When I read the article in the Greenville News, I noticed that the biggest complaint was about soccer. So here's a proposal to revamp how soccer (and only soccer) is structured in South Carolina.
My idea is to realign soccer-playing high schools to encourage competition that is really competitive. In the current structure, in any particular region at any particular level (A, AA, AAA, and AAAA), there are usually a few good teams and a few not-so-good teams, and the good teams find themselves playing a few competitive games and a few not-so-competitive games (a 5 or 6 to nil score is usually indicative of a lack of competition, though 10-0 is always so). Uncompetitive games do nothing for either side, except present the opportunity for injuries and bad feelings. So how do we eliminate the bulk of these uncompetitive contests?
Let’s break the state down into four regions. The SCHSL website currently lists 205 schools playing sports, and while not all of them are necessarily playing soccer, let’s assume they are. Breaking the state into four regions will give us 51 schools in each region (with 1 extra).
In each region, then, let’s break the schools down into 5 leagues: the Championship League, and Leagues 1 through 4. That puts 10 teams into each league. Teams are allowed to play between 16 and 18 games during a season, so each team would have roughly have of its games within its league if they played only once per season, alternating the home site from year to year as they do in football (we could just as easily add more games to the soccer schedule—I think 16 is too few, but that’s an argument for another day). In their remaining schedule, schools go out of their region to play quality teams from other regions, or they could play historic rivalry games if their historic rival is in a different league.
At the end of the season, the bottom two teams in each league (except for League 4) would be relegated to the lower league in their region, and the top two teams in each league (except for the Championship League) would rise to the league above them. (If you don’t know, this is what happens in European professional soccer.) The top two teams in each of the four Championship Leagues could then do one of two things. First, the SCHSL could have a state-wide playoff to determine that year’s state champion (the league could actually do the same thing with the lower leagues as well, just as it currently does with each of the size divisions). That would be an okay option, and one might guess that we would see the end of playoff results in the 10-0 range. Second, the SCHSL could form a South Carolina League to be made up of the top two or three teams in the 4 Championship Leagues to play the next year, in addition to their regular league play (this is the concept of the UEFA Champions League or the CONCACAF Champions League. I like this option better, but there would be a one-year lag declaring state champions each, and some people might not like that.
Some SC high school teams are good every year, those who draw a lot of kids who play club soccer. Some are rarely if ever good in soccer. Some go in cycles, having a few good years as a group of players who play club come through, but then dropping off as the next group doesn’t. Such a league structure as I’ve proposed would allow for competitive soccer to be played at every level and would give players at each level something to strive for—either a championship or at least the opportunity to move up to the next league.
It would also, I think, improve the level of soccer throughout the state, and obviate the need to eliminate all private high schools from the SCHSL.
