The Decline of Soaring Awards

I found it really difficult to get into XC flying locally, even at a club that was well staffed with great CFIs.
The solution was to join another club, that was located at one of the best soaring sites in the U.S. in Nevada. The instructors of my club were happy to teach XC flying there, but the prerequisite was really the location and the conditions.

I would encourage you to get to some good soaring sites (Ephrata, WA) in the summer where you can get a good feel of XC flying, or visit a well-established soaring site down south for e.g. two weeks.

On the other side, some clubs make weird decisions that make them look like a commercial-like operations and indirectly prevents their growth. E.g. they're not implementing a good, long-term financial plan to cover club glider accidents, but make pilots-at-fault responsible to pay a huge lump sum if something goes bad; this makes perfect sense for all the wealthy JS3 owners who already pay $500 for insurance, but just scares young generation pilots away.