I have to ask myself if all this ranting and raving would still be going on if SSC had consulted and/or contracted(whichever turns out to be the case) with CASL or Atlanta Fire. This seems to be about personal grudges with CESA more so than bringing in a professional management team.

Andrew and Pearse are in this for the State of SC and all our kids. They have dreams and aspirations of creating a program that is recruited by all the top colleges. Do we, as a state, have a better chance of sending teams to national championships if we combine our kids from different regions or if we continue to fight amongst each other and select from tiny pools of kids. Yes, tiny. Compare our market with Atlanta, Dallas, SoCal and our entire state is tiny.

In case you havent already figured it out, I am a CESA parent. Based on knowing Tormey and Hyslop, I would envision them trying to maintain strong competition within the state, but also fielding our best SC teams to compete elsewhere in the country.

I think much of the friction comes from the fact that some of our kids are not going to make the 'Premier' state team. Those of us in the upstate face that same reality. Bridge is a solid club and that is the reason for such a great rivalary, and if a single premier team is made, many lowcountry and midlands kids will be on it.

I, too, have asked the question of how we maintain strong competition if we are on the same team. The reality is that there will have to be solid teams in all areas so that we can continue to play amongst ourselves and GROW from those contests.

The only conclusion that I can draw is that Tormey and Hyslop see this as an opportunity to 'franchise'(at the risk of sounding like its a McDonalds) their program into other SC areas to further promote soccer in this state. They are not seeking to 'matriculate' everyone into Greenville teams.

For those of you who like to parse these posts to pull pieces out of context, have a ball.