Background: I was perusing TDS top 25 girl rankings and noticed a heavy Calif and western domination of the rankings. I went back and looked at the top 25 for 2016 to 2019. There were a few that didn't list the state. California had 25 girls cumulatively. Colorado had 8 Georgia had 6. Illinois had 4 Ohio had 4 NY had 4 Texas had 4 Maryland had 3 NC had 3 Washington had 3 My question is: Is this the bias of the producers of the lists? Or is California girls' soccer just head and shoulders above the rest of the country? Please feel free to educate me as to why that is, assuming it is?
California by far. You could put together California vs. the other 49 states, and in certain years California would win. Look at the forwards on the USWNT. Alex Morgan, Christen Press, Sydney Leroux, Amy Rodriguez, etc.
Somewhere here on BS, over the past year, I reported on the numbers of Division I players per youth capita, by state; and the number of Division I players on some group of top teams (something like the top 120 teams). If you can find that, you'll get a sense of what the different states' youth programs achieve. As I recall, Utah does the best. You'll be surprised by some of the results.
Although it doesn't address "great" players, here is the list of states (and DC) with the numbers of women they had playing for the top 125 DI schools last year, in order of what the number means per capita youth. What you're seeding is State, absolute number of players, and per capita youth rank: Utah 97 1 Virginia 156 2 New Jersey 165 3 Oregon 60 4 Colorado 77 5 California 559 6 Washington 93 7 Maryland 78 8 Oklahoma 53 9 Michigan 116 10 Ohio 133 11 Illinois 146 12 Connecticut 37 13 Delaware 9 14 North Carolina 86 15 Missouri 53 16 Texas 251 17 Wisconsin 49 18 Nebraska 16 19 Massachusetts 49 20 Hawaii 10 21 Georgia 83 22 Pennsylvania 87 23 Indiana 48 24 Minnesota 37 25 Florida 115 26 Kansas 20 27 New Mexico 14 28 Rhode Island 6 29 New York 112 30 Arizona 40 31 New Hampshire 7 32 South Carolina 24 33 Tennessee 33 34 Nevada 14 35 Idaho 8 36 Kentucky 18 37 Iowa 12 38 Alaska 3 39 Vermont 2 40 Alabama 17 41 Maine 3 42 DC 1 43 Mississippi 7 44 Louisiana 9 45 West Virginia 3 46 Wyoming 1 47 Arkansas 4 48 South Dakota 1 49 North Dakota 0 50 Montana 0 51
One thing to consider: This is just a snapshot of one year's NCAA rosters. This was a pretty time-consuming process, so it would be pretty demanding to try to cover a significant number of years.
Southeastern states that are so strong in the other football, appear to be generally weak in soccer numbers. Wonder why?
That is what I was wondering. I don't know that that necessarily means bias, but was hoping experts here could provide some insight. The Southeastern states are certainly at the bottom. There may be a reasonable explanation for that. The West and North are at the top. Again, maybe there is a reasonable explanation. Maybe there is a more rabid culture for girls' sports like there is for the other football down South. ???
Sydney Leroux is a product of Canada and Arizona, where she played all her youth soccer and was developed, before going to UCLA to play college.
This is particularly surprising given that 1/3 of all division 1 women's soccer teams are located in the southeast. I guess they're not stocking their rosters with local players.
I think deep south states have been slow to embrace soccer. There is a lot of youth talent in the mid-atlantic (Virginia, Maryland) and Florida, Georgia--but elsewhere it is thin. I expect that to change, however, as there are quite a lot of very young kids who attend SEC soccer games now (though adult attendance is still meh). A lot of young girls in the deep south have done cheerleading instead of sports, traditionally--talk about a waste of time and effort. Soccer has long been more of a private school sport in the south and mid-atlantic (and maybe the northeast/midwest, ,too)--and you notice that a lot of the top recruits in the east come from private schools. Public school women's soccer has definitely lagged--but I think it is definitely now in a growth mode in southern/mid-atlantic suburbs.
I am curious why you say that. Do you have a particular reason? I am interested in your thinking on this. I am not surprised. That area is not big on soccer. WVU (Canada South - they can change their name from Mountaineers to Mounties, any time) has exactly one player from WV on their roster this year. That is at a state school. If you are at all familiar with the terrain of WV... there are not too many flat places in the state (well, maybe once they are done strip mining, under mining and fracking the whole place it will be different)... it is just not going to have a lot of field and soccer complex capacity.