SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP CUFC Tryout Analysis

One way to evaluate the initial success of a newly merged club is to understand whether the new club lost, stayed the same, or gained players in terms of its academy and select tryouts. A few years ago, when CESA was created out of GFC and SGU, I did this in response to someone who said that CESA had lost players and was fielding signficantly fewer teams. Doing the analysis, it turns out that they had about the same number of teams but that the teams had more players so it looked like they slighty gained in their number of academy and select players.

Which leads us to the question, how did CUFC do in their tryouts in terms of losing or gaining players? The table below shows what seems to be the teams that CSC and NECSA fielded before the merger and the new CUFC teams arising from tryouts.



It appears that CUFC is fielding about the same number of teams that CSC and NECSA did last year. That is success in and of itself. However, if we dig down one level deeper and look at how many players with issued invitations to join these teams, here's what we find.



The median team is 18 players [the average is close at 17.3]. These are huge teams. So it appears to me that CUFC gained players over CSC and NECSA last season. So at a high level it appears that CUFC was very successful in drawing players to the club's tryouts. In my opinion [and it's opinion only], that speaks to how hungry the Columbia area was for a club offering what is hoped to be better services.

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Disclaimer: I have no doubt that I made mistakes in compiling all of this. Corrections are welcome.

Chico,
very interesting data, thanks. Where did the data come from?

Flying Soccer: All of the data is from the CUFC web site at http://www.columbiaunitedfc.com

To paraphrase Donald Sutherland as he reviewed the troops in THE DIRTY DOZEN," They're pretty, but can they fight"?.

Chico..I thouht you were supposed to be a CESA pr man? Good job and interesting analysis.

Bdad...They dozen could and CUFC will. This is going to be a great club season.

He is but he also can present other sides of the argument. I can't believe I am going to say this but cudos to Chico for the above information and thought he put into it. I hope that CUFC will give CESA a run for their money and take many state championships away from them.

key word...."issued invitations" that does not mean that they will have acceptance across the board.

Anecdotal information tells me that all clubs in the area had large turnouts.

In my mind they stayed the same as was before. They have gained some good players specifically the U18 Pinasco's team will be stacked. The rest mostly the same.

I am already hearing about parents whose precious child did not make the elite team complaining and creating dual elite teams (???) next big hurdle for the club is the east-west training sessions. It is not fun going to Northeast Columbia at 6 PM on weekdays, think if you are in Chapin or further out.

We shall see how it pans out...

who are some of the u18 players that will help them to be "stacked". I heard kropp but thats it.

>>[futbol(soccer)] key word...."issued invitations" that does not mean that they will have acceptance across the board.<<

It seemed to me that they had this incorporated into their plans; after all, carrying a median of 18 players on a roster across an entire club would be extremely tough to manage in terms of playing time.

>>It is not fun going to Northeast Columbia at 6 PM on weekdays, think if you are in Chapin or further out.<<

One of the things you see in Greenville for the last decade [predating CESA] was a more competitive attitude about team selection from players [and the parents who support them.] At an early age, players tended to play at the closest fields. However, as the players got older, there was a self-selection of the better players to the better teams, regardless of field location.

While you see some of that in Columbia, it's still not at the point you saw in Greenville 5+ years ago. Maybe CUFC will jump-start that attitude for more ambitious Columbia players.

>>We shall see how it pans out... <<

Absolutely! There are a lot of factors that go into longer-term success, but the most important are execution, execution, and execution. The quantity and quality of training and the like are incredibly important. It should be an interesting 2006-2007 season...