LPAF: Re: The "Aiken anomoly".
I'm not familiar with Aiken, because, like you, I tend to focus on the girls' side of SC soccer. However, looking at the data, it seems as if Aiken has had the core of an extremely good team that has progressed each year for the last three years (U-17B 2003, U-16B 2002, U-14B and U-15B 2001). Of course, in 2000 Aiken was state champions in U-17B and runner up in U-15B, so for the four year period the theory that "it was just one great set of kids" only holds over a three year period.
Of course, Justin Rhodes deserves a tremendous amount of credit -- from what I hear he is a fantastic coach. I think that's the heart of all of this -- a great coach anywhere can make a huge difference -- largely regardless of demographics.
Statistics can sometimes do a good job of handling the big picture, but the more granular the situation the more anomolies you tend to find. Here's a case in point - in the last four years Lexington's girls classic club (which has been roundly critized in this forum by me and others) has had more state champions in the girls area than CSC and CFC combined (2 versus 1). Now -- does this mean that Lexington's girls club is better than CSC/CFC's club on the girls' side? I think not -- as almost everyone I know thinks not -- even the coaches in the Lexington club send their daughters over to CSC/CFC to play. What occurred were that there were a few coaches from the Lexington side who were extremely talented. It's worth noting that none of the state championship coaches from Lexington coach in that club anymore.
Bottom line: if I were to start a club, I might skimp on a lot of things -- but I'd make sure that I spent as much as possible and worked as hard as possible on getting the best coaches -- because that in my opinion trumps everything else.
