Quote:

i have had the experience with both cesa and cufc and i will have to say that cesa only cares about winning games unlike cufc who actually tries to make you a better player. you really dont know what you're talking about unless you've been on both sides of the fence. so i'd watch out dale, looks like ??? knows what he's talking about.



Sigh...okay...I'll address head-on but also in the end get this back on track with regard to high school soccer...

The creation and existence of CUFC is a good thing. The creation and existence of CESA is a good thing. The attempt to create a club in the low-country, whether that club is Bridge, CESA-Charleston, or whatever -- is a good thing. The existence of very strong Charlotte clubs is a good thing. The "Bulls" experiment in Augusta is a good thing.

The only bad thing that exists is when parents in an area don't have access to services for their children just because of where they live. I judge CUFC's "success", as I've said in the past, as whether they are offering opportunities across the board for all ages and genders -- and they are. CUFC is clearly the only club in South Carolina besides CESA that in all age groups and genders are allowing players a realistic shot at the final 4 (see the numbers) -- which is a proxy for at least some level of more competitive soccer.

Does CESA care about winning? I hope so. Does CUFC care about winning? On the sidelines at games, from their web site, in talking to their coaches -- it sure seems so. Does CESA or CUFC only care about winning? If you are the 17th ranked player at U15 girls tryouts and there are only 16 slots on the premier team that you played on last year, then I'm sure it would seem so regardless of which club you choose. Both CESA and CUFC, in order to offer a full spate of services, do not offer "social soccer" at their highest levels of competition. This is different than most (not all, just most) soccer clubs where there is a tendency to want to create a social clique.

If a club wants to prove that it does not only care about winning (or money, or whatever), the best thing it can do is to open up all of its practices and training to any player, regardless of club affiliation. CESA's done that. CRSA's done that. CESA-Columbia's done that. I'm hoping CUFC will one day officially at a club level do that (note: CUFC has many fine coaches who individually already do that.) Secondly, the club has to make a hard committment at tens of thousands of dollars of scholarships and attempts to penetrate underserved markets. Beyond that, I'm not sure what else might be proferred regarding "only" caring about any one aspect of youth soccer.

Finally, I'm not against clubs that want to provide "social soccer." Providing choice means that there is room for more than one model of a club. But here in Lexington we're feeling the impact of a local club that focuses more on social soccer and too many players that for whatever reason aren't ambitious enough to challenge themselves. I fervantly hope that more Lexington JV and high school players will either make the choice to try to go to CUFC or other more highly ambitious clubs -- or demand that their local club (not just a team or two, but the entire club) get more ambitious -- because otherwise it's going to be a long time until Lexington players get to play very deeply into the high school playoffs.