On Monday, 6 November 2017 14:27:39 UTC-7, wrote:
On Monday, November 6, 2017 at 2:21:13 PM UTC-5, John Cochrane wrote:
Good post Chip, but it turns out that it's not true that we just send the same pilots over and over again.

Sorry, John, I thought I was clear in referring to the old days when the teams comprised George Moffat, Dick Johnson, AJ Smith, Dick Schreder, and a handful of others. Just for kicks, I went to http://www.ssa.org/USTeam?show=blog&id=2128 and checked out the teams for the years of my youth. In the 9 world championships between 1960 and 1978, only 14 different pilots filled 34 of the team slots. Dick Johnson went 8 times followed by Schreder, AJ, and Moffat with 4 times each. It's perhaps no coincidence that the latter two garnered 3 of America's 5 world championships, each of them winning the 2nd time around (and 4th, in Moffat's case).

In 2012, by contrast (the last "big championship" year on this page), the U.S. Team comprised 11 pilots just for this year alone!

FWIW, at least two of those pilots declined invitations to participate in this year's selection. So I'll stay with my tentative conclusions that it's "easier" to get on a U.S. Team (which might have the effect of attracting pilots to national contests) while agreeing with you that the cost and time might discourage pilots from doing so more than once or twice. As you point out, that's bad for U.S. Team prospects over time.

Interestingly, only 3 of the 12 (twelve!) pilots who participated with you in 2010 showed up two years later, but I don't know how much of that was team selection vs. cost/time. If cost is the big inhibitor, the solution is simple: just raise more funding for the Team!

Chip Bearden

Another factor may be the short time to prepare and plan for 2018 events. With the change in selection process, the folks going to the 2018 events have 9 months or less to prepare, line up equipment, housing etc etc.

Previously the individuals were selected 18+ months advance, providing time to even attend the pre-worlds if they so desired.

The new selection process could have started after Uvalde and provided a couple of more months.