I beleive that winning at the regional level has to do with state size, size of the pool of players from the state, and quality of soccer in each state. Unfortunately you are finding out that by living in a smaller state without a huge metropolitan area, you are not going to have the quality of players that you would get in large states with large metropolitan areas. We have been told that there are only 4 really good soccer areas in the country.
1) California
2) Northeast
3) Dallas area
4) Chicago area
Look where the academy soccer tournaments have been played:
1) California
2) Illinois
3) Texas
This shows you where the best soccer in the country is. Unfortunately SC in not in the list. You are not able to compete with the larger states. If you take Illinois, the metropolitan area of Chicago is greater than 5 million, larger than the entire population of SC. How can you compete with the talent that comes out of these large areas? you most likely can't. You can have great coaches and training, but if you use a population model, you have to have more population to produce the better soccer players. If you only have population of 3 million, and you use the numbers that there are only 5 excellent players per million per age group, you will only get 15 players of that calibur. If you have a state with a population of 15 million, you will end up with 45 players that are of that calibur. And you may have an elite group within that state because they end up having two to three teams that play each other at that high level.
I see this with referees. You get referees sent to ODP camp, or regionals, and you can tell who came from the bigger states, and who came from the smaller states. When you have a regional team that destroys a Kansas, South Dakota, North Dakota, etc, it is because of population density. They may be the best of that state, but they couldn't play with second tier teams of the larger states. The referees can show that too. They may be able to handle the best that the smaller states can give, but get in over their heads at the better more challenging games of, lets say, an Illinois-Ohio match.
As you have found out, SC is not up to par yet with the largere states, and may never be able to compete with the larger states. Every state thinks that they are the best, but look at the states that consistently send the best/most teams to nationals. They are typically the largest states with the largest population bases. SC better start reporducing to increase their population density!
