>>[Coach P] I'm beginning to get the impression that some of you are saying teams don't get better by playing better competition.<<
If that's what you perceived I was saying, then I apologize for not being clearer. Teams can get better by playing better teams. I don't think teams get better by playing other teams that are tremendously better than them.
To put this another way, Nadal probably gets better playing against Federer but I probably wouldn't get any better playing against Federer.
The gulf in the last ten years between SC's second-seeded RIIIPL-East team and the rest of RIIIPL-East has been so wide that SC didn't show improvement through decreased goal differential over time. In the last few years, SC has become more competitive with its first-seeded teams and now its second-seeded teams are doing better. My point was that this competitiveness arose out of structural changes and not simply hurling grossly overmatched teams against RIIIPL-East.
But let's get back to the SC challenge league. The first post in this thread noted that CUFC had won about 30% of its challenge league matches -- and yet CUFC has no "Classic" teams playing in challenge and is the second largest club in SC. Surely you see the issue here, right? Of the largest clubs in the state in terms of select players, CUFC is winning 30% of their matches while even LCSC, who has had some of their most ambitious players move to CUFC, is winning 40% and MPSC, Bridge, and CESA are all winning 60%+. This despite the fact that only four teams from CUFC are playing RIIIPL-East and thus CUFC is fielding multiple "Elite" and "Challenge" teams in the SC challenge league.
The fundamental question is why is CUFC as a whole is not yet able to more effectively compete in SC challenge league.
