SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP SC Challenge Cup

Regarding CASL, I just stumbled across this on the NC message boards:

While CASL has 26 HS-age (U15-18) Classic teams this year, they also have 47 HS-age rec teams (admittedly these play 9-a-side, but at least they have somewhere to play) and 53 Challenge teams (though a couple from FVAA and TUSA are in that count).

Chico,

After the first cut of ODP NCYSA has something like 75 field players and 10 keepers in my sons age group. After the first cut!!!!!

For SC to get more competitve we need more kids playing rec soccer at U6. We need to identify the better players and get them playing in an Academy environment at U8ish. We need to double the amount of home grown "elite" players (those legitimately capable of starting on a competitive Challenge team). We need a Premier outlet of more than 1 CLub or 2 to showcase those players.

You correctly took me to task last week for allowing incremental goal setting to limit my ability to serve the market. So how about this? Rather than just CESA and Bridge with an ersatz CUFC thrown in for good measure.....

If your goal is to GROW SC soccer......you need whole organizations like CESA in every major "metro" area of the state. York County, Columbia, GSP, Grand Stand, Charleston. Imagine if you had 5 CESA's instead of 2? Imagine the players that would be created within the Palmeto state?

If you limit yourself to CESA and Bridge and CUFC......

And if your central argument regarding constraints on elite player develoipment being the development of rec programs....well, how will CESA grow rec programs in York COunty? Or how will Bridge effect what is happening in Hilton Head or N. Myrtle BEach?

If you assume a static player pool.....then 2, maybe 3 "super clubs" is probably the way to go. But..........I would argue that if you create 2-3 super CLubs.....you will condemn yourself to a static player pool.

If you want a vibrant and growing player pool......you need competitive places for them to play.

8 NC Super CLubs: CASL, CSC, CUFC, SCSA, Greensboro, Goldstar, TFC, Triangle United.

2 SC Super CLubs: CESA and Bridge

7 NC Medium CLubs: FCCA, N Meck, MUSA, HFC, Winston Salem, FVAA, Cape Fear

2 SC Medium CLubs: CUFC, Mount Plesant

Bridge- Super Club?

Daddy,

Not sure that Chico is sold on the fact that York County has a population significant enough to support a super club. He's done some demographic analysis before and I think, in his eyes, the numbers come up short.

Personally, I'd like to think in terms of quality...not quantity. Are the facitlities, coaching and infrastructure there??? I believe so but everyone would have to get on the same page. Would the recreational base be as large as what CESA and CASL have...probably not.

Chico,

here is where I got the 75% number from it comes from the website that you link in your first post in this thread:

CESA: CESA continues to dominate South Carolina youth soccer in 2006 producing 50% of all finalists (the same as in 2005) and achieving an all-time high in terms of champions (75%). The major question at CESA with respect to continued improvement within the state is how to improve its Challenge and Classic teams such that they are either consistently the second or third best team in South Carolina

I guess my error is that when I read/hear 2006 Championships I am thinking Fall. I think the 75% must come from Spring and Fall 2006. My mistake in reading something but not reading it.

thanks for correcting me. I bow to the master of the message board!

Well, forget YC for a second, 'cause my point is more than that.

Do you look at how things are and try to build on the status quo? I would think this is what Chico referred to as incrementalism.

Or, do you scrap what you have and throw away the roadmap....and start all over.

Who woulda thunk a few years ago......that St Giles and GFC would merge and change the landscape of SC soccer? Who'd a thunk....that a year later a different model named Bridge would spring up in a different part of the State?

I'm simply saying.....that the potential is there in all the places I named......to do what CESA has done. For all their talk of bringing in players from outside of the GSP area, understand that those teams are still overwhelmingly populated by kidd from the GSP area. They have outperformed Columbia and Charleston because of better organization and vision. No magic....nothing in the water.

So go back to Chico's stated desire which is getting more kids playing soccer and developing more top level players as a by product of that......its like in manufacturing: you don't PUSH a product thru.....you PULL it thru.

Top down focus on the process will produce the same results. Then 5-6 years from now....maybe SC will have 1/2 the players in NC and not 20% as many.

Big Daddy
Take off those U13 goggles that are obscuring your overall vision--that Bridge U13 Boys team is killer no doubt about it---but have you not seen the results of the recent State Cup. Unfortunately for Bridge, no teams qualified for Premier at the Cup. To say that CUFC sits behind Bridge as a "medium club" in lieu of the results of this weekend would appear to reflect a negative bias towards CUFC for some reason.
The balance of quality Boys AND Girls teams from U14-U18 makes your position difficult to understand--now the U13 Boys and Girls have some work to do---that may be the source of your reasoning.