I well remember being at an R3PL game in Fall 2009, when I came across a guy poring over a book of charts and lists. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me he was an ODP Region evaluator. When I asked him what he thought of some of the player's on my child's team -- several of whom had been in holdover camp a few months earlier -- he pretty much told me there wasn't much there, and that he was there to evaluate CASL players. Which I found interesting, given his CASL staff shirt.
Think about it. Rather than evaluating kids he didn't know or couldn't see regularly, he was evaluating (and promoting) kids he had probably seen 20 times already.
Conflict of interest?
Now, let me tell you what I saw in Tuscaloosa each of the last 2 years; i.e., a raft of mistakes BOTH ways with kids from all states. Obvious prospects passed over; obvious suspects held over; IN ALL AGE GROUPS OBSERVED.
This is not a problem unique to South Carolina, but rather, inherent in a pay-to-play system where coaches and trainers gain credibility based on the number of THEIR players held over.
