G&B: I came to this conversation late -- but couldn't agree with you more. One of the kids mentioned in this thread was the second leading scorer in her age group in RIIIPL-East a few years back. Why? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that the team she was on was very competitive, with a lot of superb Division 1 players on it that went on to be very competitive in their freshmen D1 year and make impacts, and thus she was able to get the space to work 1v2 and even sometimes 1v1 as opposed to 1v4 or 1v5.
In 2006 Julie Bolt was either the leader or one of the leading scorers for a Clemson team that went to the final 8 (from memory.) Anson Dorrance was talking about the impact Julie had when they played UNC. I saw that same player get shut down a lot in RIIIPL-East -- not because she wasn't incredibly skilled and talented -- but because her opportunities were constrained to 1v3 or 1v4. You could tell by looking at Julie play in RIIIPL-East she was special; but quite often that translated into her creating plays that others on her team just couldn't.
I've often said that in soccer it's hard for me to tell a great defense versus a great defensive team -- because I've seen so many great defensive players get crushed because of a lack of pressure at the forward and midfield positions. To me, the worse thing you can see from a forward is the one that is lazy on defense and camps out near the goal hoping a teammate will kick one close enough for them to finish -- all the while ignoring their team being crushed due to the lack of pressure. The same kind of thing holds true on offense; the ability of the defense and the midfield to gain possession or at least to accurately make long-ball passes quickly while there's an advantage is incredibly important.
The best SC club women coaches understand that and actively resist the "cog in the machine" philosophy that players are interchangeable parts. Even the better SC women teams have a much higher standard deviation of talent than (for example) the average Atlanta team -- and thus putting kids in different positions, even during the same game, and playing systems based on the assessment of dynamic strengths and weaknesses, is really important.
SC soccer, and SC women's soccer, is still not as strong as I'd like to see it in RIIIPL-East. I've seen smart coaching overcome some of that -- but the real answer is that we need more girls playing soccer and thus a deeper pool from which to draw.
