Best Girls Youth Soccer Clubs: 2020/2021

by J.R. Eskilson

January 4, 2021

Which clubs are the best at getting players recruited to the top conferences?

With most of the 2021 recruiting classes finally officially announced, Solar Soccer Club takes the crown in the girls youth soccer club rankings. Solar SC had 17 players signed to Division I programs from the 2021 class (note: this does not include Alexis Missimo who graduated a year early and was included in the 2020 class for Texas).

PDA (12), So Cal Blues (11), and Michigan Hawks (10) also reached double-digits for players signed to Division I programs at one of the major conferences for the 2021 class.

The conferences used for the data were: Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC, and ACC. Those five were selected because all five of them were given at least five bids to the NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer Tournament in 2019 (the last edition of the event).

From there, the data was pulled from each program’s official recruiting class announcement. For the handful of programs that had not announced their class yet, the verbal commitments listed on the TopDrawerSoccer site were used. For the teams that announced only partial classes, the partial class listed in the official announcement was used for the data. Only U.S. clubs were considered for this list.

For players with a discrepancy on club, the club listed on the official press release was used for this data. In the rare case of a player with multiple clubs listed, the most recent club was used for this information.

In total, there were 397 players from the class committed/signed to programs at the five conferences with over 150 clubs represented from that pool of players.

While Solar SC, PDA, So Cal Blues, and Michigan Hawks were not much of a surprise given the success of those programs in the ECNL and previously in the Development Academy, there were some smaller clubs that produced impressive totals in developing players for the Division I level.

Iowa Rush had five players that signed to programs. Oregon United FC and Sporting Omaha each had three players signed to programs.

The full data can be viewed on a google sheet and will be updated when more classes are announced.