SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Why can't SC girls score?

It seems to me that when there is high and easy scoring in the girls game, it is more that the teams are mismatched. When females are even, little scoring—maybe true with males also.

At USC now, the women's team is probably better known as a defensive squad than as an offensive one—although they have fire power at the individual level, including Blakely as a threat even as a defender.

I have to maintain that the perception that SC girls don't score is a marker for the overall weakness of SC soccer when compared to the highest levels of soccer—not a lack of individual skill or a failure of training.

G&B: I came to this conversation late -- but couldn't agree with you more. One of the kids mentioned in this thread was the second leading scorer in her age group in RIIIPL-East a few years back. Why? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that the team she was on was very competitive, with a lot of superb Division 1 players on it that went on to be very competitive in their freshmen D1 year and make impacts, and thus she was able to get the space to work 1v2 and even sometimes 1v1 as opposed to 1v4 or 1v5.

In 2006 Julie Bolt was either the leader or one of the leading scorers for a Clemson team that went to the final 8 (from memory.) Anson Dorrance was talking about the impact Julie had when they played UNC. I saw that same player get shut down a lot in RIIIPL-East -- not because she wasn't incredibly skilled and talented -- but because her opportunities were constrained to 1v3 or 1v4. You could tell by looking at Julie play in RIIIPL-East she was special; but quite often that translated into her creating plays that others on her team just couldn't.

I've often said that in soccer it's hard for me to tell a great defense versus a great defensive team -- because I've seen so many great defensive players get crushed because of a lack of pressure at the forward and midfield positions. To me, the worse thing you can see from a forward is the one that is lazy on defense and camps out near the goal hoping a teammate will kick one close enough for them to finish -- all the while ignoring their team being crushed due to the lack of pressure. The same kind of thing holds true on offense; the ability of the defense and the midfield to gain possession or at least to accurately make long-ball passes quickly while there's an advantage is incredibly important.

The best SC club women coaches understand that and actively resist the "cog in the machine" philosophy that players are interchangeable parts. Even the better SC women teams have a much higher standard deviation of talent than (for example) the average Atlanta team -- and thus putting kids in different positions, even during the same game, and playing systems based on the assessment of dynamic strengths and weaknesses, is really important.

SC soccer, and SC women's soccer, is still not as strong as I'd like to see it in RIIIPL-East. I've seen smart coaching overcome some of that -- but the real answer is that we need more girls playing soccer and thus a deeper pool from which to draw.

Couldn't some of that be a problem of losing players to other states? How many girls are on RIIIPL - East teams for a Charlotte club or an Augusta club? Not that it would be 100, but if we lose 15 girls that hurts. Imagine how competitive some of the clubs would be if they didn't lose 50 - 60 girls to Augusta or Charlotte? Just a thought.

Sorry forgot to add. Imagine if the Martinez brothers went to a Charlotte club. That Discoveries team wouldn't exist and we would have one less RIIIPL teams. I think that happens alot on the girls side.

This could absolutely be the case on teams of which I'm not aware -- but at CESA there seems to be a lot of kids coming over the border to play from not only NC and GA but at times from TN and other places. The second strongest women's club overall is CUFC, and they seem to have an influx of players from different region of the state (not sure about out of state.)

How many of our best female players go to play in Charlotte or Augusta? I don't want to insult anyone, but I don't know of many.

I wouldn't know any names, but looking at how strong Fort Mill and Clover High School seem to be, where are all of their players playing? It obviously isn't at Discoveries or Tega Cay. I would assume some of those girls are good enough to play at a premeir level and could help bring the York county teams up to a higher level

g&b and Chico, thanks for your input.

cid,

To the best of my knowledge, only two players from South Carolina play on Charlotte R3PL teams. The only ones that I can confirm are Rachel Newmister (Clover) and Taylor Parker (Fort Mill) who both play for the Charlotte Soccer Club Blue U-16 Girls. Their team has clinched the R3PL championship this season.

Clover also has about eight sophomores and freshmen playing for classic teams at Charlotte United, Nation Ford has three sophomores playing classic at Charlotte United and Fort Mill has four frosh and four sophs also playing classic for CUFC.

There are 2 other YC girls on CESA R3PL teams who were until recently Charlotte Club players. Chico, one of them on your daughter's team.

There were three U-18's down at CESA at one point, one from Clover and two from Fort Mill.

Also, Rock Hill's Alex Ramsey, who now plays for CESA Premier U-16G, played most of her club career in Charlotte.

I have been mulling this—And I would just add that I believe soccer rewards COACHING and TEAM DISCIPLINE. If a coach and team are committed, I believe they can compete with teams that are actually superior in talent because in soccer you actually CAN "build from the back."

As I have stated, since SC is still behind other states as a soccer state, we lack a deep and wide pool of female players—not that the talent we haven't isn't strong—it is. But SC teams will still tend to be not as strong from #1 player to #11 player compared to GA or TX or OK(I think we have caught NC). To be competitive, then, our best coaches play defensively—and we are often more competitive regionally that we once were. If it appears we can't/don't score, I think that is a marker of how we compare regionally, not a truism about our attacking ability.