021. ECNL GAMEWEEK 35: HIGHLIGHTS

The month of May has arrived. It's the proverbial beginning-of-the-end of the season, with 94%+ of Boys nationwide games now behind us:

• Gameweeks 34+35 contained ≈10% of the Boys entire season's scheduled game play.
• Gameweek 34 itself was the 3rd-busiest week of the year (409 games).

In other words, it's "crunch time" for many teams competing for the few remaining postseason slots. The data may have surfaced evidence of increased play-intensity during Boys' Gameweek 35: average goals-scored per game increased by 7.4% vs previous Gameweek 34.

Our stories for ECNL Boys Gameweek 35:

• Nationwide Team Rankings ▫ All Ages Combined:
  • Northeast's Pipeline SC reclaims the #1 top spot.
  • Northeast's SUSA FC delivers a 14-spot uplift - this week's biggest-mover across this ranking.
• Conferences & other regional highlights:
  • Compared to other conferences, Northern Cal, Northeast and Texas produces higher GF-G.
  • Also - 45.1% of this week's gameload emerges from the above-mentioned 3 regions.
• Nationwide Team Rankings ▫ By Age Group:
  • Midwest's Chicago Magic 2007 Boys skyrockets-up their nationwide age group rankings by 29 steps.
  • Northeast's STA 2009 Boys makes a dramatic entry into their Top 25.

Gameweek summary

ECNL Boys and ECNL Girls:

Nationwide Team Rankings ▫ Boys - All Ages Combined

Pipeline SC back to #1 ▫ SUSA FC up by 14 spots

The math is straightforward: the further-along you get into the season, the harder it is to improve your rankings - this is the nature of cumulative performance. Here's a snapshot of latest rankings - Top 10:

See full rankings on our post in the Featured section.

Pipeline SC moved-up from #2 to #1 nationwide. However, the intriguing aspect of this near-term success is that... they didn't have to play a single game in-order to reclaim the top spot. Instead, it's Seattle United's single-game tie that reduced its PTS-G by ≈0.01. Pipeline SC's PTS-G remained stable week-over-week, at 2.52.

As a contrasting example, consider this week's Northeast SUSA FC: they uplifted their rankings from #75 to #61. It's this week's biggest - by far! - club-level upward-move, driven by a no-loss streak across 10 games.

Conferences & other regional highlights

Northern Cal, Northeast and Texas are this week's standouts

You can tell by your own favorite team's conference schedule: a few weeks can pass-by between games. At a national level, this observation translates into conferences impacting gameweek results at different levels. In-order to correctly-appraise what's going-on across conferences, questions like these are relevant. During Gameweek 35:

1. What's the game volume across each conference?
2. At the conference-level, what's the average GF-G?
3. At the conference-level, to what extent did the average GF-G change on a week-over-week basis?

By integrating insights from the above 3 questions, we can contruct a story of "... what happened across our conferences in this past week...".

Consider these 3 heatmap grids:

Takeaways from above: There was a significant amount of game-volume across 6 of 12 conferences.

Takeaways from above: Of the 6 high-volume conferences, 3 delivered relatively-high GF-G results (> 2.0).

Takeaways from above: Many of the conferences with relatively-high GF-G also produced higher-averages than the previous week. A short-term bump?

Nationwide Team Rankings ▫ By Age Group

Midwest's Chicago Magic 2007 Boys jump 29 spots... wait, what? ▫ Northeast's STA 2009 Boys make their way into Top 25

Each Age Group team competes within its own conference... but of-course there's an implicit nationwide ranking, right? That ranking (mostly-driven by PTS-G) reflects your likelihood of making-it into the postseason.

One of this week's biggest age group movers was Chicago Magic 2007 Boys... another week like this one, and might they just make it into the postseason?

There are many data-driven ways to communicate that a team is performing at an exceptional level inside its age group. Here's an example of a team jumping its way into their coveted Top 25, with 2 consecutive in-week wins:

That's it for this week!

Richard - from SoccerAnalytix.