Those kids are having an amazing good time. I enjoyed putsing around with the old guys when I was a kid but given the choice any teenager would rather have the kind of fun the Brittish Junior Team is having.
Heck, I want to go hang out with them myself!

It's not that I enjoyed "putzing around with the old guys" per se. Some things don't change. I just wanted to fly against them in competition. Spending time and money to tilt against a handful of barely post-solo juniors wouldn't have been as attractive once I got past that stage myself.

On the other hand, the stuff on the UK Junior Gliding TV videos looks marvelous! Yes, yes, yes, in a minute. But doing grass-level, high-speed passes in a modern glider at the Junior World Championship before dancing the night away isn't quite what one is likely to encounter at Ionia next summer.

Of course, you have to start somewhere, and--as Sean has pointed out--the UK Junior experience is a great goal. So if, after polling the juniors, there's enough interest in the proposed event, then by all means go for it. I was just expressing what my views were at the time, a far different time by someone who was in the ideal position to benefit from my father and a good club.

And it was a time, as now, when there just weren't very many junior pilots. Perhaps a good question would be: How many of today's competition pilots started flying gliders as juniors? I know of quite a few: Eric Mozer, Erik Nelson, Erik Mann (hey, there's a theme, here!), Sean Fidler, Sean Franke (another theme), Tommy Beltz, Hank Nixon, Roy McMaster (I believe), Garret and Boyd Willet, John Seymour, Chris Woods, Andy Blackburn, Rick Indrebo, Dave Mockler, Danny Sorenson, Mitch Hudson, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some plus leaving out others I don't know. I think most, though certainly not all, of these pilots had a family connection: a father or other family member who was already involved in soaring. Trying to duplicate that may be a way to grow our base but I suspect we're looking for more than this.

It's probably no accident that two guys on this list who got into soaring based on their own strong interest--Hank Nixon and Erik Mann--have been leaders in encouraging cross country, competition, and junior soaring for many years in my part of the country...and can probably speak much more knowledgeably about what it takes to promote junior soaring than I can.

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"
U.S.A.