SCDSL G04 Flight 1

lancer

SILVER
The 04 board has been dead for awhile, maybe this will revive the banter....

Now that the SCDSL 04 girls are done, what did you all think of the competition? Discovery, Champions, Europa North South East and West...there were an awful lot of teams. There has been talk about what is a true flight 1 team. Will Discovery and Champions continue next fall or will Europa open even further to allow flight 2.5 teams join the fray and get blown out again?
 
Some Discovery / Flight 1 stats:
Total of 41 teams in the "Top" SCDSL Flight for 2018. There were 26 teams in Flight 1 in the 2017 Fall Season.
  • Discovery league had 11 teams in it this year.
    • Teams only play each team 1 time per season.
    • 2 teams from San Diego
    • 2 from near the Riverside area
    • 3 from Los Angeles
    • 4 from Orange County (1 south and 1 north)
    • Four of these teams has "Slammers" in their name
  • 1 team was fairly dominant. Aside from 1 blowout, every game was decided by 2 goals or less.
  • 2 of the clubs (Real So Cal and Legends) have DA and DPL teams.
  • 1 Club (Slammers) has an ECNL team
  • My opinion- Competitive league. Not sure how everyone feels about driving to Silverlakes each weekend. How many quality teams did these teams drive past each weekend to play at Silverlakes?
Flight 1 - 30 Total Teams - Spread between Champions (6), Europa East (6), Europa South (10) and Europa West (8)
  • Of these 30 teams, 10 of them have DA and DPL teams. ( Pats(3), Legends(3), OC Surf(1), Beach (1),SD Surf(1), Real SoCal(1)
  • None of the DA clubs finished in 1st place in their respective Flight 1 grouping.
  • With the exception of a few teams, most teams with a losing record had goal differentials in the single digits. (This tells me that teams were somewhat evenly matched across the 10 game season)
  • Each grouping had 1 very dominant team.
  • Each group had 1 team that won 2 or less of their games.
Now the questions are:
  • What happens next year?
  • Will Discovery and Champions still exist as separate brackets?
  • If they stay separate, will teams get relegated? If you get relegated from Discovery or Champions, where does that put you? (Europa or F2?)
  • Will teams that didn't do well in Europa be relegated to make room for Flight 2 teams to move up?
 
Discovery aside from the heat/wind (3pm games mostly) during the majority of the season, it was fairly competitive with the exception of a few teams that finished at the bottom. Some of the scores although close in many games didn't tell the full story. Many of those games were dominated by one team and for one reason or another just didn't score. (The beauty of the game) There was some good soccer played and some pretty dirty soccer at the same time.

Pros:
* All teams played at the same time (mostly)
* Same field conditions for all teams
* Competitive bracket (mostly)
* Medical staff
* Tournament stipend for top 2 teams

Cons:
* Cost of parking (opportunity possibly for reduced rate pass in the future ??)
* Excessive heat especially in the early afternoon ( Over half of the season was played in the high 90's and low 100's)
* Norco afternoon winds (several games the wind had a significant impact on the play)
* Ref issues for the first part of the season (quality of refs did improve over time)
* No exposure opportunities like other top leagues such as DPL and ECNL (I recognize college soccer is in full swing during the season)

I would be in favor of relegation if done properly. Some of the teams at the bottom of discovery would be better served playing down and in turn there were teams in Champions that probably should have been in Discovery. In the Europa brackets, there were middle of the pack Flight 2 teams that moved up and more or less lost every game. (I'm guessing with Discovery that allowed more teams to move up) Teams that perform well should have the opportunity to move up and not be stuck below teams that haven't consistently performed at a certain level but have a larger club's name. It's a hefty undertaking for SCDSL and the larger clubs carry more influence so I dont know if we will see relegation actually happen.

Good luck to all of the 04's in their first year of high school soccer!
 
A few other comments re: Europa teams.
I know quite a few of them entered tournaments this summer in lower flights. And didn't necessarily kill everyone.
I was surprised by the last place team in Europa South. They have some very athletic players. Either they had some injuries, tried to adopt a different style of play, or got solved by teams that kept the ball away from their athletes.

What criteria did SCDSL use last year to move teams from F2 to F1? Seems there are a few teams that finished last year in 4th place in F2 that moved to F1.

There are some F2 teams this year that were pretty dominant. Will the top 2 teams in each group be able to move up?
 
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