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Even though both teams are very good, if the best of each team were combined by process of merger there could be a very strong team.

And if after the merger, the best players from that team merged with the best players from CESA, it would be even better. Next year, they can merge with Bridge for a statewide powerhouse. Unfortunately, they would have no one to play, and a lot of good players would be excluded, but that's okay.

Carrying this to its logical conclusion, Arsenal and Chelsea will be merging as the only team to be able to challenge the proposed Real Madrid / Barcelona juggernaut.

Sometimes, competition within the same area results in good games. Let it go.

If CSC, Necsa, and Lexington merged for a "columbia Bridge" club, then it would make for a competitive premier club from the midlands, that is what I'd like to see.

[lurker] And if after the merger, the best players from that team merged with the best players from CESA, it would be even better. [...]

This is known as the "slippery slope" logical fallacy, in particular what is known as the "causal version" of this fallacy. This type is based upon the claim that a controversial type of action will lead inevitably to some admittedly bad type of action. It is the slide from A to Z via the intermediate steps B through Y that is the "slope", and the smallness of each step that makes it "slippery." [Source: Fallacy Files.]

I prefer the following argument to make your case: if the best players in a specific age bracket and gender cared enough to play on a single team, then there is nothing stopping them from all talking to each other and trying out for that single team. Until this begins to consistently occur, there is apparently little demand for mergers to occur.

What about the CRSA kids from downtown? They are pretty good too, and several that grew up at Congaree are starring at CSC now - especially on the girls side!

Add Discoveries, Northside and Tega Cay to the CSC/Necsa/Lexington merger as well. This will eliminate another whole region of the state and allow scheduling to be so much easier (less teams to worry about).

Of course, eventually (with apologies to The Slippery Slope Theory) there will not be any teams left to play.

CESA...Bridge...COLA

Round-robin matches every Saturday!

"People can have the Model T in any color - so long as it's black." [Henry Ford]

Here's an interesting question: does the balkanization of soccer clubs in the Fort Mill area lead to more choice or less choice for players?

Or, to put this another way, if you have 100 manufacturers each producing approximately the same product, do you have more choice than if you have only a handful of manufacturers producing very different products?

With 3 clubs in Rock Hill area, there are of course more choices for the players. But what is the result? The result is the same as in Cola. area..........dilution of the talent pool to such a degree that you produce average, but not great teams.
Chico, regarding your statement that players should talk among themselves about all moving to one club to produce a great team.....kids do a lot of 'talking' about what they may want, but are most often quite reluctant to back up that 'talking'. Plus they aren't the best planners/motivators in the world!

Chico, not saying the consolidation of the three clubs in the Fort Mill area would be a bad thing. It would be nice to have another entity that could stay on the same field with CESA.

2004striker has consistently professed that the state of South Carolina needs 3 Super Clubs (Charleston-Columbia-CESA).

I say.............why not 4?

2004striker: I'm not sure that I agree that more clubs means more choices for players if those clubs are not offering different services to those players. It seems to me that the only way you get more choices is through different service offerings - and it doesn't matter if it's one big club or lots of small clubs. But I could be missing something here.

The one thing I noticed in Greenville before CESA was ever formed was that many [most?] of the most ambitious players cared enough to typically gravitate toward the best team. I can remember SGU having an amazing team in one gender/age bracket, or GFC having an amazing team in one gender/age bracket -- but it seems to me less common for their to be two strong teams in one gender/age bracket.

I guess I'm positing [and only positing] that the issue with offering higher levels of competitive soccer in the Columbia area may be [and only ***may be***!] fewer people who want those services when compared to the upstate or the coast. In other words, the people who run the Columbia clubs might be dead right when they decide not to merge, because they know that for their customers convenience and other factors are much more important than competing regionally or nationally.