# SCDSL rules for Flight 1 Status



## Yolinda (Dec 11, 2017)

Does SCDSL really follow the 4 point rule on flight 1 Club status?

Winning 1 game equals 4 pts.


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## Josep (Dec 11, 2017)

No


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## Evan Cook (Dec 12, 2017)

3 points for a win, 1 for a tie.


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## mirage (Dec 12, 2017)

They do use point system and they also use average points/game (total points/games played) but its only used to determine standings in-season and playoff seedings.

Starting next season, I've been told, that SCDSL is creating a new top tier league that you have to qualify with promotion and relegation.  This league will sit on the top of Flight 1.

The simply way to think about the new format is to take the Champions grouping and make those a league by itself and have promotion and relaxation in and out of it.  Flight 1 will just be the Europa equivalent.


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## MyDaughtersAKeeper (Dec 12, 2017)

mirage said:


> Starting next season, I've been told, that SCDSL is creating a new top tier league that you have to qualify with promotion and relegation.  This league will sit on the top of Flight 1.


So they are becoming CSL?  I thought the reason SCDSL was created was the club DOCs didn't like the restrictions of CSL.  
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.


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## LASTMAN14 (Dec 12, 2017)

With talent now being pulled from DA and still from ECNL all leagues will now become weaker. Makes sense to try and pull the better teams into a separate division with in each age group.


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## MyDaughtersAKeeper (Dec 12, 2017)

LASTMAN14 said:


> With talent now being pulled from DA and still from ECNL all leagues will now become weaker. Makes sense to try and pull the better teams into a separate division with in each age group.


@LASTMAN14 I tend to agree with your posts, but pulling talent in more directions would seem to further dilute it.  We already have too much dilution with: DA/ECNL/CSL/SCDSL/SDDA and DPL (yes DPL is last for a reason).  I am not sure how we fix this mess, but I would say that reducing the leagues (closed circuits) not adding to them would be a start.


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## LASTMAN14 (Dec 12, 2017)

MyDaughtersAKeeper said:


> @LASTMAN14 I tend to agree with your posts, but pulling talent in more directions would seem to further dilute it.  We already have too much dilution with: DA/ECNL/CSL/SCDSL/SDDA and DPL (yes DPL is last for a reason).  I am not sure how we fix this mess, but I would say that reducing the leagues (closed circuits) not adding to them would be a start.


I actually agree with you. That's what I was intending to say. Should have been more specific. The best of the talent that remains which is not playing ECNL or DA or any other league. Maybe make it like CRL where 75% of the team needs to be intact and have a qualifying play-in? And, as you mentioned trimming leagues down too.


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## MWN (Dec 13, 2017)

If SCDSL does this then they are doing 2 things that are responsive to their members.  First, recognizing the "Flight 1" in SCDSL is BS because there are essentially 2 levels of F1 (Champions and Europa North/South/East/West).  From a marketing perspective, SCDSL can't suddenly say to the Europa F1 teams ... Congratulations you are all now Flight 2, so the only logical option is take F1 Champions and call it something else with a few more rules/requirements to get in.  Second, recognizing and responding to the reality of CRL, DPL, boys ECNL, etc.  Within the DA, you also have "off years" for the composite ages.  Next year the 2003's are off (unless USSDA makes the U16 a single age), so the DA clubs are looking for a mechanism to keep the higher level of play for their DA players.  CRL won't let them in because Cal South knows these off-year DA teams are just there for a cup of coffee.   In the SCDSL the team that won the U16 - 2002 Champions Bracket was Arsenal's DA team, 3 DA teams made it to the Semi's.  SCDSL needs to remove the weaker teams from its top flight to increase the reputation, so the move makes logical sense (if its true).


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## Eagle33 (Dec 13, 2017)

MWN said:


> If SCDSL does this then they are doing 2 things that are responsive to their members.  First, recognizing the "Flight 1" in SCDSL is BS because there are essentially 2 levels of F1 (Champions and Europa North/South/East/West).  From a marketing perspective, SCDSL can't suddenly say to the Europa F1 teams ... Congratulations you are all now Flight 2, so the only logical option is take F1 Champions and call it something else with a few more rules/requirements to get in.  Second, recognizing and responding to the reality of CRL, DPL, boys ECNL, etc.  Within the DA, you also have "off years" for the composite ages.  Next year the 2003's are off (unless USSDA makes the U16 a single age), so the DA clubs are looking for a mechanism to keep the higher level of play for their DA players.  CRL won't let them in because Cal South knows these off-year DA teams are just there for a cup of coffee.   In the SCDSL the team that won the U16 - 2002 Champions Bracket was Arsenal's DA team, 3 DA teams made it to the Semi's.  SCDSL needs to remove the weaker teams from its top flight to increase the reputation, so the move makes logical sense (if its true).


How is it possible for Europa B02 team to beat 2 DA teams and loosing by a goal in the final in playoffs to Arsenal you mentioned? Why this team was in Europa in the first place? There is not much but politics that's left in SCDSL. 
All those DA teams on a year off were in Champions bracket anyway and played each other. What about all the other age groups? There is no DA teams there.


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## SocalPapa (Dec 13, 2017)

MyDaughtersAKeeper said:


> So they are becoming CSL?  I thought the reason SCDSL was created was the club DOCs didn't like the restrictions of CSL.
> Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.


I need to learn more, but this sounds like a relatively small tweak to the current SCDSL structure as opposed to the adoption of CSL's promotion/relegation scheme.

First, SCDSL only has a Champions division for U15 and above.  This is very different from CSL, which has a (nearly strict) promotion/relegation system for all age groups (and all tiers) based on standings from the prior year.   Second, SCDSL already has to decide which teams should make up the "top 11 teams" each year.  Certainly the prior year's performance was already taken into account.


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## mirage (Dec 13, 2017)

Eagle33 said:


> How is it possible for Europa B02 team to beat 2 DA teams and loosing by a goal in the final in playoffs to Arsenal you mentioned? Why this team was in Europa in the first place? There is not much but politics that's left in SCDSL.
> All those DA teams on a year off were in Champions bracket anyway and played each other. What about all the other age groups? There is no DA teams there.


I don't know where this notion of having off year comes from.

At U16+, boys are, for most, done with puberty and like high school varsity soccer, age is not a criteria - ability is (politics aside).

Take the current years - 99/00 and 01/02 (since 03 and down have each year, not a part of the discussion).  Many 00s are playing over 99s, and 02s over 01s as well as into 99/00 age group.

My kid used to play for 2 different DA clubs and also played for another that had DA (but he chose to play high school that year), did not have their DA players on so called off-year play in SCDSL/CSL.  Those players stayed with DA and did play.  Clearly there are some turnover and some elect not to stay or be cut from the DA teams.

Those of you who think the DA teams stay together and and compete in CRLSCDSL/CSL as a norm is mistaken.  They do not.  Obviously one can point to exceptions here and there, especially for clubs like LAUFA (since they end at U15), where they don't have U17, U19 DA programs.  These clubs want to keep the teams going but not if you are one of the full program clubs.

Also worth adding that USSDA encourages younger players playing up.  At these showcases, they are more interested in the so called off year players playing up than those that are on on-year players.


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## mirage (Dec 13, 2017)

Forgot to add one more thing.

Those clubs that had teams in SCDSL called ... Academy or ...Reserve. teams use those labels just to keep the money coming in with a promise of players being called up as DPs. 

If the players were good enough, they would have been on the DA roster as FT players.  That would explain why non-DA flight 1 teams can beat them and compete with them.


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## MWN (Dec 13, 2017)

Eagle33 said:


> How is it possible for Europa B02 team to beat 2 DA teams and loosing by a goal in the final in playoffs to Arsenal you mentioned? Why this team was in Europa in the first place? There is not much but politics that's left in SCDSL.
> All those DA teams on a year off were in Champions bracket anyway and played each other. What about all the other age groups? There is no DA teams there.


Its possible because:

(1) there are many very good players and teams in SoCal that have no DA aspirations, so just because a team is made of mostly DA players doesn't mean a non-DA team made of very good players can't beat that team.   The talent pool in SoCal is very deep and there are literally thousands of kids in SoCal that could displace other kids on DA teams.  DA teams are not invincible and many Coast Premiere and SCDSL Flight 1 and CSL and ECNL and other teams have the players to compete against many DA teams.  That Strikers team was just plain good.  They went undefeated in their Europa F1 season and would have beat most of the Champions F1 teams.  Give the boys and coach credit for being a great team.

(2) DA teams on "off years" tend to be made up of the weaker/bench players because the studs are good enough to play up in the composite age group.  I believe that Arsenal team that beat Strikers lost 4-6 of their better players who went up to the 2001's or other non-DA teams closer to home.

(3) Now, as far as that Strikers team being impacted by politics, I don't think that is the case.  That Strikers team was middle of the pack the previous year (5-4-1) with many players playing up.  If you look at the players on the 2017 roster, in 2016 many played on RJ Castle's 2002 team; in 2017 they played on Castle's 2002 team.  This tells me that these kids were good enough to be very competitive in 2016 playing up, and when playing at their appropriate age level they formed a top flight team.

With regard to the other question (the other age groups), CalSouth has about 170k registered youth and adult players (this excludes ECNL (Club), DA, NPL, etc.).  Let's assume 150k youth players.  If we take the top 10% of those players that means there are 15k youth players in SoCal representing the top 10%.  Let's eliminate 2/3rds as too young (under 12).  Leaving us with 5,000 players.  Assuming 18 players per team in 6 different age groups, we are looking at about 46 teams in each age group to be split betweeen CSL and SCDSL.  There simply isn't enough DA and ECNL teams to take on those players, so we will always have a need in SoCal for brackets/leagues that give some of the top talent opportunities to play and compete.  The reality is that many of these teams will not be made up of the top 10%, rather the top 20% and its nearly impossible to aggregate all that talent on those 46 teams, so we will have many more teams with varying degrees of talent. Putting the top 8 to 10 in each of the leagues makes sense and CSL already does that.

Bottom line, I believe that we have so much talent in SoCal that we need to look for better ways to give that talent opportunities to play at a higher level.   DA is regionally exclusionary, with many potential DA players refusing to make the 4 day training commitment and traveling in SoCal traffic 4 days a week (5 hour per day commitment) [when my son was asked to train with a DA team, we left at 4pm and didn't get back until 9pm ... nope].


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## MWN (Dec 13, 2017)

mirage said:


> Those of you who think the DA teams stay together and and compete in CRLSCDSL/CSL as a norm is mistaken.  They do not.


This year they did.  The off year U16 (2002) teams aligned with SCDSL clubs sent their mostly intact (i.e. the 2002 players that didn't play up on 2001) DA teams to the Champions bracket (Arsenal, Real So Cal, Strikers, etc.)


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## Not_that_Serious (Dec 13, 2017)

MyDaughtersAKeeper said:


> @LASTMAN14 I tend to agree with your posts, but pulling talent in more directions would seem to further dilute it.  We already have too much dilution with: DA/ECNL/CSL/SCDSL/SDDA and DPL (yes DPL is last for a reason).  I am not sure how we fix this mess, but I would say that reducing the leagues (closed circuits) not adding to them would be a start.


id get rid of leagues and construct something under Cal South. Pro/Rel at lower flights is useless, having a Flight 1 (gold, silver or whatever they call it) beat up a flight 3 level team to work up is worthless at young ages. The kids arent competing at appropriate skill level and not improving like they would if they faced competition at their level (Add the fact kids come and go all the time and really makes pro/rel silly). Kids lose a season of development not competing at appropriate level. Not hard to get teams to come out on a weekday or weekend and see what level a team can play at. Play a couple of games and slot them at whatever level they should be at. Having one org run everything will make comp more inclusive and get more styles of play involved. DA/ECNL can be its own thing if need be, but teams not labeled "DA" or what have you can still compete to be included. Some want it closed off to make money. some parents would have it closed off to make it exclusive - because that is important for some reason.


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## espola (Dec 14, 2017)

Not_that_Serious said:


> id get rid of leagues and construct something under Cal South. Pro/Rel at lower flights is useless, having a Flight 1 (gold, silver or whatever they call it) beat up a flight 3 level team to work up is worthless at young ages. The kids arent competing at appropriate skill level and not improving like they would if they faced competition at their level (Add the fact kids come and go all the time and really makes pro/rel silly). Kids lose a season of development not competing at appropriate level. Not hard to get teams to come out on a weekday or weekend and see what level a team can play at. Play a couple of games and slot them at whatever level they should be at. Having one org run everything will make comp more inclusive and get more styles of play involved. DA/ECNL can be its own thing if need be, but teams not labeled "DA" or what have you can still compete to be included. Some want it closed off to make money. some parents would have it closed off to make it exclusive - because that is important for some reason.


Whatever you call it or no matter what method you use to select the teams for  it, having a league designated as the top level (Premier, F0, whatever) will result in player movement from relegated teams onto promoted teams.  That helps in some way to institute the steel-on-steel idea for player development, but has almost a randomizing effect.

I proposed years ago when ODP was the only local player-identification mechanism that Cal South should have several feeder teams (such as one per District) that would compete among each other on a regular basis and provide a basis for selecting the State ODDP team. An all-seeing soccer czar would spread the best players out 15 to a team located so that everyone has easy commutes to practice, but that's not going to happen.


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## INFAMEE (Dec 14, 2017)

lol@ ODP


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## Eagle33 (Dec 14, 2017)

MWN said:


> (3) Now, as far as that Strikers team being impacted by politics, I don't think that is the case.  That Strikers team was middle of the pack the previous year (5-4-1) with many players playing up.  If you look at the players on the 2017 roster, in 2016 many played on RJ Castle's 2002 team; in 2017 they played on Castle's 2002 team.  This tells me that these kids were good enough to be very competitive in 2016 playing up, and when playing at their appropriate age level they formed a top flight team.


What you saying is based on your opinion, but the fact is Strikers MV 02 team did well in National Cup and advanced to CRL, and did asked SCDSL to be placed in Champions bracket, but got denied. Politics absolutely played a role in this. Back story to this was another Strikers MV team (04) that SCDSL refused to place in Flight 1 in 2016 (team did not have a good season in Flight 1 in 2015). Eventually they did place them in Flt 1 (after numerous letters and calls from DOC) with very stern warning that if this team don't do good, they would never place another Strikers MV team in Flt 1 again without SCDSL committee decision. That 04 team not only finished on top of Flt 1 but also won National Cup that season.


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## MWN (Dec 14, 2017)

Eagle33 said:


> What you saying is based on your opinion, but the fact is Strikers MV 02 team did well in National Cup and advanced to CRL, and did asked SCDSL to be placed in Champions bracket, but got denied. Politics absolutely played a role in this. Back story to this was another Strikers MV team (04) that SCDSL refused to place in Flight 1 in 2016 (team did not have a good season in Flight 1 in 2015). Eventually they did place them in Flt 1 (after numerous letters and calls from DOC) with very stern warning that if this team don't do good, they would never place another Strikers MV team in Flt 1 again without SCDSL committee decision. That 04 team not only finished on top of Flt 1 but also won National Cup that season.


I'll readily admit that I have no inside knowledge of SCDSL or the Strikers organization, let alone Strikers MV v. any other Strikers.  All I know is what I can observe and then make a few inferences.  We know that the 2002 SCDSL Champions Bracket had 4 DA (off year teams) added to it, bringing the total teams to 16 (since its XMas time, its safe to say there wasn't a whole lot of "room in the inn."). 

With regard to this Strikers team in question (Strikers FC - MV R.Castle) finished mid pack in 2016 with 5 wins - 4 loses and a tie.  At playoffs this Europa Flight 1 Strikers (5th seed) team was beaten in the 1st Round by the 12th seed Sherman Oaks Extreme (Flight 2) team.   At National Cup, it won a single game, lost another and tied one.  It didn't make it out of bracket play ... I don't think we can honestly say that a team that fails to advance to the Round of 16 by getting out of its bracket "did well."   Now, based purely on the previous years performance ... it certainly didn't deserve to move up to Champions, which is why I don't think politics played a roll.  The 2016 league and playoff record speaks for itself.

That said, something changed from between then and now for this team.  It only picked up a few new players, so its roster was largely intact.  Where these new players difference makers?  Maybe, it was just a bunch of boys hitting puberty at the right time.  I have no idea, but have to say they did a marvelous job and this team deserves to be in the Champions bracket next year.


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## mirage (Dec 14, 2017)

MWN said:


> This year they did.  The off year U16 (2002) teams aligned with SCDSL clubs sent their mostly intact (i.e. the 2002 players that didn't play up on 2001) DA teams to the Champions bracket (Arsenal, Real So Cal, Strikers, etc.)


 I know those teams were in SCDSL but they are not their 2002 DA team.  That's what I'd said originally.  They simply have the name and implications but with their non-DA players or their bottom half DA players.


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