Club Soccer in Columbus, OH: A Complete Guide for Parents (2026)
TL;DR: The Columbus metro has four club soccer programs on ClubScout with confirmed league affiliations, and between them they cover an unusually clean spread of tiers — one club at each rung of the ladder. Columbus Crew SC runs the MLS NEXT academy out of the OhioHealth Performance Center; like every MLS academy it is invitation-only, and accepted players are not charged a club fee. Columbus United competes in Girls Academy, won four national championships between 2023 and 2025, and is Everton FC's first international academy affiliate in the United States. Columbus Force is the multi-level option, with confirmed NPL membership and a program ladder running from age 3 through U19 across four Central Ohio facilities. Dublin United is the outlier worth knowing about: the largest parent-coached club in Central Ohio, no tryouts, and $645–$765 for the year including the uniform kit, 20–24 games, tournaments, and winter indoor — the lowest verified all-in fee anywhere in our directory. Based on ClubScout data from 4 approved clubs in the Columbus metro. This guide covers factual information only — no rankings, no subjective claims.
Are you a club director in Central Ohio? Columbus is one of the markets where our data is thinnest, and parents are searching anyway. Claim your free ClubScout profile to verify your league affiliations, publish your actual fees, and respond to parent reviews.
How This Guide Works
We're not ranking these clubs. What matters is fit — your child's age and level, your commute, and what your family can sustain for three or four years.
For each club we list what we can confirm: league affiliations from our database, program structure, facilities, and leadership from enrichment data. Where our data conflicts with a club's own website, we say so rather than picking a side. Then go look for yourself. Our guide on how to choose a club covers what to look for, and the coach evaluation guide has the questions worth asking at every visit. Many Central Ohio clubs will let a player join a session or two on trial — that's a better read on the coaching than any website.
New to this? Start with recreational vs. travel soccer and the age-by-age guide. If cost is the constraint, see the club soccer budget guide.
Columbus Metro Clubs at a Glance
Ordered from the most competitive tier down.
| Club | Confirmed Leagues | City | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Columbus Crew SC | MLS NEXT, NAL | Columbus | MLS academy; invitation-only, no cost to accepted players |
| Columbus United | Girls Academy | Lewis Center | 4 national titles 2023–2025; Everton FC academy affiliate |
| Columbus Force | NPL | Lewis Center | Ages 3–19; local through national tiers; Crew network partner |
| Dublin United | Central Ohio Premier League / Ohio Champions League | Dublin | $645–$765 all-in; no tryouts; parent-coached |
For what these league names actually mean, see MLS NEXT, Girls Academy, and NPL. For head-to-head comparisons, see MLS NEXT vs ECNL, ECNL vs Girls Academy, and Girls Academy vs DPL.
One geography note before the profiles: two of these four clubs train in Lewis Center, about 20 minutes north of downtown Columbus, and a third is in Dublin to the northwest. Central Ohio's club soccer center of gravity sits north of the city, not in it. If you live south or east of downtown, map the drive at 5:30 PM on a Tuesday before you fall in love with a program.
The Clubs
Columbus Crew SC
Location: Columbus, OH Leagues: MLS NEXT, NAL (National Academy League) Facilities: OhioHealth Performance Center, ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, Historic Crew Stadium Gender: Boys (academy)
The Crew academy is the top of the boys pathway in Central Ohio, and it works differently from every other club in this guide. It's the youth arm of the MLS club, and players don't register for it — they're identified and invited. Accepted academy players are not charged a club fee. That's the MLS academy model, and it means the top tier in Columbus can't be bought into. It also means the Crew is not an alternative to the other clubs here; it's a destination that a small number of players reach from them.
The staff structure reflects the professional environment:
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| Technical Director | Marc Nicholls |
| Academy Director | Brian Bliss |
| Head of Coaching and Individual Development | Dan Lock |
| U18 Head Coach | Chris Rogers |
| U16 Head Coach | Eddie Hertsenberg |
| U15 Head Coach | Shahad Farahani |
Alongside the coaching staff, the academy carries performance coaches, sports scientists, and athletic trainers, with training based at the OhioHealth Performance Center. That support layer is the real difference between an MLS academy and a well-run club program.
What our data does not tell you: which birth years currently field teams, how players are scouted, or what the pathway looks like for a player who joins at U13 versus U15. Ask directly. And confirm the no-cost structure for the specific age group you're asking about before you assume it.
View Columbus Crew SC on ClubScout →
Columbus United
Location: Lewis Center, OH — Jennings Sports Park (our database lists this club under Columbus; training is in Lewis Center) Leagues: Girls Academy confirmed; the club also lists National Academy League Contact: simon@columbusunited.org Gender: Girls at the Girls Academy tier
Columbus United is the top girls pathway in the Columbus metro in our data. The club dates to 1988, when two amateur men's teams merged, and moved into youth soccer in 2015 — so the youth program is only about a decade old. In that decade it won four national championships between 2023 and 2025, and became Everton Football Club's first international academy affiliate partner in the United States.
| Role | Name |
|---|---|
| VP & Executive Director | Jeff Berman |
| VP / Sporting Director | Simon Davis |
| Zone 1 Director (Boys & Girls), Head of Sports Performance | Michael Custidiano |
One data conflict to be aware of: our database confirms Girls Academy membership only, while the club's own materials describe both Girls Academy and National Academy League programs. Both are plausible — clubs routinely run a second league below their national tier — but we haven't verified the NAL affiliation against a league roster. Ask which league your daughter's specific birth year would compete in, because that answer determines her travel schedule, not the club's overall affiliation list.
Tryouts for 2026–2027 are referenced on the club's site without published dates as of our last crawl. For a Girls Academy program, expect evaluations to run early — top-tier clubs can start as early as April.
View Columbus United on ClubScout →
Columbus Force
Location: Lewis Center, OH Leagues: NPL confirmed; the club also lists ECNL Regional League, USL Youth, Great Lakes Alliance, Ohio Champions League, Central Ohio Premier League, Midwest Developmental League, and Ohio Soccer State League Ages: 3 through 19 Gender: Coed Facilities: Liberty Park South (Powell), TOCA Sports, formerly SuperKick (Lewis Center), Havener Park (Delaware), Kilbourne Run Sports Park
Force is the club in this guide with the most rungs on its ladder. Programming starts at a Minis Academy for ages 3–4 and runs through U19, with Local, Regional, and National tiers stacked on top of each other, plus USL Youth teams, Force 7s, goalkeeper training, speed and strength work, and a girls-only OVPL U23 side. The club operates as part of the Columbus Crew network through an official partnership, and organizes itself around a values framework it calls C.H.I.R.P — Commitment, Humility, Integrity, Respect, Passion.
The coaching staff is unusually transparent about credentials, which is worth noting because most clubs aren't:
| Role | Name | Credential |
|---|---|---|
| U16–U19 Girls Director | Kelly Bryan | — |
| U16–U19 Boys Director | Mauricio Mendez | — |
| U8–U12 Boys Director | Evan Wherley | USSF B License |
| U12 & Below Technical Director | Braden Bell | USSF D License |
| Head Coach, 2010 NPL | Scot Ziolo | — |
| Head Coach, 2014 Girls Blue / 2013 Girls White | Erin Hawkins | — |
A licensing note that matters more at these ages than the letters suggest: a higher license does not mean a better coach. A USSF D-licensed coach who runs organized sessions and connects with nine-year-olds beats a B-licensed coach who can't hold their attention. Watch a session. The red flag at any age is kids standing in long lines waiting for a turn.
How Force prices is the thing to understand before you tryout. Our enrichment found tiered pricing based on placement in the club's vertical pyramid — Regional or Local — with no published numbers. So an acceptance from Force isn't a price. Get the fee for the specific tier your child is offered, in writing, before you commit.
Tryout timing here is genuinely complicated, and Force runs more entry points than most clubs:
| Window | What |
|---|---|
| May 2026 | Main tryouts for the 2026–2027 season |
| October–November | Supplemental tryouts, ECNL-RL and NPL levels |
| December–January | USL Youth ID clinics, U11–U14 |
| December–January | OVPL Women's tryouts |
The club is also moving to grade-year grouping for 2026–2027 rather than birth-year grouping. That's a meaningful change for families with a child near the cutoff — it can move a player up or down a full year relative to where they've been playing. We cover what that switch does to a roster in our guide on the birth-year vs. school-year age group change. Ask Force directly which group your child lands in under the new system.
View Columbus Force on ClubScout →
Dublin United
Location: Avery Park, 7401 Avery Rd, Dublin, OH 43016 Leagues: Central Ohio Premier League, Ohio Champions League Ages: U7 through U18 Cost: $645–$765 for the year Contact: dublinunitedsc@gmail.com Gender: Coed
Dublin United is the most useful club in this guide for most families reading it, and it's the one least likely to show up in a Facebook group recommendation.
It's a 501(c)(3) founded in 2005 under a name that tells you exactly what it is: the Dublin Middle Tier Soccer Organization. It sits deliberately between rec and select — the largest parent-coached club in Central Ohio, with parent coaches backed by professional training staff. There are no tryouts. The club runs player evaluations instead, placing kids by skill and, explicitly, by who they want to play with.
That $645–$765 is the lowest verified all-in figure in our entire directory, and it's all-in in a way club fees usually aren't. It includes:
- Complete uniform kit and training jerseys
- 20–24 regular season games
- Up to 20 footskills sessions
- Goalkeeper training
- Tournaments
- Winter indoor training
Compare that honestly against a select club. At most competitive clubs, the number you're quoted is the starting point, and the kit ($150–$400), tournament entries ($500–$1,500), and winter training all land on top of it. Dublin United's structure removes those line items, which is why the gap between it and a national-league program is far wider than the registration fees alone suggest.
The tradeoff is real and you should name it. Parent coaching, supported or not, is not the same as full-time professional staff. Competition is Central Ohio regional — there's no national showcase circuit and no college-recruiting infrastructure attached. For a U9 who loves playing, or a U13 who wants real games without the family reorganizing around soccer, that's a feature. For a U15 with genuine college ambitions, it isn't the right platform, and the club doesn't pretend otherwise.
One data conflict, disclosed: our database carries a DPL row for Dublin United. The club's own site describes only the Central Ohio Premier League and Ohio Champions League, and a parent-coached middle-tier club competing in the national Development Player League doesn't fit the rest of the picture. We're treating the DPL affiliation as unverified and have flagged it for review. Confirm with the club before assuming any national-league play.
View Dublin United on ClubScout →
Two Columbus Clubs We're Not Listing, and Why
Transparency is more useful here than a longer list.
Ohio Premier. Real Ohio Premier programs operate in Columbus, but our record for one is unusable — enrichment scraped a Cleveland home-services business, not a soccer club, and the record carries an unverified ECNL Boys league row. A second record, Ohio Premier Futbol Club, is sitting in our review queue. We're not going to describe a club from data we know is wrong. Look it up directly, and treat any ECNL Boys claim you see on our side as unconfirmed until we've fixed the record.
Club Ohio. Our record is live and carries NAL and NPL rows, but the enrichment found the club's own web domain listed for sale with no evidence of current operation. It may be defunct. If someone points you to Club Ohio, verify the club is actually running before you attend anything.
Both are being corrected. We'd rather tell you the data is broken than quietly present it as fact.
Understanding Columbus's Soccer Landscape
The ladder is clean, but each rung is one club deep
Most markets we cover give you three or four options at a given tier and force you to compare them. Columbus doesn't. You get one MLS academy, one Girls Academy club, one multi-level regional club, and one middle-tier club. That's a clean ladder and a thin one.
The practical consequence: if your daughter doesn't make Columbus United, there is no second Girls Academy club in the metro to try. Ohio statewide has one Girls Academy club and, in our current data, zero ECNL Girls clubs. So plan for that possibility before tryouts rather than during them — the when to switch clubs guide covers how to think about the fallback tier without treating it as a failure.
The girls-pathway data gap, stated plainly
We have one confirmed top-tier girls program in the Columbus metro (Columbus United, Girls Academy) and no ECNL Girls clubs anywhere in our Ohio data. Meanwhile Columbus Force's own materials reference ECNL Regional League play, and the club employs a dedicated U16–U19 Girls Director.
Read that as a gap in our data, not proof of a gap in the market. Ohio is the third consecutive state where ECNL Girls is missing from our league records, which points at our roster coverage rather than at Ohio. Verify by birth year with each club directly. For what separates the two top girls pathways, see ECNL vs Girls Academy.
What Columbus club soccer costs
Only one Columbus club publishes a number we could verify, so treat this table accordingly. The Dublin United row is confirmed. The rest are modeled from comparable programs in our directory and should be used as a budgeting starting point, not a quote.
| Level | Annual Range | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| MLS NEXT (Crew academy) | $0 to accepted players | MLS academy model — confirm for your age group |
| Girls Academy | $3,500–$6,000 | Estimated from comparable Girls Academy clubs |
| NPL / Regional (Force) | $1,500–$3,000 | Estimated; Force prices by placement tier |
| Middle tier (Dublin United) | $645–$765 | Verified, and includes kit, games, tournaments, indoor |
Two things that make Central Ohio genuinely cheaper than the coastal markets we cover. There's no metro-density premium of the kind that pushes Montgomery County or Fairfax County fees up. And unlike New England, winter indoor training is bundled at some clubs rather than billed as a $400–$1,200 add-on — Dublin United includes it outright. For the mechanics of the hidden costs, see our travel soccer cost breakdown and, if you're running two or three players, the multiple kids guide.
Whatever tier you're looking at, ask the same three questions: is the kit included, are tournament entries bundled or billed separately, and is winter training extra. Get the all-in number in writing.
Tryout season in Central Ohio
Columbus Force runs the widest set of entry points — main tryouts in May, supplemental tryouts in October and November, and ID clinics in December and January. Columbus United references 2026–2027 tryouts without published dates. Dublin United holds evaluations rather than tryouts, which lowers the stakes considerably for a first-time family. The Crew academy operates by invitation.
Top-tier clubs can begin evaluations as early as April, not May — a timeline that catches families off guard every year. For preparation, see our tryout guide and check the ClubScout tryout calendar.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Columbus club is best?
We won't answer that, because no honest reading of our data supports a ranking. What we can say is that the four clubs occupy four different tiers, so the question usually answers itself once you're specific about your child's level, your budget, and your drive. A U10 whose parents want real competition without reorganizing the family calendar is a Dublin United question. A U15 girl with college ambitions is a Columbus United question. Use the framework in how to choose a club.
Can my child just register for the Columbus Crew academy?
No. MLS academies are invitation-only — players are identified and recruited, not enrolled. Accepted players aren't charged a club fee, which is the upside of a structure you can't buy into. The realistic path runs through a club like Force or United, where a player gets seen. Treat the academy as a possible destination, not a plan.
Is $645–$765 really the whole cost at Dublin United?
That's the verified range, and it covers the kit, training jerseys, 20–24 games, up to 20 footskills sessions, goalkeeper training, tournaments, and winter indoor training. You'll still buy cleats, shin guards, and a ball ($100–$250 in year one), and you'll drive to games. But the line items that usually push a $2,000 club fee to $3,500 are inside that number rather than on top of it. Confirm current pricing with the club — our figure comes from their published materials at last crawl.
What are the options for a girls player in Columbus?
Columbus United (Girls Academy) is the confirmed top-tier option in our data. Columbus Force has a dedicated U16–U19 Girls Director and its own materials reference ECNL Regional League play, so it's worth a direct conversation even though we can't confirm that affiliation. Dublin United serves girls U7–U18 at the middle tier. No ECNL Girls club appears in our Ohio data — verify by birth year with each club, and see ECNL vs Girls Academy for the pathway comparison.
Why are so many "Columbus" clubs actually in Lewis Center and Dublin?
Because that's where Central Ohio's youth soccer infrastructure sits. Columbus United trains at Jennings Sports Park in Lewis Center, Columbus Force operates across Lewis Center, Powell, and Delaware, and Dublin United is at Avery Park in Dublin. All are Columbus-metro clubs by any reasonable definition, but the drive from the south or east side of the city is real. Map it at practice time — 5:30 PM on a Tuesday, not Sunday morning.
My child isn't ready for a national-league program. What now?
That's the most common situation and Columbus handles it better than most markets. Dublin United's evaluation-based placement means there's no cut to survive, and Columbus Force's Local and Regional tiers exist precisely for players who aren't at the national level yet. Both are legitimate places to develop for two or three years. See recreational vs. travel soccer and the age-by-age guide for what each level asks of a family.
How does Ohio compare to the East Coast markets on cost?
Cheaper, and the top of the boys ladder is free. Ohio is the most affordable market we've covered — Dublin United's all-in fee is the lowest verified figure in our directory, and both Ohio MLS NEXT programs are MLS academies with no cost to accepted players. What Ohio has less of is depth at the top: one Girls Academy club statewide, and no confirmed ECNL Girls. Compare against the Maryland cost guide or Virginia cost guide to see the difference.
What to Do Next
- If cost or commitment is the constraint, start with Dublin United. No tryout to fail, a verified all-in fee, and an honest middle-tier positioning. For a lot of Central Ohio families this is the right answer and they never hear about it.
- If you want a club your child can grow inside, look at Columbus Force. Ages 3–19 across Local, Regional, and National tiers means no club change as your player develops. Get the placement-tier price in writing, and ask which group your child lands in under grade-year grouping.
- For a girls player at the top tier, contact Columbus United. Confirm which league her birth year actually plays in — Girls Academy or NAL — before you plan a travel budget.
- Treat the Crew academy as a destination, not an application. Invitation-only, no fee to accepted players. Ask any club you're evaluating how their players get seen.
- Verify Ohio Premier and Club Ohio yourself. Our records for both are broken or stale, and we've said so above rather than listing them.
- Ask every club the same three cost questions. Kit included? Tournaments bundled? Winter training extra? See the budget guide.
- Map the commute at 5:30 PM on a Tuesday. Central Ohio's clubs cluster north of the city. This is the single most common reason families we hear from leave a club after one season.
More Resources
- How to Choose a Club Soccer Club
- How to Evaluate a Youth Soccer Coach
- What Is MLS NEXT?
- What Is Girls Academy?
- What Is NPL?
- MLS NEXT vs ECNL
- ECNL vs Girls Academy
- Girls Academy vs DPL
- Compare All Youth Soccer Leagues Side by Side
- Recreational vs. Travel Soccer
- Club Soccer Age-by-Age Guide: U8 Through U18
- Birth-Year vs. School-Year Age Groups: What the Change Means
- Club Soccer on a Budget: Under $3K/Year
- Managing Club Soccer Costs With Multiple Kids
- When to Switch Youth Soccer Clubs
- Youth Soccer Glossary
- Browse All Ohio Clubs on ClubScout