Chapindad: I have several, very respectful, questions concerning your last post. Please don't take anything I'm saying as disagreement; I'm simply trying to understand. I've gone on record now for the last year with my admiration for CSC/CFC -- so we're certainly not in disagreement on that. I'm going to use excerpts from your post to try to put my quesions in context.

>>Lexington will never be a true club because the facilities are owned by the county and not a club. And I know the people that work for the county have no interest in classic. They are very happy with the Rec. program. The classic is just tolerated but not encouraged.<<

I'm certainly not arguing with you about the quality of Lexington's four clubs, and in particular the two classic clubs. But here's what I'm wondering. It's true that Lexington has county fields controlled by a huge number of clubs put together in a bureacracy called LUSA. But given that there are two classic clubs devoted only to classic soccer, why would it matter who owns the fields? To put this another way, who cares what the county government thinks as long as the two classic clubs have field access? Isn't the success or failure of the Lexington classic programs completely the responsibility of the two classic clubs?

To put this another way. If I had to start a regionally/nationally competitive club right now, I'd rather do so with guaranteed field access provided for free than have to devote resources into building those fields. I'd then take the resources and devote them into building the best coaching staff in the state.

What am I missing?

>>I agree with Bdad11 that NECSA and CSC could worked together to cover the mid-state for soccer. Allow natural selection to take care of which is the best team for each age group.<<

I think what Bdad11 actually wanted was one club, but wanted to see as a compromise, intermediate step two clubs, with a series of mergers led by NECSA on one-half and CSC on the other half [which makes sense since these are the two largest clubs in the area].

I believe that CSC is the best hope for competitive regional and national soccer in the area. And I applaud the steps that the club is taking in terms of coaching staff and resources. But I think it's pretty important to note that in 2003, CSC yielded only one state championship team and that came from the CFC side. The merger with CFC paid huge dividends -- not just in the short term with respect to winning state championships but with respect to increasing the quality and level of the coaching staff. The point of Bdad11's message [and if I'm wrong, I hope you or Bdad11 or anyone will correct me] was that he'd like to see a consolidation of clubs and thus resources.

I don't think that SGU and GFC and MPSC are stationary targets -- they're getting much better very fast and are emerging into the regional and national arena with more breadth than any Columbia area club has had for years. As a fan of SC club soccer, I'd like to see CSC continue making non-incremental leaps [e.g., mergers]. Because the more quickly we in the Columbia area can become competitive on an intra-state basis, the faster we can begin helping the state in terms of competing on a regional and national level.

>>I also agree that good coaching makes the team and CSC is putting together a very young energitic coaching staff. Eddie Crosby is doing a great job.<<

I know from your past messages that you know this, and I'm sure that Crosby is doing great things, but I'd also give Frederick a big part of the credit. I'm aware that the U-16B team was second in the state this year -- but there was some history there with past success. Frederick took a team with little history and won.