Let us know the topics of interest to you!

It's a very special episode of Breaking the Line, as the podcast celebrates its 125th episode!

After an invigorating discussion about navigating birth years and skill levels within youth soccer, ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken continue the conversation with a parent email regarding how to properly handle when an athlete has the skill to compete at a higher level, but not necessarily the physical attributes to do so.

This question, paired with some realizations from Ep. 124, leads to the meat of this week's episode: the parent-player-coach dynamic.

The Breaking the Line team dives into the relationship from all three parties, and discusses the roles and responsibilities of each side of the dynamic, and how to ensure everyone is copacetic and have positive relationships and interactions throughout an athlete's journey.

As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.

Let us know the topics of interest to you!

After a quick Labor Day pause, the Breaking the Line team returns to your airwaves. Fall is in the air, the kids are back at school and the 2025-26 soccer season is ready to kick off.

This week, ECNL President Christian Lavers and ECNL Vice President Doug Bracken discuss two topics that were submitted by Breaking the Line listeners. First up was a question about a topic that has been discussed at length on the podcast: birth year vs. school year. This episodes, the pair examine how clubs are going to navigate the shift beginning in 2026, and more importantly, the distinction that not every player will automatically stay with their birth year or their school year, and that there are a multitude of factors players, parents and coaches need to examine when determining which team these players born from Aug. 1 - Dec. 31 will play on.

The second segment of the show follows a similar through process, which is how, as a parent, do you know when your player has outgrown his current team environment? Once again, it's a gray area, but Lavers and Bracken go through their ideas of what development looks like at different age groups, what are good determiners of development, and more.

It's a fantastic episode that every soccer parent will want to listen to, and the BTL crew even gives a teaser for episode 125.

As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.

Let us know the topics of interest to you!

Breaking the Line, the ECNL Podcast, welcomes newly-hired Pre-ECNL Commissioners Bobby Reiss and Ruairi McGuinness to the airwaves for a riveting discussion surrounding the ECNL’s entry into Zone 1: the Pre-ECNL.

ECNL President Christian Lavers sits down with Reiss and Ruari to dive into exactly what the Pre-ECNL is, what the ECNL has for the Pre-ECNL platform this upcoming season, how the ECNL plans to balance atheltes’ desire to win with the need for development, especially in Zone 1, and so much more.

As always, make sure to submit any questions to https://ecnl.info/BTL-Questions, to subscribe to Breaking the Line on YouTube, and to follow the ECNL on all social channels.