SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Traditional Clubs VS Power Clubs

How hard will it be for a traditional soccer club/team to attract quality players with the success of CESA and Bridge ? I find it hard to believe that a quality player would have a desire to play for a mediocre club/team.

Next to impossible. The big names of CESA and Bridge attract many quality soccer players not only from the Greenville area or the Summerville/Mnt. pleasant area, but also from columbia, anderson, clemson, and in some cases Georgia and probably from other areas in lower state concerning Bridge. One reason a quality player wants to play for a prestigous club such as CESA and Bridge, is so they can be seen by scouts on a regional or national level. Now in the classic leagues there are other small clubs that can dominate such as Aiken and Tri-county, but in the challenge and premier leauges its just going to get harder and harder for traditional teams/clubs to become real power houses because there can only be so many great clubs in one state.

I know of several players from smaller clubs that only offer classic level soccer who travel considerable distances to play for challenge teams. Obviously these players will be thinking of trying out for one of the two "Super clubs", especially if there is an expansion in the Columbia area.

This will make the try-out process much more convoluted. Should all players with ambition try out for CESA / Bridge, and then if they don't make it onto the premier or challenge team, go back to another club? I assume that most clubs will have try outs about the same time, so this makes the logistics very complicated. CESA and Bridge would be doing everyone a favor if they held their try outs and announced their selections a week before everyone else.

Should parity even be a consideration for SCYSA / SCSCL / the various Executive Directors of clubs as they develop their mission statements?

Do Bridge and CESA now replace ODP as the primary mechanism for "getting seen"? (Maybe they did a while ago, and SCYSA hasn't noticed yet...)

So many considerations for the ambitious player (and parent). Keep repeating, "It's just a game, it's just a game..."

With this expansion to Columbia Cesa is considering, will all players come to one place to tryout and with practice the columbia kids, in my mind must come to Greenville at least once a week to get a practice in with their team, then practicing at the Cesa facility in columbia the other days. is that how its going to work?

It's my understanding that that is what they do now, only not at "Cesa" facilities. I believe that there will be actual teams in Columbia. At least at the classic and rec level.

Futbol G-
Previous press release by CESA states Columbia based teams. That means CESA will have teams that train and play home games in columbia hence CESA Columbia. I guess.

If that is the case just what does CESA intend to do by moving into the Cola area? If the top players are driving to CESA to play on the top teams (which they are) and if the players from the cola area are going to be playing on "their own" teams why would they want to leave one of the established clubs in the area? Who will the adacemy kids play? will they have to drive to greenville every weekend or will they only practice and never get any "games"? It sounds to me that CESA will be doing nothing but diluting the already diluted talent pool in the cola area. If CSC, NECSA, LCSC can not get the talent together what makes anyone think CESA can? That brngs up the question...who will coach them? The established clubs in Cola already employee most of the top coaches in the area and I'm sure they are under some sort of annual contract. So what is CESA going to do come in and throw more money their way to get them to break contracts and "jump" clubs? If that is the case I would hope SCYSA would step in because nothing good can come from that...It seems that the coaches and the clubs forget that it's all about the kids not the clubs or coaches.

Lots of questions/opinions; I'll give you my personal opinions on a few:

• Why would any player want to leave one club to join another? The only reason I would think anyone would switch clubs would be if a club delivered a much higher value to a player.
• In terms of "diluting the talent pool"; anytime you have more than one club, you are theoretically "diluting the talent pool." In this same way, Foothills, Furman, CESA, CFC, ASA, and others "dilute" the talent pool in the Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson area. In reality, it's about offering higher value services to kids -- and if you do it right, increasing the talent pool by increasing the penetration of soccer into underserved areas.
• If [Columbia-area clubs] can't get the talent together what makes anyone think [another club] can? There are two ways to look at the problem: trying to "force" parents/players together to increase the depth of the talent pool or trying to increase the depth of the talent pool through development. Since there's no way that any club can "force" parents/players together in the Columbia area, my guess would be to look toward development.
• Coaches breaking contracts. If a coach breaks a contract, then the club itself should have recourse (e.g., legal, SCYSA, whatever); just as if a club breaks a contract with a coach. Coaches are adults and should be treated as adults -- they have to honor their contracts -- just as clubs have to honor their contracts. There's not much wiggle room here (except for that implicit in any legal/arbitration-based system.)
• It's all about the kids not the clubs or coaches. It's hard for me to grasp the argument that multiple clubs offering different services represents a threat to my children that live in Columbia. However, multiple clubs offering the same services does not offer my children living in Columbia much at all.

Bluntly, folks, the Columbia area might be great for certain teams but to date it's been not so good in my experience in terms of being "for the kids" in any general way. For example, I've heard from some parents right now in Lexington that there are kids that want to play high school but are afraid of not being able to stay on (or even get back on) their club team because their club coach will "kick them off and not let them rejoin." I thought this was highly unusual; but in researching this I found the following post where something similar was described by another parent almost three years ago at an entirely different club. Bluntly, I'd like to see a high-level club (or clubs!) in the Columbia area in which more focus is given to the value delivered to kids rather than on the value delivered to clubs.

>> [lurker] Should parity even be a consideration for SCYSA / SCSCL / the various Executive Directors of clubs as they develop their mission statements?<<

Parity within what area? A municipality? South Carolina? Region III? The United States? Etc.

I vote at least "The United States." Let's not automatically condemn children living in South Carolina from having the opportunities other children in other states have.

I agree completely that SC players need to have an opportunity to be competitive at the highest level. I fully support what the "super-clubs" are doing to make that happen. (Plus, I love watching them play when they are on an adjacent field to my classic team.)

However, in my opinion, what these clubs have done is create another informal tier in the soccer club hierarchy. There is now classic, challenge, CESA / Bridge and premier. To progress from classic to premier, a player needs to go through one of the two big teams.

I'm a parent of a good player in a town without a challenge team. We've discussed the possibility of spending a few hours a week in the car to have him play on a challenge team. But, looking at the results, if that team is not CESA or Bridge, it makes it very hard to justify the cost. And even if he was good enough to make the roster of CESA or Bridge, that's way too far for us.

My question concerning the mission statements of SCYSA, SCSCL and the clubs is one of ownership of the process for making South Carolina competitive at the next level. It appears that two clubs have taken it upon themselves to make this happen. And that's great. But, does it make the ODP (and therefore SCYSA) irrelevant? And does that hurt the goal of providing a league within SC where any team can start the season knowing they have a shot of finishing in better than third place?