SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP State Cup Final Fours

Chico

Once again you have somehow managed to manipulate data in order to reinforce your agenda at denouncing anything positive about CUFC. I have reread several of your postings on many topics and, while there is weak attempt to hide it, a clear anti CUFC tone is evident. I do not know why you would have this and I may of course be wrong but that is how it reads. I simply do not have the time to make as many comments as you do but i can tell from reading yours that you probably never played or coached soccer. % points, Standard Devation, Variances etc have and never will be used in converstations or debates with true soccer lovers and understanders.

Yeah gamecock! I am sure that post had a lot of effectivity on Chico. That will fix him and his Evil Red CESA for good!

I don't believe Chico has any hidden agenda that is meant to denounce everything CUFC does. I think the way he makes it looks that way comes down to a decision made by CUFC to play most of their "B" teams at the challenge level. If you look solely at the winning percentages of these "B" teams, than that looks to be a mistake. There obviously two sides to that arguement that have already been thouroughly discussed. These "B" teams dilute the winning percentages of the club overall, which makes it easy to argue that CUFC had a poor winning percentage and a sub-par year as a club in its first season. I don't feel this is the case. I think the fact that CUFC is sending the 2nd most amount of teams to the final four is a sign of success. I think its blatantly obvious that CESA is on a whole other level then any other club in the state. The bar for merging clubs was set extremely high by CESA when they did so a few years ago, but I don't feel that is a fair standard of comparison for clubs who have merged after them. When CESA merged there was no one super club in the state of South Carolina. There were a few superior clubs, but no one dominant club. When CESA merged to make the first "super club" the state championship sweep was a much easier task (not trying to take anything from that. it was amazing) But clubs that have merged since then have an unfair standard of comparison. With a super club already established, these new clubs would have to unseat a majority of these defending champions, a very daunting task, in order to be considered successful. Sorry this post is so scatter brained.... Had a lot on my mind when I posted

gamecock44: I know math can be scary (it's scary for me a lot of the time...later today I have to revise some of these numbers because someone called out an error!), so let me make it even simpler.

Assume Clemson had 100 teams competing in the ACC. Now assume your beloved Gamecocks had 50 teams competing in the SEC. Finally, assume that the ACC and SEC have the same number of teams competing.

You see the inequity, right? You would expect Clemson to win twice as many games and titles as USC. Thus, if Clemson won 5 titles and USC won 4, you wouldn't fire the USC athletic director and give the Clemson athletic director a big raise based on her/his success versus USC's results -- to judge the two programs you'd simply divide by the number of teams competing.

Since Clemson would have twice as many teams competing as USC, you'd expect Clemson to do twice as well. [Note: This assumes the same number of teams played overall in the SEC and ACC, and that both leagues were similarly competitive -- the analogy works because for youth soccer we're talking about the same league.]

Now...taking this back to this subject...it's absolutely fair to call out that CUFC is a first-year club and Bridge is a second-year club and thus you should compare the first year results of each. It's also absolutely fair to make judgments of programs based on more than winning percentage, for example, completeness (e.g., the size of the program and its offerings), development (e.g., how many kids get college scholarships), and the like are fair criteria.

My impression is that you [and the CUFC web page] want to find great results and tout them. Nothing wrong with that -- it's the heart of marketing and publicity [although I thought that some of the language was disrespectful to CRSA and LCSC, and possibly violated SCYSA rules, I figured that was just my opinion]. But the difference between setting expectations and measuring against them and publicity/marketing is tremendous. That may be the crux of the issue here -- to measure the success of a program, I think you have to do that based on some legitimate expectations rather than sifting through facts looking for those that are favorable only to your favorite entity.

Corrected numbers giving the difference between what you'd expect given the number of teams competing in challenge/premier and the number of teams in the final 4 -- positive is good and negative is bad -- the old ones were wrong because I counted U13-U14 teams in them (thanks futbol(soccer)!):

CESA 34%
CUFC -42%
Bridge 4%
LCSC -167%
MPSC 29%
DSC -113%
CASC -7%
CFC -60%
NASC 47%

Also, the new numbers of teams competing in each club.

CESA 16
CUFC 16
Bridge 9
LCSC 5
MPSC 4
DSC 4
CASC 2
CFC 3
NASC 1

In terms of "making final 4 success, actual versus expectations", the three clubs doing the best were NASC, CESA, and MPSC.

In terms of "completeness", the two clubs far and away getting the highest grades are CUFC and CESA -- both fielded "A" and "B" teams in all 15-18 age groups.

2004striker: I know you're poking at me, and I used high-fallutin' language to express a simple concept, and I deserve it. I'm hoping the Clemson/USC example suffers less from the overly-complex language.

>>[Midlandsoccer17] [...] comes down to a decision made by CUFC to play most of their "B" teams at the challenge level. If you look solely at the winning percentages of these "B" teams, than that looks to be a mistake. There obviously two sides to that arguement that have already been thouroughly discussed. These "B" teams dilute the winning percentages of the club overall, which makes it easy to argue that CUFC had a poor winning percentage and a sub-par year as a club in its first season. I don't feel this is the case. I think the fact that CUFC is sending the 2nd most amount of teams to the final four is a sign of success.<<

This is an incredibly viable argument. I would couch it in slightly different terms. CUFC is only the second club in South Carolina to be able to field "A" and "B" teams in all age groups in challenge. That's an accomplishment. It speaks to the tagline of CUFC "All Youth All Soccer All Levels"

It's funny -- but when you present the most unbiased facts you can lots of folks think you hate their favorite organization. Some CESA folks have complained to me because I called out that they were below average in RIIIPL-East winning percentage. Some Bridge folks have complained to me as have other clubs.

>>The bar for merging clubs was set extremely high by CESA when they did so a few years ago, but I don't feel that is a fair standard of comparison for clubs who have merged after them. When CESA merged there was no one super club in the state of South Carolina. There were a few superior clubs, but no one dominant club. When CESA merged to make the first "super club" the state championship sweep was a much easier task (not trying to take anything from that. it was amazing)<<

Agreed. I thought that the people who were talking about CUFC matching CESA in its first year were on drugs -- for precisely that reason.

>>But clubs that have merged since then have an unfair standard of comparison. With a super club already established, these new clubs would have to unseat a majority of these defending champions, a very daunting task, in order to be considered successful. Sorry this post is so scatter brained.... Had a lot on my mind when I posted <<

Again, agreed that it is unfair to expect CUFC to sweep the state championships this year. If you want to judge CUFC, then you have to set expectations that are more reasonable than that. However, just as it isn't fair to compare CESA and CUFC in terms of first-year state cup results, I don't think it's fair to compare CUFC and Bridge, or CUFC and LCSC, or CUFC and CRSA in terms of state cup results.

If you want to compare clubs, you are going to have to figure out ways to do that that are more nuanced -- or you fall into the trap of setting your expectations way too high [CUFC should sweep the state cup] or way too low [CUFC should be thrilled that it has more final four teams than Bridge.]

I believe that every club has its weak points based on expectations. For Bridge, I think it's completeness -- particularly on the girls side. For CESA, I think it's the growth of the recreation program and getting into the USYSA nationals. For CUFC, I think it's the "B" and "C" teams of the club. The issue I see at this point is that I see Bridge addressing their issue actively, I see CESA getting millions for more fields to increase recreation and making some strides [not enough!] to get into nationals, but I haven't been able to get from anyone a reasoned discussion as to the systemic issues underlying what occurred this year in challenge league with the CUFC "B" teams -- thus my concern.

Another thing I find interesting - CESA has 5 of its 8 B teams in the final 4. No other club in the state has even 1 B team in the final 4.
Previously it was stated that when clubs merge, all of the strong players from the old teams are put in the A teams to make them stronger and the weak players are left on the B teams to make them weaker than the average. If this is the case, how did CESA manage to get 5 B teams in the final 4?

It seems to me in its simplest terms it is all going to come down to who is the finalists and victors this weekend. If CUFC has more finalists and victors then the 2 clubs combined did last year then I would consider the merger successful. I'm sure there are plenty of other measures of success that Chico has pointed out, but that is the clearest one for me. We can also use the same form of measurement for CESA and Bridge.

Hey Chico you've done the Math for club comparison this year, but have you done it for teams making the different stages last year vs. this year.