NPL League Overview
Purpose
The NorCal NPL is part of US Club’s National Premier League. With the aim of providing the highest level of competition and college showcasing opportunities to teams and clubs within Northern California, while limiting the travel demands on families.
NorCal believes that while clubs, teams, and players should strive to find their highest level, there is plenty of competition within Northern California, and very few of us need to get on a plane to find competition that is going to stretch us to our highest levels. The NorCal ECNL RL provides top-level competition with no requirement to leave Northern California.
NPL League Structure
The NorCal NPL fits within the broader NorCal league structure, and is part of a hybrid club and merit based system. Teams from NPL designated clubs are guaranteed placement into the entry ages of the NPL (U13), and then are promoted and relegated within and out of the league based on their performance on the field. Additionally, the NPL is an open league where any team, regardless of what club they come from can qualify by earning promotion through the State Premier league, or by their State Cup performance.
The best leagues around the world use promotion and relegation as it is the only way to ensure that teams are at the appropriate level, and provide a consistently high quality competition. With an integrated promotion and relegation system from State Premier all the way through ECNL RL, NorCal provides a pathway for teams to earn their way to the highest levels of competition available.
U12 Pre-NPL – The Pre-NPL is a year round league with separate fall and spring divisions. Fall divisions will be formed locally to minimize travel, where as spring divisions will be based on fall performance while also being regionalized to prevent state-wide travel.
U13 NPL – The first full year of NPL, divisions will be regionalized in the fall. Teams will qualify for either ECNL RL, NPL 1 or NPL 2 divisions based on their fall performance. NPL 1 and 2 divisions will be regionalized to prevent state-wide travel. There will be no relegation at the end of the U13 year.
U14 NPL – Following U13 all teams will return to regionalized divisions in the fall of their U14 year. Teams will again qualify for ECNL RL, NPL 1 or NPL 2 divisions based on their fall performance. NPL 1 and 2 divisions will be regionalized to prevent state-wide travel. Six teams will be relegated from the NPL 2 divisions at the end of the spring.
U15 NPL – Following U14, all teams that do not qualify for the ECNL RL division at U15 will be placed into regionalized divisions in the fall. Based on performance teams will be placed into state-wide NPL 1, NPL 2 and NPL 3 divisions in the spring. At the end of spring season, the top finishers in NPL 1, 2 and 3 will be promoted to ECNL RL, NPL 1 and NPL 2 respectively. The bottom 3 finishers in NPL 1 will be relegated to NPL 2, the bottom 4 finishers in NPL 2 will be relegated to NPL and the bottom 6 finishers in NPL 3 will be relegated to State Premier.
U16 – U19 NPL – Following the spring U15 finish, teams will be placed into ECNL RL, NPL 1, NPL 2 or NPL 3 based on their previous season finish. At the conclusion of each fall season, the top two finishers from NPL 2 and NPL 3 will move up to NPL 1 and NPL 2 respectively, while the bottom two finishers from NPL 1 and NPL 2 will move down to NPL 2 and NPL 3 respectively. At the conclusion of the spring season, the top two finishers from each division will be promoted up (NPL 1 to ECNL RL, NPL 2 to NPL 1, et), and the bottom two finishers from each division will be relegated down (ECNL RL to NPL 1, NPL 1 to NPL 2, etc.)
