I always optimized for quality of life when choosing. Optimizing for winning only seemed to land you on a team with batshit crazy parents and crap tons of out of state travel.
100%. Unless your kid is some crazy savant, the other kids, families, and overall enjoyment is way more important. Even if your kid is a wizard, I feel like they will be seen no matter what if you are on a decent team. Our baseball group is amazing. It's not even our school team or anything, but all of the parents and kids are great. That helps out so much especially with a time sucking sport like baseball. Prob same with soccer.
My oldest kid played for one club from age 4-18. My middle son was sort of on that route, but his enjoyment was going down hill. He changed clubs last year, but things weren't that much better, and now he's out of club soccer. My youngest is on his third club in 4 years. Frankly, I really wish my middle son had moved earlier.
What I would say is that there is absolutely no one size fits all club. The club that was best for my oldest, was absolutely not the right place for either of my other two kids. The absolutely most important thing in my opinion are the other kids on the team, by a pretty long way. Stuff like level of competition, coach, organization/communication, other families, distance to fields are all important, but how you value things depends on you and your kid.
I put winning way toward the bottom of the list. While my oldest was on a team or two that won a lot of games, he was also on some teams that got hammered. But for him, competing at a high level, getting a ton of playing time, and improving as a player were all way more important. Obviously, losing all the time can be draining, and if it means that your kid is going to quit, then look to change, but I also saw some kids that went over to the "best" team, but ended up not playing, and for lots of kids sitting is way worse than losing.
