benp: Great numbers and insight -- thanks. When you look at the results and denominate by population on an ad hoc basis, it appears to me that the surprises are OK and SC -- although OK has had enough success in the last few years that they really aren't a surprise any more.
The thing that's difficult to show quantitatively is how much the "luck of the draw" figures into reaching the quarterfinals. For example, the CESA U15B Premier team had an incredibly tough draw -- just as the DSC U14B team last year was in a "group of death."
What I find wonderful is how we've gone from in the past simply counting won/lost records, or counting which teams reached quarterfinals, to doing deeper analysis of things like seeding coming out of the bracket. It seems like our expectations for highly competitive soccer in SC are slowly going up as the clubs are providing the opportunities for our most highly ambitious players.
The most surprising thing to me so far isn't how good some NTX or OK teams are, it's how much better the traditional underdogs are getting. SC has undergone wrenching change in the youth soccer environment in the last two years -- and yet it seems clear to me that SC needs to accelerate that progress in order continue to show relative improvement in Region III and nationally.
Every team I've seen so far from SC has shown well. I sat by several Georgia team coaches at the CESA versus DSC U15B game who kept arguing about whether the teams playing were from SC -- they thought they were too good to come from SC. So congratulations to DSC and NECSA for coming out and doing well in their brackets.
Good luck to the teams from Aiken, Bridge, and CESA today in the quarterfinals [and semifinals.]
