SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Club U13+ Challenge League Performance To Date

So coach P... if Chico had posted a stat chart that compared Tega Cay and Discoveries, instead of CUFC & LEX, showing two local clubs and one doing better than another, would you still have posted on this topic regardless of the clubs compared?

Still looks like your defending to me. I'd be careful if I was you. Last guy on here that tried to defend CUFC was "Chapindad" and he took such a beating on the scsoccer that he had to pack up and move out and start his own message board where he is the number 1 poster of topics and replies to HIMSELF!

What's wrong with defending his club? He coaches there so should'nt his loyalties lie with his club?

steve,
sounds like you have an unresolved beef with chapindad, and are trying to find someone to take it out on.....
Everyone in the forum has the right to his/her respective opinions and comments.

Steve: Honestly, I deeply appreciate what Coach P is doing on this message board. I don't think Coach P is any more biased than I am about CESA. He coaches in CUFC, I have a kid that plays in CESA, we both like the clubs with which we're associated, and we both have more knowledge of these clubs than others. Thus, it makes a tremendous amount of sense for him to participate. And I find Coach P's arguments to be rational and logical. When I post a set of data there are typically multiple interpretations of that data.

If it weren't for Coach P, I would have never understood that there was a CUFC strategy of "pushing" teams up in classification with the intent of team and player development. Does this strategy make sense? I don't know...to do a full analysis you'd probably have to look at goal differential in these games and drilling down further into posession and the like. However, if we assume that the goal differential is 2 or less without the use of a 10-0-0 system (packing the box), then it seems to me to be a viable strategy presuming that during the season you see a sharp trend upward in terms of winning percentage.

Are there other answers for what's going on at CUFC? Sure. Here's one off the top of my head. As noted several months ago, the average invitations issued per team was extremely high which could result in a weakening of challenge and classic teams since there is almost never the kind of depth in any club to generally sustain 18-20 elite players and still be competitive in challenge and classic. You could argue whether the best thing to do would be to increase playing time per child by reducing the elite numbers and simultaneously help the classic and challenge players through the distribution of the lower ranked elite players into their ranks.

The point really is that there isn't a single strategy for what's going on -- what clubs have to do is to choose a strategy, communicate the heck out of it, and then operationally execute on it.

In the end, however, I'll make several predictions. First, CUFC will do better than a 30% winning rate for the year -- it's early in the season and CUFC is a new club. Secondly, if they don't do better than 50%, then it's not a sustainable strategy to put kids on the field and have them repeatedly lose -- it simply puts too much pressure on the coach and the club. Third, if they can't do better across the board against LCSC (and CRSA), that they're going to lose players to those clubs -- after all, why play on the challenge team at CUFC and lose when you can play on the top team at LCSC or CRSA and win (or at least win more)? Simply putting more and more kids on your "elite" team isn't a long-term solution -- playing time is just too contentious an issue.

Chico,

I think several of these issues will work themselves out over time as the club matures. As the club builds more of a track record with assessing it's teams, you may very well see more of a balance in the different leagues and teams being placed in leagues where they are more competitive. However, this is just my opinion and I am certainly not representing the club's position on any of this.

Also, I think the number of players selected at tryouts was due to the newness of the club and the uncertainty about how many would accept the offers. I think this, too, may change as the club matures.

My team made the decision to play Challenge after quite a bit of discussion and research, talking to coaches whose teams had played Classic in this age group last year. I was already familiar with Challenge having coached in the League last season. I still believe it was the right decision, and, at least to this point, the players seem happy with the decision. They seem to prefer playing in the Challenge league over the Classic even if it means we do not win as many games.

Long time reader, first time posting. Let's call a spade a spade. What CUfC has done is to take their Challenge level teams and call them Elite; take their Classic level teams and call them Challenge; and, wherever they could get enough kids together (as well as parents willing to pay the freight, they took what would be a high end recreational team and called them Classic. Good marketing!!They sold it to the parents by telling them that the kids would develop better by playing at a higher level - ok, remains to be seen! By that token, every club in SC should take their teams and call them "Super-Duper Elite Premier Challenge" and then play them in the highest level league that will accept them. By their logic, that would be good for soccer in SC.

Truthfully, the only teams that can be assured that they are playing at the correct level are the RIIIP teams - because they actually had to win something to get there. Kudos to them! Everyone else at CUFC is playing at the level they are at by voice vote of the CUFC Board - period.

The only thing that will sort this out is if SCYSA would adopt a promotion/relegation system for Classic and Challenge - as they have already done for Challenge and Premier. Then, if a team is playing at a higher level, you can truly respect what they have accomplished. Without that, its a lot of bloviating opinion. So lets push for that.

Head Coach
Super Duper Elite Challenge Premier 90 Girls Blue Dynamo

Sepp, how 'bout a friendly? What level are your girls at again?

Seriously, you raise a great point about the promotion/relegation system. I don't know all the SCYSA history, so I don't know why this isn't in place. It may be because there are not very many teams at some age groups.

Promotion/relegation works well, but I have found the going rough with my daughter's U-15 team in NC. It's painful....much easier to stay up than it is to move up.

NCYSA last year only promoted one team from the second division to the first. We went 8-1 and went to the semi-finals of the state cup. Still didn't get us promoted. One team in our division beat us 3-2, and finished with a record of 9-0. I don't think they even entered the state cup. They got promoted, and we got left down. If we stub our toe again, we will stay down again despite having a relatively strong team. The system is not very forgiving.

But I understand what you are saying. I like the idea of earning your way into a competitive league/division. How about two up and two down?

Two up and two down would be the way to do it. The real trick would be in getting it started. I would say that you need a minimum of six teams in the Challenge Division. That way when the two premier teams come back in for state cup, you have a very robust 8 team tournament - with the two premier teams getting the top seed in each bracket. Also, that gives you a 10 game league schedule - plenty of time for tournaments and such.

If you don't have six teams in the Challenge division, then you adjust until you can get there.

Everyone else plays Classic, possibly in a Division I and division II lineup, if there are too many teams.

For the first year, SCYSA would have to asign teams based on where they played in the previous year and their overall record. After that, the system should do the sorting.

First two places in Div. I Classic go to Challenge. Bottom two Challenge go to Div. I Classic, etc. Would make for some interesting games in the Challenge Division at the end of each year.

Nah! It'll never happen. Makes too much sense. Better to stick with the unregulated chaos we have now.