>>[Beezer] And CESA thinks it has it all but it's not close in Region III and the country on a consistent basis.<<
Who at CESA thinks that they have it all? I know a lot of folks from CESA and have never spoken to anyone that believes CESA is yet sufficiently competitive in RIIIPL-East across the board, let alone in RIIIPL or nationally.
I think you're confusing the general South Carolina perception of CESA with CESA's opinion concerning itself. Winning state championships is wonderful, and even more wonderful is consistently being a finalists in state championships and earning RIIIPL-East slots, but that is a far different thing than being consistently in the top 2-3 in RIIIPL-East -- which in turn is a far different thing than consistently winning Region III titles and going on to compete and occassionally win nationally.
Now...do I know of anyone at CESA who believes that the best thing we could do is to throw away what they have built to date? No. Do I know of anyone at CESA who believes that a South Carolina state structure is better than a South Carolina/Georgia/North Carolina/Tennessee regional structure [in effect what CESA has today with ambitious players from multiple states joining its teams]? No.
CESA has existed for two years. In that time, it's done well within South Carolina. Also in that time, it has produced teams that have consistently done better in RIIIPL-East play in terms of records and goal differentials. Perhaps more importantly, since CESA was created we've seen the creation of at least two other clubs that are clearly attempting to be more competitive regionally [Bridge and CUFC].
I've got to tell you, if I sat on the board of one of these clubs and the DOC came in and told me we needed to scrap what we had in order to go to a state-wide cooperative approach, I'd tell her/him that she/he was insane unless she/he could tell me how this would work better than what was already in place. Stating you're going to draw from all of South Carolina sounds great until you begin figuring that (a) we're excluding players from other states already in our system, (b) we won't get the players on our borders who play at CSC and elsewhere where good soccer is offered conveniently close by and (c) we don't have 18-24 players willing to travel 3+ hours per week 3 times per week for training in every gender and age bracket.
