If you look at the number of players each year at the State and local level, you'll see that population only rise by a percent that is pretty much in line with region population growth.
That pretty much makes sense as you can't just manufacture kids overnight that want to play. What changes is the uniform they wear, so I think yours is a fairly easy question to answer: yes some clubs will lose as others win.
You allude to it already with (~100) shift from SSC to GPS recently, certainly CASC has grown at someone else's expense, and similarly we would expect to shrink with others success. We never worry about what others are doing and just make decisions based on what is best for our membership, and in this case, we decided to look at a new option for Junior Academy play, liked what we saw and took the plunge. But not lightly and with a good amount of consideration and due diligence.
To be fair, Coastal League was initiated to replace a 'club managed' local league in LSYSA and I think even SCYS would cede that the league has had its challenges and complaints over the years. More than once we've considered looking for alternatives long before the Battery decided to step into youth soccer and if a good alternative had presented itself in the last 2-3 years we would have certainly considered it. We have certainly provided feedback and suggestions to improve without too much movement and hoping our latest decision will work out and not backfire, but who knows. Onwards.
