SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Boys Varsity Soccer St. Joseph vs. Blackville-Hilda

BTW St Joesph's beat JL Mann and Riverside and 3a Greenville and lost to Eastside 0-1.

Why are they playing at the 1a level in the first place???

I don't know how familiar you are with St. Joseph's but according to their website, their high-school enrollment isn't even 400, so it isn't like they are a massive school with thousands of athletes to choose from who then compete against smaller schools and lesser opponents just because they can.

I tend to agree with many folks on this message board that the way soccer is done in this state could benefit from a structural overhaul. No state championship game should be that one-sided - in theory it should be the best game of the year.

That being said, it isn't right to knock the St. Joseph's team or what they accomplished either. The reality is that they didn't magically become good overnight - they built a program over many years that has now found success. I remember 10+ years ago when that school just opened and their soccer team was co-ed, and look where they are at now.

I've posted this before, but here it is again:
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.

The narrative here is, well, interesting to say the least. There is one aspect of missing in the discussion. All points mentioned are valid. There are some points not mentioned. Reality check- St. Josephs beat a team that was clearly lacking in fundamental knowledge, skills, technical ability and physical ability. The lower state was filled with co-ed teams that were not much worse. The argument about St Josephs or other private schools having unfair advantage just does not pass muster when the score of a state final is 12-0. There is a greater problem here. Schools should not field teams that can not compete. It is a subtle cruelty to do so. Christ Church was in 10 straight state championships and the worst blowout was a 9-1 win against Williston Elko in the first 1A state championship in 2001. Coincidentally Blackville-Hilda played Christchurch in 2002 for the state championship and lost 4-1. The BH team from that year had a record of 12-9 with a schedule made by playing some pretty good teams from various classifications. The Christchurch team from 2002 had an All-American Duke signee and had beaten a number of very good teams from bigger schools, including two state finalists that year. The following two years Buford played Christchurch and competed. Academic Magnet and Lincoln were in the state finals in the years following and were involved in very competitive finals.
So here we are speaking of the injustice towards schools having to play against private schools in state finals? How about the reality of what really happened recently? If a school and community can not or will not make the commitment necessary to develop and maintain a competitive program, in any sport, than it should not field one. It is cruel to the kids. To tell kids to be proud of getting humiliated in the state finals and convincing them that it was a great accomplishment to get there is just wrong, especially in light of the level of play involved getting there.

I sat behind a young man from the Blackville-Hilda community. He said that they really don't have a club that the kids play for and everyone was so proud that they made it to the championship game. To get beat 12-0?

St. Joseph's has mostly premier level players (CESA and Academy) and should either move up to 3A, 4A or go to SCISA.

I don't know how all this works but it obviously needs to be based on more than enrollment.

CESA/Academy + no club level soccer = 12-0 beat down

Perhaps CESA or another club/ organization could start initiatives to bring development to the areas that have little or no soccer development going on? Next year Blackville Hilda is realigned into the upper state so they will not be back.
The argument against the private schools still does not float. Do we hear these schools making the argument when they get hammered in football or basketball? No Did we hear complaints when a school like Blackville Hilda wins 100 straight girls basketball games? No. Making the private schools or the SCHSL the villains is not the answer.

There is an easy way to solve this...all private schools play in the private school league. The end. See how easy that was? There is no doubt that they have an unfair advantage in specific sports depending on the school. It is not fair to have them play against a public school that can't recruit.

I remember when Bishop England was beaten in football by Hanahan something like 70 to 0 a while back. There are numerous other stories like this in sports like football and basketball. Is there an unfair advantage there? Private schools are allowed to take any student who can pay tuition. So far there has not been a rampant factual basis for these schools paying kids to go to school for the sole purpose of athletics. In the cases that have been discovered, very few, they have been dealt with.

The SCHSL is not alone among state associations in feeding the fallacy that enrollment size is the No. 1 predictor of outcome and, therefore, the only way to set up leagues and state competitions.
The reality is, private/parochial schools do not play by the same rules as the public counterparts. They have virtually unlimited enrollment areas AND the capacity to recruit student-athletes. Not all do. But some do. Mix that with better "resources," and then, as they like to say in the U.K., the cat's amongst the pigeons.
Allow me to add that this is NOT a uniquely private school phenomenon. For years, Summerville High School aggressively recruited kids for football, then ruthlessly redshirted many in the name of winning football games. The results were stunning until others started doing the same sort of things. Exhibit A: Goose Creek football.
All of this having been said, there is at least some truth to the sentiment that it's up to each school to field and support competitive teams. Not sure that necessarily implies the course of discontinuing "non-competitive" programs. Obviously, B-H was "competitive" with many of its peers, as it DID get to the title game. And I'd venture a guess that it rolled up a few one-sided scores of its own along the way.