all because he was exploring Canada with his friends — and his definition of Be Valiant: take it into valor. Be brave. Be honorable. Stand up for what you believe.
We got absolutely obliterated in almost every game. But I spent three or four days with my buddies in a hotel, exploring Canada, playing soccer. We didn't care about the scores. That's why soccer has such a hold on me.
Top 5 Takeaways
The ECNL was built on a belief, not a business plan. When Christian and a group of coaches founded the league in 2009, they had a five-year plan and a conviction that the girls side of youth soccer needed what the boys side was getting from the Development Academy. They didn't have a vision for where it would go. What they had was a belief that what they were doing was better for the player. That belief — and the willingness to fight for it when US Soccer launched a competing platform in 2015 — is what built the organization. The lesson for parents and coaches is the same: clarity of purpose is more durable than any strategic plan.
Coach to the top of the group, not the middle. Christian's coaching philosophy is built on the premise that if you set an environment that demands a lot — in terms of concentration, work, and the fun of competing and learning — the players at the top will thrive and the rest will be pulled along. Coaching to the middle serves nobody. Coaching to the bottom is a disservice to the players who are ready for more. This doesn't mean ignoring the kids who are struggling. It means setting a standard that gives everyone something to reach for.
Engage parents or leave things to chance. Christian has been across the full continuum on parent communication over his career and landed firmly in the camp that engagement is not optional. If you don't give parents things to measure success by, explanations of why you do certain things, and ways to interpret what they're seeing, you're leaving things up to chance. This is especially true with younger players, where the parent is a central part of the development environment. The coaches who say 'I'm the coach and you're the parent' are not protecting their players. They're creating an information vacuum that fills with anxiety.
The ECNL requires annual coach education. Every coach in the league must complete five hours of online coach education per year through the ECNL Coach Education Center, a partnership with The Coaches Voice out of England. They are, to their knowledge, the only organization in the country with that requirement. The league chooses the content each year based on what they believe the sport needs most — mental health, technical topics, behavioral change. More than 50,000 hours of coach education have been consumed by coaches in the league since the program launched. If you are evaluating clubs for your child, ask whether the coaches are required to do any ongoing education. The answer tells you a lot.
Sleep is the most underused mental health intervention available to youth athletes. The ECNL Center for Athlete Health and Performance, in partnership with Dr. Drew Watson at the University of Wisconsin, recently published research on the relationship between sleep and anxiety and depression in young athletes. The finding is stark: the difference between five hours of sleep a night and eight hours of sleep a night produces a dramatic difference in anxiety and depression outcomes. Christian now leads with this finding in presentations. It is free, it is actionable tonight, and it is backed by data from youth athletes specifically — not adults.
There is no single road to Rome. One of the narratives the ECNL pushed back against when the girls Development Academy launched was the idea that if you want to be a top-level female player, you need to train four days a week, fifty weeks a year, and play no other sport after age thirteen. Christian's response: look at the profiles of national team players over history. It's just not true. There are a million different ways to get somewhere, and there are ways you won't get there, but there is no absolute certainty in either direction. The ECNL's decision to allow high school soccer — which the DA did not — was a direct expression of this philosophy. Players and families should make the decisions that are best for them, not the ones that a league or a club has decided are mandatory.
The one word parents overuse is 'win.' The one word Christian wishes parents used more is 'love.' He said both without hesitation in the rapid-fire round. The best soccer memory of his life was a tournament where his team got obliterated in every game and he didn't care because he was exploring Canada with his friends. The sport's hold on him has nothing to do with trophies. Parents who have forgotten that are the ones shaking their heads at referees over a throw-in call.
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