I actually have been reading this - and I've been tempted to post a few times but was concerned anything I write quickly could be perceived as a criticism of one or more clubs. I'll make it clear - I think that CUFC is doing a good thing here for players, parents, coaches, and itself.
I perceive that are three major facets of youth soccer; these are (from most to least important) the players (and their parents), the coaches, and the administrators.
I think that the players (and their parents) are well-served by the CUFC announcement (and the CESA announcement as well.) I’ve always been a broken record on the concept of choice – greater choice, and greater diversity of service offerings, is precisely what South Carolina youth soccer needs. So I applaud CUFC for this.
Likewise, from the coaching perspective, I see the CUFC announcement as a win – although less so just because all it does is shift around opportunities. I actually thought that the YMCA announcement CUFC made was more important with respect to coaching – because it gets at the core issue of getting more kids playing who might not otherwise be playing. But in this announcement an alliance (or partnership, or whatever) between CUFC and Bridge seems positive for coaches.
Finally, the least important group: the administrators. Please note that I am not stating that many (or even most) of these people aren’t important – they’re just not as important as the players, parents, and coaches. I think that the CUFC announcement is absolutely fascinating – a veritable soap opera of shifting interests and alliances.
Emerson once wrote that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” You can’t accuse the CUFC administrators of having small minds – the fact that they lodged complaint after complaint toward CESA and coaches associated with CESA – and even one against my dog “Chico” (hard to believe, but actually a true story) concerning CESA creating first a club in Columbia and then creating alliances/partnerships with clubs in the Columbia area was pretty well documented. This resulted in what was in my opinion the single worst ruling of which I’m aware – the creation out of whole cloth of the “district rule” whereby a player who wanted to play on a team not in their “district” would be forbidden if adding that player would result in over half of the team being from “out of district.” To watch the administrators at CUFC decide to go outside of the USYSA (and thus SCYSA) structure to create teams that can bypass the rule that they themselves so adamantly lobbied for is simply fascinating. I don’t think that anyone can argue that the administrators at CUFC did this “for the kids”; it was a nakedly aggressive and ambitious ploy and I think it helped the club. Despite all of this, I actually think it was pretty clever – although perhaps not possessing quite as much integrity than that for which I might have hoped.
Finally, there’s the SCYSA. I honestly do wonder if the incisive and brilliant minds over there have quite yet made the connection concerning just how all of this has unfolded – that even the club for whom they carried the water and made a ruling against player and parent choice has now elected to go outside of the SCYSA to defeat that ruling. Ironic – in a lemming-like fashion.
In closing, I’ve got to tell you that the SCSYSA’s role in all of this reminds me of an old story. A college professor asked a student if for $1M the student would go on a date. The student enthusiastically agreed. The professor then asked if the student would go on a date for $10. The student indignantly replied “What do you think I am?” The college professor noted that there was no doubt of the answer to that question; that at that point all that was occurring was negotiation.
The SCYSA is a negotiating body. Perhaps there's brilliance in what they do that I just don't get. But if so, I need to stick to "for-profit" companies; the non-profits are just entirely too smart for me.
