You two beat me to it. In particular I was thinking of Howie who I always felt was doing it for the right reasons. When you say “money and control” thou there is a lot of room for interpretation. I never felt it was ego driven but more about what was right for coaches trying to make a living as well as families.
East County Surf
- Thread starter Mic Nificent
- Start date
Back in the day Crusaders had an amazing pool of rec teams to pull money from. I am not sure it’s current state?? I always hoped they would get a new board (especially Pres) and regroup. I wonder if this will be the end of them?
My memory tells me that the Crusaders suffered a sudden vacancy of leadership when their club President (and Presidio treasurer) John Balman was killed in a car accident returning from a Utah ski trip in 2007. From the outside, it looked like an internal conflict over the club's direction.
Here is an old article about the club from San Diego Reader --
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2015/jul/07/stringers-stolen-soccer-sign-sleuth/#
Banana Hammock
SILVER ELITE
I am surprised that Liverpool decided to go with the establishment Surf. I would have thought that they could have merged with some of the other small east county clubs and form an original "big" club.
Surfref
PREMIER
I agree with you on Howie. Really nice guy and a good coach. He always seemed to put the players first.
futboldad1
PREMIER
From living there for 20 years I'd guess they must be referring to Hotspurs....
futboldad1
PREMIER
My bad. SurfRef go there first (hadn't read through the whole thread). Agreed on Howie as well........
Agree. The East County loses its best players to Albion and Surf (Nomads on the DA level). It would be nice if a few of the EC clubs could merge to create a club with more resources to give players a reason to stay in the area.
I guess Liverpool figured if they "can't beat 'em, join 'em.
Socal United
SILVER ELITE
I said it on another thread, their new sponsor should be Walmart.....
Years ago when I was still active in youth soccer club politics, I proposed that the big 4 North County Inland clubs (Poway, RB, PQ, and Pegasus) could combine in a way that would result in a virtual super-club without giving up their individual characters. Each club would supply their best players to a team nominally managed by one of them, with each club managing a different birth-year team. For example - Poway gets BU15, PQ BU14, RB BU13, Pegasus BU12, and the team holds together from year to year. East county teams could have done something similar.
What has happened instead is that three of those clubs have merged into SDSC, with Poway hanging on independently.
Justus
GOLD
My niece was killed accidently by stupid lawn darts back in 87' I believe. My bro (Vietnam Vet, Hand Radio Operator and part time Helicopter Gunner) took on Washington DC and got those shitty things band in America. The consumer product safety dude from the government got his ass fired too. These "toys" were hidden in volleyball sets. All made from China and Korea. He was on 60 minutes, "Mr Snow goes to Washington." Anyway, Target had some blame and he decides to open a little Hobby Shop in Palm Coast, FL back in late 80s. He loves model airplanes, remote control cars and planes and all that hobby stuff and sold it to his neighbors who were semi retired. His wife even had her little section for sewing and stuff. Business was booming until Walmart decided to open up their new location in the same shopping center. My bro would tell me stories about how Walmart would send their "price shopper" and then they would go and lower their price to beat his price. He was out of biz within a year...…...Tough to live in America sometimes
Banana Hammock
SILVER ELITE
Poway should join SDSC and finish your original plan.
My original plan was for the 4 clubs to stay independent, but cooperate on superteams at every age.
Poway Soccer is in a unique position because its agreement to use city fields (and some combined city-school district fields) depends on it having a majority of players residing in Poway. The Poway soccer club is the biggest in numbers of any of the youth sports groups petitioning the city every year for field space and time, so they get political respect. It's not clear whether the Poway City Council and Recreation Department would grant the same rights to a combined entity.
When I first got involved in Poway soccer back in the 70's (I was in the Navy stationed at Miramar and "I have to go to soccer practice" was a legitimate excuse to leave work early) the club included teams all over North County, including what eventually became the RB, PQ and Ramona clubs. Pegasus grew up by itself as a small group of competitive teams with no rec soccer base and had some initial success, but then eventually faded when the other clubs started to match them in competition.
Justus
GOLD
Anyone who has the guts to take on establishment is my kind of guy. My brother is a true inspiration to me and many others. He loved his baby girl and he misses her all the time. A great watch if you have 14 minutes.....My niece was killed accidently by stupid lawn darts back in 87' I believe. My bro (Vietnam Vet, Hand Radio Operator and part time Helicopter Gunner) took on Washington DC and got those shitty things band in America. The consumer product safety dude from the government got his ass fired too. These "toys" were hidden in volleyball sets. All made from China and Korea. He was on 60 minutes, "Mr Snow goes to Washington." Anyway, Target had some blame and he decides to open a little Hobby Shop in Palm Coast, FL back in late 80s. He loves model airplanes, remote control cars and planes and all that hobby stuff and sold it to his neighbors who were semi retired. His wife even had her little section for sewing and stuff. Business was booming until Walmart decided to open up their new location in the same shopping center. My bro would tell me stories about how Walmart would send their "price shopper" and then they would go and lower their price to beat his price. He was out of biz within a year...…...Tough to live in America sometimes
Socal United
SILVER ELITE
Not sure it faded, it was a large club when it merged with RB Renegades. Pegasus was stronger on the competitive side, RB on the rec side. They shared RBCP as a field so it was a natural merger. Plus, all the coaches knew each other so it was just a matter of time.
SDSC would be better served with working with Force than Vaqueros. Outside of the turf fields there is not much value to joining with Vaqueros. Your son's team was the extreme outlier and as I am sure you would agree would never have happened in today's landscape.
SDSC would be better served with working with Force than Vaqueros. Outside of the turf fields there is not much value to joining with Vaqueros. Your son's team was the extreme outlier and as I am sure you would agree would never have happened in today's landscape.
The extreme outlier was the team that started in BU8 in the 1997 Presidio season. Presidio did not have U8 circuits then, so they had to compete in a special BU9 circuit along with a couple of other BU8 teams and the remainder BU9 teams. The team was the brainchild of one of the parents, Reiner Bilawa, who had been a pro player in Germany before immigrating. His older sons had already played for a while in Rec and Presidio circuits and he thought he could do better. He took the previous year's Division 6 Rec all-star team and started from there. They did so-so the first year, then the next year they were the only team in their BU9 circuit with a year's competitive experience, so they won their group easily. After that they picked up strong players from all over North County and even one from Chula Vista (he was also the CVHS football kicker). That morphed eventually into a team that played in the USL Super-20 Southern California circuit for three years, and both my sons were part of that after playing in teams a year or two younger for a while.
Poway has some turf fields (Valley Elementary, Meadowbrook Middle School upper fields, and on special occasions Poway HS) but many of their games are played on grass (Arbolitos, Meadowbrook Middle School lower fields, Twin Peaks/Tierra Bonita fields, and Hilleary Park).
My niece was killed accidently by stupid lawn darts back in 87' I believe. My bro (Vietnam Vet, Hand Radio Operator and part time Helicopter Gunner) took on Washington DC and got those shitty things band in America. The consumer product safety dude from the government got his ass fired too. These "toys" were hidden in volleyball sets. All made from China and Korea. He was on 60 minutes, "Mr Snow goes to Washington." Anyway, Target had some blame and he decides to open a little Hobby Shop in Palm Coast, FL back in late 80s. He loves model airplanes, remote control cars and planes and all that hobby stuff and sold it to his neighbors who were semi retired. His wife even had her little section for sewing and stuff. Business was booming until Walmart decided to open up their new location in the same shopping center. My bro would tell me stories about how Walmart would send their "price shopper" and then they would go and lower their price to beat his price. He was out of biz within a year...…...Tough to live in America sometimes
this gives new meaning to the term back story.
nonetheless, sad
Nfarr67291
BRONZE
I feel this was done because Liverpool was done with losing players to the bigger clubs. Why not bring the bigger club to east county and stop the fighting over players with all the little clubs in East County San Diego.
outside!
DA
I don't see how the rebranding changes anything, it is still a small, east county club. The better players parents will move them to a bigger club with teams that compete at higher levels.