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.

Wearing my old foggies hat, a question: why is it necessary to
have an expensive glass two seater to teach cross country? I seem
to remember it was possible to set off on cross country in a "low"
performance single seater. Of course it resulted in field landings
and was a desperately slow way to learn. But it was the norm a
few decades ago; some instructors even flew X-country in K13s.
The extra costs of long aerotow retrieves from failed attempts are
very minor costs compared with the Club funding an Arcus Turbo.

I think a key issue is the mind-set of the Club instructors & X-
country pilots: a good Club is Key.

PS This method is probably why I am still so poor at X-country.