Boy, this topic went all over the place. And I apologize now but so will my response.
Minorities:
I can not speak for all ethic groups but I feel I have a good understanding of the Asian culture, at least in South Carolina. Asians place a higher degree of effort on academic success over athletic success. They want their children to be doctors, not soccer players. I am not sure when this will ever change or if Asians want it to change. And as a side note, Asians do not believe females should be playing sports at all. They believe it makes them to manly. My daughter is Asian American and has played soccer a long time. Her grandmother never came to a single game. We have a son 12 years later and the same grandmother is able to make about half of his 5 year old rec soccer games. My point is that you could give soccer away for free and that does not mean that minority cultures will flock to the sport.
Costs:
I saw in one post the REC/Classic/Challenge are the same at $930. All I can say is that they never had a child play any of those levels. REC is $65 at most per season, that is a far cry from $930. Classic and Challenge could be close to each other depending on the club and the mix of players.
BTW, try doing Karate as a sport. That is a VERY expensive sport with almost no chance of a financial reward from college.
Academy Travel:
That was not suppose to happen. SCYSA, given to them by USYSA, put out a template for clubs to use to create their academy pools, not teams. That template focused only on player development, which included NO travel outside of 30 miles, no tournaments, relaxation of the rules and training pools. There was suppose to be ZERO focus on wins/losses. I know CSC and NECSA, at the time, and I am pretty sure CESA followed that template. The PARENTS went absolutely ape crazy over it. They wanted travel, they wanted teams so that they can prove that Johnny is better than Bobby, they wanted strict enforcement of the rules, and for the love of Jesus and all that is good in the World they had to have wins and losses. So do not blame Soccer, the Clubs or the Coaches. The parents control the boards at this clubs and how the money is spent.
Final Thought:
I do think it is a elite sport right now but I truly believe talent will go up and money will start going down once my daughter's generation starts to have children and they start training at home because they know what they are doing. I played with my daughter a lot when she was growing up but I quickly became a liability in training because I never played a lick until she came home one day and wanted to play for the School Rec team. But her children will be a different story. They will learn from the ground up on the correct ways to do things. And then like all sports it will move from being an elite sport to a true backyard sport.
