SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Has the Tide Turned?

The beauty of this country is that you can seize upon an opportunity, develop it, nurture it, and then market it and sell it to the public. Welcome to youth soccer in South Carolina, and likely anywhere else for that matter. Capitalism in it's purest form.

I believe that it is largely about the money, and not about the kids or the talent, and you know what, that's ok. Just quit peeing on our heads and telling us it's only raining. For those of us who have been around this for any length of time, we have all seen teams with no club affiliation who can whip up on anything we call premier, elite or otherwise. If you want to recruit these players, have at it, but please, don't tell me it's all about giving the kid the best possible opportunity.

Sorry for the rant, it's just my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions.

CP - You just had to go and try ruin the post of the year! Without knowing, I suspect it is just semantics. The meatier points are far more tasty!

I have a hodgepodge of topics I wouls like to throw out there and this seemed the best place to do it because of the posters involved and my rant (for lack of better term)involves tryouts and has the tide turned.

First, at CESA, we must realize they don't have tryouts but evaluations instead. One look at how the group is broken up immediately lets you know. In addition, players at the u15 try..er....evalutaion were told if they wanted to try to make the premier team they could work out with them (interesting?) on Sunday but if they did not make it, they would not be on any team. This comes from my son who is very reliable. As far as I know this was never communicated to the parents, which I think is very wrong. Also, the CESA premier team has had the same coach for what, 6/7 years while the challenge team has had 7 coaches in 6 years. Not what I think is best for the players.

Which leads me to my other point. The comment was made that CESA coaches have done nothing but try to help players. My guess is your children are head and shoulders, either talent-wise or physically, above the other players in there age group. I know that if you watched the CESA premier team play the challenge team this season (u14b) you would have thought they were in two different age groups. Add to that, every single coach, including the premier coach has said they same thing to my son during evaluations (I won't comment on others though I have had discussions with parents). Unbelievable with the ball at his feet and his ability to take people on, needs to work on his defense. Not one of these coaches regularly put him in a position to do what he does best (and a few actually critized him for taking people on in the attacking third even when he had no support) and NEVER put him in a position in a game where he would have to defend more (and I always asked him if the coach worked with him on defense in practice. His answer was always no).

This leads me to my third topic, has the tide turned. The u14 challenge team lost to the much bigger, faster, stronger and supposedly better skilled premier team 2-0 in state cup first round. It was 0-0 until late in the game and the second goal was total miscommunication between keeper and defender. They then scrimmaged a few days before the semi-finals and lost 1-0 while playing with 6 or 7 classic players on their team. In a word, CESA is DEEP.

I would like to see more of the kids get a chance to practice with the premier team (which isn't supposed to already hav been chosen) at these tryouts/evaluations. It is obvious, they can hang with them.

One final thing. I am planning on volunteering to be an unpaid asst. coach for whichever team my son makes. I think it is a disservice to the players for them to have only one coach (who splits time with multiple teams)who has no one to talk to about what he sees on the field, etc. My guess is I will be turned down, even though I have a license, played in college, coached club and coached high school. Whatcha think?

(sound of music)

!!!!! The hills are alive with the sound of griswold !!!!!

!!! they been around for a long .......

"First, at CESA, we must realize they don't have tryouts but evaluations instead. One look at how the group is broken up immediately lets you know. In addition, players at the u15 try..er....evalutaion were told if they wanted to try to make the premier team they could work out with them (interesting?) on Sunday but if they did not make it, they would not be on any team."

My understanding of that situation is somewhat different. The boys were told that if they only wanted to be on the premiere team and not on the challenge team they could ask for that and they would be given an answer when the rosters are posted next week. If they would consider the challenge team then there would be one roster for both and the final rosters would be announced after regionals. I think they expect every boy to want to be on the best team they can. Some may choose to roster at a different club if they don't make premiere.

"One final thing. I am planning on volunteering to be an unpaid asst. coach for whichever team my son makes. I think it is a disservice to the players for them to have only one coach (who splits time with multiple teams)who has no one to talk to about what he sees on the field, etc. My guess is I will be turned down, even though I have a license, played in college, coached club and coached high school. Whatcha think?
"

If your son goes to CESA, I don't think it will be allowed. I am not aware of any coaches who coach their kids team and that's the way it should be. It's very painful for the other parents to watch their kids sit while the coach's kid is getting way too much playing time. We pay a lot for the training and playing time and don't need that distraction.

Greenville, S.C. teams advance to 2010 US Youth Soccer Region III Championships
May 21, 2010


FRISCO, Texas (May 21, 2010) –By winning the recent US Youth Soccer South Carolina State Championships, nine Greenville, S.C., area soccer teams have qualified to compete in the US Youth Soccer Region III (South) Championships.

U14 Boys
CESA 95 Boys Premier
U15 Boys
CESA 94 Boys Premier
U16 Boys
CESA 93 Boys Premier
U17 Boys
CESA 92 Boys Premier
U18 Boys
CESA 91 Boys Premier
U15 Girls
CESA 94 Girls Premier
U16 Girls
CESA 93 Girls Premier
U17 Girls
CESA 92 Girls Premier
U18 Girls
CESA 91 Girls Premier

Has the tide turned?...I wouldn't say so.

CESA is Deep. But I am sure all big clubs are deep and many parents feel the same way as you at bigger clubs.

As far as your analysis of the 1st round state cup game, yeah, the score was only 2-0, but shots had to be 15 or 20 to 1. I saw the game and the u14 premier team dominated possession and chances. Also, the challenge team comes to play with nothing to lose and the premier team's mindset coming off a disappointing r3pl season probably was "Why did we put ourselves in this position?". Maybe their play against their challenge brothers was their motivation to win state cup? And everyone says the CESA challenge teams are red-headed step children. The challenge team does have a good back line (it looked like some of the best players were in the back). I personally only saw two or three players from challenge team that could possibly go up. Then the question is, whose spot should they take? The score really only means that the U14 age group at CESA is probably "recruiting" finishers for all levels of teams - lol

There is a good book out there that parents of all kids who play competitive sports should read - "Outliers". The premise of the book is that youth players whose birthdays are just after the cut-off date have the best chance to succeed (i.e. be on the premier/elite teams) because they are physically bigger, stronger and faster than kids whose birthdays are later. This is a generalization, but for the most part, I believe to be true. Case in point, the U14 CESA premier team. If you look at their roster, all the kids have 95 birthdays with only 3 or 4 exceptions which have 96 birthdays. I am sure they are looking at or "recruiting" (if you will) some bigger, stronger, faster, kids to replace those 96 kids even as we discuss it. I personally know one kid's family they asked to come play and he is a big (maybe would be the biggest overall on the team), strong kid who is a 95. Cannot blame the coaches for wanting to make their teams better and generally this means maturity/physical size. Not to say there are not very good small kids out there, but only so many Messi situations.

Good luck with the volunteer asst. coach thing at CESA. I am sure they have a U7 rec team that needs a coach. If that is what you want to do, you need to take your kid to a smaller club. It used to be that at CASA, those asst Clemson coaches that had club teams to supplement their incomes were gone recruiting so much a dad had to take over coaching training and/or games. At least it sounds like you are much more qualified. However, I am sure the parents would complain about you to.

When it comes to your kid, or your allegiance (club or school), the one thing this message board should teach us is that we are all biased - but it sure makes for some great banter