>>[Big Daddy] You are obviously a bright person so don't go down that road. I just think you are highly partisan.<<
I may very well be partisan, but if so I am partisan to an idea rather than a club. I'm partisan to the idea of South Carolina offering its youth services on par with any other Region III state.
Having said that, there are only two clubs at this time that I respect for trying to do just that: CESA and Bridge.
>>Having said that....your analogy is ridiculous. Besides CASL....the Raleigh area boasts really good Clubs like Goldstar, Fuquay Varina, TFC, Triangle United. A Triangle parent does not have to go to Greensboro to have exhaustive choice.<<
It's funny -- your definition of a good club in North Carolina is not the same as your definition of a good club in South Carolina. CASL dominates their highest-level state cup competition; these other clubs are fortunate to rarely win a few. The upstate has clubs that are equally or more competitive than these clubs -- and yet you want to believe that somehow a kid in Raleigh has more choice than a kid in upstate. Strange...
>>Charlotte has a couple of clubs (CSC-CUFC at the least) that can compete age group to age group with CESA-Bridge, so don't kid yourself. The really good Bridge '93 team got beat by CUFC Gold at Jefferson Cup last year, and Gold is less than half of their top kids.<<
CUFC may very well field a team that is competitive now and then, but the club has not been successful across genders and age groups. CSC has been declining since 2000. I realize that everything you're saying is colored by your pride for your child, but in order to make these arguments you actually need to look at the entire club and not just an age group.
>>You raise a great point tho. Is the objective to raise the level of play throughout SC? Or is the objective to be as competitive as possible within the region? Two different answers with two different paths. <<
Fascinating that you believe that doing one doesn't do the other. The Bridge web site actually sites CESA in the discussion of its founding.
There is a tendency toward people to embrace either a "best-practice" culture or a "all work together" culture. It's a false dichotomy. South Carolina has for years been mired in the theory that if somehow we all work together things will get better. They haven't. Then we had one club take major steps to get better. That seems to have caused more change in South Carolina soccer in less than two years than in the preceeding decade.
>>If you want to build teams to go beat Texas or Georgia or Florida within the next 2 years.....superteams/superClubs are the way to go.
If you want to raise the overall level of play and create synergies between CLubs and districts with the intention of long-term building teams to go beat Texas or whomever......I would argue against it, given where SC currently is.
First build the pool, then narrow it to a Super team or 2. But the foundation precedes the roof.<<
Your analogies continue to stretch logic. Here's the bottom line: you want to ignore the fact that in the last two years the emergence of several more regionally competitive clubs in South Carolina has caused more change than in the preceeding decade.
But what I find particularly amusing is that you want to "create synergies between clubs and districts" but are arguing against an agreement between CESA and CRSA to do just that and also are arguing for stronger district boundaries.
But I guess a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, right?
