The highly successful UK Junior XC program vs. USA's nonexistantJunior XC program. Why?

On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 1:00:52 PM UTC-7, Sean Fidler wrote:
Good point. We need a balance for sure. Right now the balance is pretty full in the "not cross country" direction at most clubs. Not having gliders to fly because they are all out flying XC would really be a good problem to have initially...


A little data (thanks to Frank Whiteley).

There are 37 clubs in the US with at least 5 SSA youth members. The total number is 351. If you add the smaller club programs, juniors not on youth memberships or non-SSA members and juniors flying at commercial operations, maybe there are 400-500 juniors currently flying gliders in the US. If even a third of them are reasonably committed that is something we can work with..

There is also the Collegiate Soaring Association, a 501(c)3 with an assortment of glider equipment. It's unclear to me the current level of activity within the CSA and I understand that there are issues with the bylaws of the CSA that restrict how the equipment can be used. Something to look into.

I've been noodling on a few ideas for about a year now and have come to the conclusion that we really need to understand better where the bottleneck is: intake (seems not from the data), getting to solo, getting to first XC or getting to advanced XC/racing-ready? We also need to understand the state of the junior population and what the constraints are. The solution really needs to fit the problem - even then it would take energy, commitment and resources.

I've also discovered with just a little digging that thoughtful and generous people have been working on these issues for quite some time, but results have been, well, uneven. Hip-shooting solutions will likely waste time and energy and have little impact. I'd suggest a hard look at where we stand and some directed creativity to see if we can't come up with new approaches and focused investment (of time and money) to make some progress.

I'm willing to do some work on it, but for now I'm still counting leeches from the last r.a.s. racing discussion.

Andy Blackburn
9B