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

Are SC clubs developing their girl soccer players to play defensively? In the premier league, the SC girls teams are either last or in the lower half of the listing for # of goals scored in all age brackets. U15, u16 they are dead last. Even in U17, U18 where the teams are in 4th and 5th place, if you look at the goals scored it is only 12 versus the 32 and 25 that the leaders have. At 12 goals they rank 3rd and 4th from the bottom of number of goals. NC and GA consistently seem to be at or near the top. Is it merely talent pool? Although in terms of goals let in the SC teams fair much better and seem to average in the middle. Any comments?

How much emphasis do you see placed on finishing at a club or high school practice?

Coaches seem to concentrate more on passing and possession rather than 1 v 1 dribbling and shooting. Does anybody have their players dribble through cones any more? I coached a player in high school who played about four or five years in MLS and one preseason, he was loaned to AC Milan. He spent about three weeks there training with the club and he said EVERY DAY, for a 15-minute warm up, they dribbled through cones.

How often do you see a coach take his attacking players, maybe just three forwards and a couple of attacking midfielders, and send them to the other side of the field to work on shooting and finishing drills? Often our club coaches (and sometimes our high school coaches) work alone. There's no assistant out there to help work with the girls.

If you're playing forward for your team, and you are responsible for scoring goals.....don't you think you should be working on these exact skills.....for at least 30 minutes (preferably 45) every practice? At some practices, a forward may never even take a shot if "finishing" is not what is being taught that particular day.

A lot of practices end with small-sided games but there is no guarantee there that the forwards are going to have the opportunity to take many shots.

Hurst I agree...
WAMSC5 .... on the other hand, the other team also determines how easily you can score. maybe they are better defenders? I think that the question should consider there is another team on the field trying to prevent you from scoring...

Good point futbol.

Goals are certainly hard to come by for any teams playing in the R3PL because all the teams have great players and are well-organized.

To wamsc5's point.....it would be nice to see some great offensive-minded talent developed among the ladies.

It seems to me in watching alot of these games other teams seem to have harder shots. They score from further out. And if they are close it is hard for the goalie to get it at the pace it has on it. Why do other states strike the ball so much harder, especially while moving with the ball??

My daughter played club for nine years in SC, the last several years of that in PL. What can I say about those teams? The last two years she was on the PL team with the lowest goals against both years, but throughout all nine years, it SEEMS we could not score as well as other teams.

Now with some distance and time to think, I believe the reality is that SC teams—even the best ones, even though we are gaining ground—are still simply behind other states. Thus, it is simply harder to score. When you are a weaker state, it is possible to coach defensive and be successful as compared to try to "catch up" by being offensive. Does that make sense?

Coaches in SC clubs know we are still behind so I believe most of them do focus on being solid defensively somewhat to the exclusion of offense. I think that is best for our teams to have success. But frustrating for fans. . .

g&b,

You've been around high-level South Carolina club soccer a lot longer than I have. I don't have any daughters playing R3PL and my youngest is the first one to play SCYSA ODP. I have seen some of our best young ladies on the high school field but only very rarely have I had the opportunity to see some of them play club soccer. I'll defer to you and I'd like to hear more of your thoughts.

As I mentioned earlier, if there was more than one club coach working with these girls at a time, perhaps the forwards could be trained specifically to finish while the rest of the team is working on other aspects of the game.

How many great goalscorers have we produced, that have made an impact on the collegiate level? In the past few years we have seen West Ashley's Julie Bolt, JL Mann's Blakely Mattern and North Myrtle Beach's Blair Monroe.

Julie's very explosive and capable of scoring goals, but:
1. She plays in the top college league in the country (it's hard to score)
2. Goalscoring is not her primary job at Clemson (I think they play her at midfield)

Blakely is a fantastic player at USC, but I believe her role with the Lady Gamecocks is primarily a defensive one.

Blair scored 134 goals in high school and plays on one of the top teams in the Big South. She is a proven goalscorer at the D1 level at Coastal Carolina. Granted, the Big South is not nearly as competitive as the SEC or the ACC, but Blair is still putting it into the back of the net.

I'm sure Julie Bolt could flourish as a forward in the Big South, but I'm not sure about too many others. Perhaps Danielle Schmitt who plays as a reserve forward at Clemson but scored well over 100 goals in her high school career at Fort Mill.

Are there any other South Carolina products knocking in goals at any South Carolina colleges, or are all the goalscorers from out-of-state? C of C, Furman, Wofford, The Citadel, Charleston Southern????

How about some of this year's high school senior class? Kira Campbell (Lexington), Hannah Gmerek (Wren), Ashleigh Sheets (Fort Mill)? All of these girls can score at the high school level but do they have much success at R3PL? All three of these girls are probably either midfielders or defenders at the D1 level in the fall of 2008.

You can't compare goals scored in High School against goals scored against challenge or premier level competition. There are lead scorers in H S who are very impotent in higher level competition. (This goes for both boys & girls)

IMO, it is not always a lack of skill in the forwards, it could be unusually strong defenders this year or simply a lack of mid-field support. One would have to look at some of the SC team games to see where they are hurting.

Monkey,

I agree, it's a whole different level. I also feel there is a pretty big difference between the ACC and the Big South. On the womens side, Clemson beat Coastal 5-0 earlier this year (although High Point did play NC State to a scoreless draw).

But who is scoring goals at the college level? Anybody making significant noise in the past five years? Through her junior year, Blair Monroe has scored 34 goals for Coastal. With a few games left in her senior year, West Florence's Brooke Tumblin has scored 29 goals in her Newberry career against some fairly tough D2 competition.

Anybody else aware of anyone else with a knack for knocking them in at a high (collegiate) level?

I agree with every comment made..My daughter spent an hour and a half last night playing small sided games...nobody wants to hear this but the lack of numbers does play a role in this.Most coaches have a small number to choose from

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.

But why is it that SC "girls" can't score but the "boys" apparently can? In looking at the R3PL standings, the boys are very competitive with ALL of the teams except two (MPSC 16s and CUFC 15s)with a positive goal diffrential while drawing from this same "shallow and narrow" pool. Is the boys side in R3PL really "watered down" with the Academy program (as some of our lowcountry brethren have suggested) or are our boys farther along in their development and skills than the girls for some reason?

Boys world—different world. In each state the pool for boys is LARGER than the pool for girls—so the impact is pronounced when we compare. SC soccer overall is not up to other states but the gap appears larger for females because females are less likely to participate in sport than males in ALL sports.

I hope that is clear—I have coached both males and females—as has my wife. By definition, this is a sexist comment, but I intend it NOT to be a negative one. Boys and girls are different.

Again, I don't know how many girls are "lost" to NC, but...
Very few boys play in NC because the high school season there is in the fall and club in the spring. Opposite of SC. The good boys (Martinez brothers, etc.) have no choice but to stay in SC and play. The girls leave and then get split up among 3 Charlotte clubs and 2 York clubs. If you took all of the U16 girls from Clover and Fort Mill and put them on one team, I think you would have a very strong premeir team. One that could score.
There are more boys playing. There are more HS boys teams than girls teams (last time I checked). Now add that you are losing some of the better ones from certain areas and it hurts. Why doesn't the HS league put a rule in that says you must play all amatuer ball in the state in order to play HS here? It will never happen, but... Or, why not change the SC girls season to fall? That would force all of those players to come back.

It is impossible to translate high school performance to R3PL—sorry. PL players do very well in high school. But I and others who post here will tell you, boys and girls, high school performance cannot predict PL level of play—not even close.

Even WITHIN high school, the stats don't mean much. I watched a team in the playoffs last spring face a team with one of the top scorers in the state at that classification; the team and the player put up pretty big numbers all year. The player scored 0 goals in the match as did her team, which fell by double digits.

That sort of imbalance rarely happens in PL or at regionals; look at the scores of regionals and then nationals.

I mean no disrespect to high school stats—I am proud of my daughter's career HS stats!—but they mean little as predictors of PL success.

G&B
I will certainly agree with you that boys and girls are different and that the boys will draw from a larger pool-- especially if more boys are playing rec soccer (an assumption on my part). But is there really that much of a difference given the disparity of success between the boys and girls in R3PL? For example, the success at the 18 age group on the boys side with Lexington and CUFC who don't have the "draw area" of CESA (I would hazard a guess that most of the boys come from the Midlands) goes against the conventional wisdom of larger pool to draw from (just imaging if those two teams WOULD pool their talent!). Maybe this is a drop off of talent in premier league this year.

But your theory IS supported by the historical success of Discoveries and Aiken Fire (? our most successful teams is premier league and regionals?) who both drew from all over the state as well as out of state.

But I would think that the success of CESA and with their training sites in Columbia, Charleston, Rock Hill and Asheville that their "pool" would have expanded enough to overcome the shallow talent pool in SC and lead to more success in premier league play and regionals--not just for CESA but for all the other clubs "chasing" CESA as well as they try to improve their teams.

Hopefully we can beat the bushes to bring more kids/athletes to this wonderful game and maybe we can suprise some folks with success at regionals if not this year then some time in the future..

Don't misunderstand me, I agree that HS stats aren't the same. My argument is that a pretty darn good team could be made from FM and Clover kids that "defect" to NC. Not that they would be premier league level, but I know that at least one Charlotte team won the USA Cup in Minn. at a U 14 level. Very good tournament. I would assume that those kids would play well if they came back to SC and added a few others. I agree that HS can be inflated.

I also have meant to add that we saw this in the Clash girls match—remember?

SC scored a PK, only—even with some quality HS finishers. SC was anchored by some HS players who were also defenders on a very successful PL team.

NC had a wealth of club players—scored 3 goals (1 of which was a PK). But anyone seeing that match would have said that NC girls seems to take more powerful and frequent shots.

Again, imbalance. Not that NC girls are individually better than individual SC girls (SC has nearly caught NC, I believe, in some respect at the regional level), but NC still has more of them on any given team.

Garnet

Population may come into play somewhere. Numbers aren't everything, but it has got to be factored in.

IMO, NC should be much stronger, it has about twice the population of SC.

The four Charlotte teams, that these '91 (U-16) girls all play for, won their first round NCYSA State Cup play-off games earleir today. Charlotte Soccer Club Blue, Charlotte United Gold, Charlotte United Green and Charlotte United Emerald (Koalas) all enter Sunday's second round of group play with a record of 1-0.

B Daddy/Hurst 66:

In your opinion, how many girls are able to take a free kick or PK with either foot?

Who are the best forwards in girls SC club soccer U-15 - U-18? and have any of the older players committed to a top D-1 school.

2,567

Only 518 from Region III.

211 from Texas.
119 from Florida.
88 from Georgia.
37 from North Carolina.
35 from Oklahoma.
14 from Tennessee.
6 from South Carolina.
4 from Alabama.
2 from Arkansas.
1 from Mississippi.
1 from Louisianna.

Hurst66
Only 6 from South Carolina, shocking.

True, Alex never played for the Koalas.

I think Daddy's point was just that Alex is a York County resident.

sweet,

I didn't mean to be a smart @$$.....I just wasn't sure what your point was.

Glad I helped you make it. My daughter plays forward and I'm all over her about her left foot (the "ornament").

Right on!

OK, I have heard that our older boys RP3 leagues is about as exciting as kissing your sister and now hearing that our older girls can't seem to score. What is going on?

Looking at the RP3 site the older boys seem to be doing good. (Yes the older teams are watered down, no one can argue that) but the teams there are no push overs either.

On the girls side, they are not doing quite as well, but at least they ARE playing premier. IMO not as much gloom and doom as I am hearing and reading.