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Hurst66: That U15B team from DSC seems as if they can stay on the field with anyone!!!

I do understand...and maybe the issue is less having three clubs in this area than having one club that is really trying to compete regionally or nationally. In the past, that's been Charlotte [CSC], but they seem to be getting weaker instead of stronger. I hear great things about some of the teams at FC Carolina Alliance out of Charlotte; maybe they'll be able to step up more in the coming months and years. But of course, I'd love to see a South Carolina club up there do it -- for the simple, incredibly biased reason that I'm from South Carolina!

Chico,
I sadly concur with your assessment that the people who run the Cola. area clubs do believe that they are adequately serving their communities. I do believe, however, that CSC once welcomed a merger that would serve all the area interests. Yet, the other area clubs have too many various self concerns to be interested in a larger, grander vision for soccer in Cola. There is just not the passion here to produce high quality teams.....the kind of passion that is quite evident at CESA and now possibly beginning at Bridge.

2004striker, which clubs are looking after their self interests in Columbia? Seems to me that with five or six clubs (NECSA, CSC, CRSA, Lexington, Lower Lexington) in town that each have different goals and objectives. Can you explain a little furhter and be more descript? What more do you expect?

Things sure have changed since my son played at CMSA!

Cola fan,
Maybe self interest is not the correct word, because they naturally have the right to develop their own objectives and pursuits. And you are exactly right that there are 4,5 clubs well serving their respective communities and striving to accomplish their respective objectives. Maybe that is all that is possible and desired in Cola. It is just my own personal desire to see their objectives be broader and grander, and to seek to field the strongest teams from the Cola area. But again, that is not one of the objectives in Cola., as it is at CESA & BridgeFA. It is all a function of what is desired by the total soccer community in Cola., and at this moment in time the DOCs and parents only desire satisfactory, convenient soccer. But there I go again with the merger talk.........I will never learn. I attach for your review the copy of the letter posted here last year regarding CSC's efforts to work with the other clubs to set and seek higher goals for the Cola. soccer area. At least one DOC was interested in a higher quality of soccer in Cola. Yet, I do not believe there was much progress:

<posted February 13, 2004> Attached you guys will notice a letter I sent out to all Club Presidents and DoC's in the Columbia Metro Area! I want you all to know that we (CSC) would love to make this happen...the offer and on the table and hopefully we can get the ball rolling "together" here in Columbia?

....Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen,
As you are well aware of by now St. Giles United Soccer Club and Greenville Futbol Club are well on their way to merging the two clubs into one super club. However, there are ways, that we in Columbia could unite our resources without taking away from anyone else. I feel at this time that Columbia Soccer Club has taken some steps to be just a slight bit ahead of the top clubs in Columbia and maybe in South Carolina compared to SGU and GFC. I'm not saying that Lexington, NECSA, Congaree and others are not, but I feel that CSC has taken some huge steps to provide the Columbia-Metro area kids an opportunity to play at the next level. Our coaching staff is maintains a minimum USSF C license or higher with most staff members carrying B and A or equivalent. We currently own our facilities with a 6 field complex, lights, paved parking, restroom and dining facilities. Also, we have received grant money to acquire two additional lite regulation fields along with two U10 fields as well. I know that all of you have great facilities as well! I know what great things you have to offer and I'm not disputing this, but if we shared resources: coaching, training, facilities, etc...the greater Columbia area would surely benefit? Please don't miss understand me. I'm not asking you to merge under CSC and drop your club affiliation. I'm asking you to consider our options. (What are those you may ask...?) I am proposing that we continue training the U11-14 at your various clubs for now. However, U15 and above would unite and play under one banner (which ever we decide) to compete at the regional and national level. While doing this our top coaches would be in charge of training/coaching the elite teams, while keeping their other club commitments as well. There are tons of options to work off this and this is only one idea! I'm sure you have your own and that is great, too!!! I think we all want to hear those! So, are we interested?
Sure, in the past we've all had a team here or there to challenge the upstate as well as a regional/national competitor. However, the time has come for us to put the KIDS first in our decision making. We can always work out logistics, money, training, etc...but we need to act on this to continue our development of the midlands youth. Together we can make this possible. I'm not doing this for personal gain, professional gain or any other alternative motives. Like all of you, I'm here for the kids and the advancement and development of our youth players to challenge and compete on a state, region and national level. As long as well keep this in mind and hire people with our same goals and vision... we will always keep our focus on the KIDS!

I have been in discussion with Kevin Demers from US Club Soccer and I'm very excited about our options to take our situation to the next level. He would like to meet with all of us. The sooner the better. He is working on a presentation and meeting for us to guide us (as a unbias professional) through this process. He has worked with Club soccer for numerous years and been in dealings with the likes of Concorde Fire, CASL, Charlotte and others. He, like us, is in it for the best interest of the kids. Attached is his email if you would like to contact him personally.

I look forward to hearing from all of you very soon. Please respond either way in regards to whether or not you would like to meet and your feelings regarding the meeting.

Respectfully Yours in the Game,

Eddie Crosby

Cola Fan: I can't answer the question concerning self-interests, because I have trouble with the semantics of the phrase. To me, all clubs pursue their self-interests, which is primarily to offer the services that their customers want or that they perceive that their customers will want in the future.

However, of the five clubs you note, it appears to me that the only one I think I truly understand is Lower Lexington -- it seems to be a geographically-oriented club that offers convenience to those in a traditionally underserved area. The one that I understand the second best [I think!] is CRSA; it seems to be primarily a high school feeder club.

CSC, Lexington, and NECSA have often appeared to me to be more of a loose aggregation of teams pursuing wildly different objectives than clubs in which there are club-wide objectives to which teams subscribe. I have seen CSC attempt to step up to a more cohesive model in which the club as a whole pursues regional competition; I believe that this is the reason that in the past they were more open to non-organic change than other clubs.

I have no doubt that I'm ignorant on this score; I hope someone will correct any of my misinterpretations or misinterpretations with facts.

This has quickly gotten outside the subject of U18 challenge information. However as with 2004striker, I will put my two cents in.

I believe the model that will work best for the Cola area is a Bridge model, assuming it is succesful. This will provide the 'choice" that Chico is referring to for the player (and the parents who foot the bill) as to the direction they would like to go.

The problem is not that dissimilar to ODP pool.
(A whole different subject.)

Nevertheless, Chico if you look at the map again, you will note that the majority of the smaller clubs do not offer anything above classic ball.

At the challenge and Premier level of play, CESA leads the way with 25 teams (23%), CSC is next with 14(13%), Bridge 11(10%), NECSA 8 (7%), Lex 7 (7%) with thee remaining clubs all having 5 or less

61% of the teams in the higher levels come from 5 clubs. 3 of these clubs are in the Cola area.

A merger of LCSC and CSC (geography)will yield the same numnber of teams as CESA without loss of numbers, and one can argue increased competitivenes.

Other numbers:

25% of the teams come from the low country.
42% from the midtstate (N. Augusta to Rock Hill area)
33% from the piedmont
(all classical definitions of the old 3 tier division of the state)

Assuming 16 players per team - there are 1712 players in the upper levels.

Looking at these numbers a set-up similar to bridge in Cola may benefit all involved without loss of numbers and teams.

futbol(soccer): Great post and excellent breakdown/analysis.

There is little doubt that some form of cooperation, whether it be through merger or affiliation, could theoretically increase the competitiveness of Columbia-area soccer. The fundamental question I have is whether there are enough players [and the parents that support them] who care about increasing the competitiveness of Columbia-area soccer to make this worthwhile.

There seem to me to be two fundamental models of Columbia-area soccer clubs that appear on this board from time to time:

• That they are led by power-hungry idiots who care more for their financial empire than "the kids."
• That they are offering what their customers ["the kids"] want and that an incredibly small minority of outspoken parents criticize but are not representative of the whole.

I honestly don't believe the former is an adequate model; while it has the advantage of being simple, I don't believe that all of these people giving their time and energy are either stupid or only after short-term financial gain.

When SSC and JIYSC formed Bridge each had the advantage of having a similar vision -- of offering services to more highly ambitious kids. When SGU and GFC formed CESA each had the advantage of a similar vision -- SGU had their "2006" program to win a regional championship and GFC had done the incredibly rare thing of winning a regional championship. But underpinning all of this was the fact that SGU and GFC also decided that they wanted to be able to reach more kids at all competitive levels than they could by themselves.

In Columbia, it's much tougher to find clubs with this type of similarity of vision. CSC at a club level is largely unencumbered with municipal fields and with local politics and seems to have the clearest vision. NECSA and LCSC at a club level are encumbered -- while not as much as MPSC, they would still have significant hurdles to overcome -- more so for LCSC than for NECSA, from what I remember of the political firestorm that those new fields potentially represent. So even if the leaders of NECSA and LCSC agreed to merge or affiliate with CSC based on offering services to more highly ambitious players [which they spurned a year or so ago], I think it would be tough to execute. I do agree with you that an affiliate model in this circumstance is more appropriate than a merged model; I'm simply not sure if there is a common enough vision in order to create and sustain an affiliation.

futbol,
Just a brief note about the proposed alliance model. I do not believe that an alliance with just CSC & LCSA would improve overall competitiveness in the Cola area. NECSA should be a part of the equation, as well.

2004striker

I do not disagree, I just used the geography as a means of combating the travel argument someone would have. Adding NECSA into the mix creates in my mind a potential powerhouse.

Chico
Municipal restrictions aside (if any). Although I agree on both points about the Cola brain trust, I have to say that the former seems to be more prevalent than the latter (at least from discussions I have had in the past). Pearce and Andrew did a fine job in the upstate. I'll let Bear comment on the Bridge issue (I have my own opinion about a CofC force, which I will keep to myself) as it is still in its infancy.

The key is to set a specific rule such as Bridge by not doing classic and CESA by keeping Classic labeled teams in Classic, that will make the "classic" club comfortable in the service it provides.

So what is the key to these two clubs. Both have strong willed people who decided what was best for the area and stuck to it (in CESA's case you can argue econmically succesful as well). There is no such individual or group in the Midlands, except for one person, who I would think could stand to gain the most benefit, but has been strangely mum. I believe if this individual were to galvanize the clubs a succesful bridge model could arise with little to no loss in numbers.

I guess I am starting to sound like 04striker now.

There is one bit of data that will need to reviewed in 2 years. How many players drop out because they do not want to go through the travel and cost of playing CESA and Bridge if they cannot break the upper echelon.

Futbol,
I do agree that NECSA would make the alliance a possible powerhouse. And you don't want to sound too much like me cause you will subjected to the wrath of the social conservatives in Cola. soccer circles who desire convenient, satisfactory soccer.