SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP CESA soccer fields mentioned in "Legislators' pet projects"

3/15/07

Legislators’ pet projects no longer guaranteed
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/16904859.htm
John O'Connor & Aaron Gould Sheinin, The State

Projects paid for
Carolina Elite Soccer Academy soccer fields, Greenville — $100,000
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/16904860.htm
The State

Disgusting and unfair. Our tax dollars going to benefit a private club. Now CESA gets 100k and it will not be allowed any more so they benefit once again. Ridiculous.

SP
Maybe if they had more soccer fields in Richland County $25,000 of our taxes would have to be used for an anti-graffiti program. Now that's disgusting, unfair and ridiculous.

>>[Soccer Parent] Our tax dollars going to benefit a private club.<<

As I sit here paying ever spiraling property taxes, I have to wonder how much the $100K bothers me when compared to the $6M+ Lexington fields -- which 99.99% of the time may be scheduled only through LUSA -- a consortium of private clubs.

Could we make a deal? I'll pay your and my part of the $100K for the privately built CESA fields; and you pay my part of the $6M+ for the Lexington fields that shows up on my property taxes.

Chico....what is LUSA and what fields are you talking about in Lexington?

I am only aware of baseball and football complexes going up in the newly revamped Ball Park Rd complex....?

CESA is largely synonymous with all soccer in Greenville county (no disrepect to some of the remaining smaller programs). 20 fields between Brushy Creek, MeSA, and Wenwood and whatever at Sunset is simply not enough space for that size of that program. Just look at their competitive teams at U13-U18. Figure 3 teams at each age and gender ... that 36 teams looking to practice on average 3 x per week. Figuring that you can set 2 teams to a field (I know they often place 3 teams on a field) and have two practice time slots per night, that's 9 fields tied up 3 nights a week.

They host games for all ages and levels and accept all comers from the surrounding counties at any level regardless of club. Of course they need more fields. (Now, I'll admit if they (**I mean CESA**, not the state legislatures) invest the money for fields in Columbia or Rock Hill, I'd have something different to say.)

Lexcoach:

(1) LUSA was (is?) the name of the entity which actively manages Lexington's Gibson road complex. It was created to give the four (now three) clubs the ability to schedule the fields while ensuring that outside entities (such as CUFC) were excluded.

2) The fields I'm talking about are the Gibson Road fields.

greengrass: To me, the choice between the "private field model" that we see predominantly in the upstate and the "municipal field model" we see a lot elsewhere in the state is a no-brainer. CESA pays for their multi-million dollar field complexes and then works hard to host tournaments that in turn bring business into their surrounding municipalities, counties, and the state of South Carolina. I was once privy to the financial models and can tell you that the state of South Carolina, and even more the upstate, gets a lot more than they have given in terms of CESA bringing in money.

By the way, the former CSC (now part of CUFC) was the first midstate club I was aware of that pioneered building their own fields. Of course, when Richland County chose to invest to create fields that are effectively managed by the private club, my only reaction was "...hey, those guys are smart...".

While as Emerson noted a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, an unfoolish consistency tends to be the mark of integrity. I'd like to actually see some of these folks who are being critical apply the same degree of consistency to whatever club they like to the clubs that they don't like.

The midstate has a probably equally difficult space problem. Perhaps CUFC, and other clubs in the midstate, together with SCYSA and the state legislature to go after some US soccer foundation money since the foundation seems to be focusing on putting money in areas with large population centers. Get it built, with room for expansion, and work out a deal for CUFC to maintain it.

What is the requirement from a soccer field perspective to host the regionals in South Carolina? It seems that we are always going out west to play.