The US Team selection process in future years

Excellent report RO! Most informative piece I've ever read on RAS.

I hadn't realized the degree of financial commitment that's required of the team members. Between the problems of geography that prevents team practicing and the geography problem that increases travel cost and the expanding number of classes and the declining SSA membership base, we're in a pickle..

One thing that your report shows is that during the early years of objective team selection, there was not a problem that could be tied to rotating in too many new people as consequence of objective standards.

I stopped racing entirely from 2001 until 2015 because of the
WGC team funding issues. My reasoning was, why bother racing
and qualifying if I'm just going to have to turn down a slot
anyway? I have raced the last 3 years again, mostly for fun,
and to see what the new generation is up to. Going forward
from here, I only see myself racing for the challenge and fun of
it without regards to team selection at all. Otherwise, it just
becomes too frustrating, and makes it not worth the effort at
all anymore..

RO

Thanks for coming back, Mike. It was a great pleasure and privilege to meet you and fly with you at Hobbs this past summer. Hope to fly with you again soon.

WB

At 16:11 07 November 2017, Steve Koerner wrote:
Excellent report RO! Most informative piece I've ever read on RAS.


One thing that your report shows is that during the early years
of objective team selection, there was not a problem that could
be tied to rotating in too many new people as consequence of
objective standards.


Funny Rieti story. During the opening parade, the announcer hardly
recognized any of the USA team's names, so he introduced us as
the "much overhauled Team USA", and everyone was snickering.
They didn't snicker anymore after the first competition day though.
DJ and I won the day in 15m and Std. The other team members
placed right up there with us. There was lots of shouting on the
German's part due to the fact that we had procured the "coaching"
services of German champion Walter Neubert (who had great
individual success in Rieti). When asked why he wasn't coaching the
German team, Walter replied that nobody had thought to ask him.
The Germans were labeling Walter as a traitor, and he just laughed
it off. What a real gentleman. We had T-shirts made that had Team
USA on the fronts, and "much overhauled" across the backs in order
tweak the people and announcer who had been snickering during
the opening ceremonies.

DJ flew an absolutely unconscious contest as a lone eagle. His lead
kept growing as the organizers kept setting harder and harder tasks
with what looked like (to us anyway) the intent to get DJ to land out
and even up the scores. Except, DJ kept finishing while everyone
else landed out. Going into the end of the contest, DJ had close to
a full day's 1000 point lead, and it seemed like the organizers finally
gave up on trying to get him to land out. He succeeded in
absolutely blowing the world's best 15m pilots right out of the water
in a very convincing fashion. There was no more snickering at the
closing ceremonies, and I know that several other nation's teams
went home pretty mad about their own poor performances. I know
that the French used their poor performance at Rieti as a stimulus
to build up their team, which has been a juggernaut since Austria in
1989... The German, British and Polish teams seem to have done
the same as well.... The team flying landscape has drastically
changed with all of this too. It makes the typical "lone eagle" type
pilot's (which objective selection methods might tend to produce)
chances of doing well smaller and smaller - as I see it anyway...
As you said, "We're in a pickle."

RO

"Just tell me what you want."

Scenario 1: The prime objective of U.S. competitive soaring is to win the World Championships. Ergo national championships--including the rules (e.g., regarding task types and team flying)--should encompass training, evaluation, and selection processes that surface pilots who can excel on the world stage. Venues should closely mirror those of upcoming world championships. Only those qualified few who are being groomed for and/or truly have a realistic chance of placing well should be chosen and funded. The inclusion of a self-funded "auxiliary corps" of pilots to fill out the allowable (by WGC organizers) Team slots should be based on whether their addition will enhance or detract from the Team's chances.

Scenario 2: The prime objectives of U.S. competitive soaring are (i) to select champions and (ii) to encourage participation by as many qualified pilots as possible through selection of task types and venues (higher completion ratios, venues with better weather, sites rotated for geographic equity, etc.) as well as social events. Selection of an expanded group of pilots to U.S. Teams with modest financial support would be as much to motivate/reward them and to generate PR and general enthusiasm for competition soaring as it would be an opportunity for the U.S. to excel on the world stage.

These are not 100% mutually exclusive but they do reflect different perspectives. Or perhaps points on a continuum. Thoughts?

Chip Bearden

On Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 3:53:09 PM UTC-5, wrote:
"Just tell me what you want."

If you are drawing from the pool of pilots that have the resources to play with cutting edge gliders you are in a hobby sport. And that's OK. If you want the US to win the Worlds, the US National Team needs to have coaches. Own/lease/rent cutting edge gliders. Then put the fastest pilots they can grow in them. For a variety of reasons that would be experienced juniors or recently aged out juniors. Provided they have dodged marriage, mortgages, car and student loans...
Would require a lot of support from old time glider pilots while cutting most of them out of the chance of making the team. Do we want a US Team that wins the Worlds or a better chance getting on the team for any hobby pilot that tries?

Re chip's post: We should distinguish the purposes of US contests, and the purposes of the US team, not just selection policy but its other activities.. US contests must have a broad participation motive. Among other issues, if we run them as pure training camps, meaning you must have crew or motor, and you will land out a lot, we will get far fewer people. It is more reasonable that the US team have a focused objective of winning. Though notice how it has been asked to trade that for fairness, transparency, etc.
John Cochrane

Crowd funding might be successful, If the general SSA membership were fans of our racing team. The most excitement I have seen surrounding a glider race, in the U.S., was this summer's junior team effort in Lithuania. Those young men flew their hearts out, as much for each other as themselves. We took notice and cheered for them. I, for one, will be willing to open my wallet when their opportunity comes around again. Most glider pilots I know, don't give a whit about our racing team. The new system combining objective and subjective selection criteria may be a move in the right direction. It is certainly a well thought out idea and deserves a chance to succeed. If it leads to a real team effort and not an assemblage of egos it may give us a team worth cheering for. My Dad used to tell me when I was whining " Don't cry before you'r bit ". Good advice I think.
Dale Bush

The system selection process could be improved by utilizing a hybrid system of objective (hard numbers from contests) with subjective (pilot votes). The current system used objective values to select those eligible but then used subjective voting to create the final list.

The forced choice ranking was subject to large variance and the absolute values were used to rank the pilots without looking to see if they were statistically significantly different. Rather than forced choice ranking a value of 0 to 10 could be given to each pilot during the voting. Remember all of these pilots were above 88 percent to make the list. Most should be getting an equavelnt score between 9 and 10 in voting.

The subjective ranking would also likely benefit from using the technique of throwing out the high and low score. This would minimize the impact of outliers and minimize one voter giving a pilot and extremely high or low ranking in an attempt to skew the results.


A hybrid system would use both values in a combined score to retain the objective score while adding the subjective component. The weighting of each can be adjusted, but I would recommend no less than 50% for the objective score.

Any plan as well as equations for adjusting scores from FAI scored contests should be put out for discussion and voted on by the racing community.

Good direction - and discussion

Since I have no skin in the game, but have been involved in Olympic selection is another sport, maybe I can add in a positive way.

We had huge problems and some sport still do with Team selection - it is not just us. Pure result selection diminishes organizers stress but sometimes the team can be weaker. Pure subjective selection always leaves someone not selected bitter.

The direction Tim Taylor is suggesting seems pretty logical. I agree.

There are only a few things that seem odd in Soaring selection compared to my experience.

1. the athletes (pilots) voting? I am not sure I like that idea. They could vote people onto a selection committee...... the Coach had allot of influence - do we have a National Coach?
2. a percentage of slots were allocated based on pure performance and a lesser amount of slots were subjective (coaches choice). this gives some flexibility to bring someone who is the type who performs best on the big stage.. (there are some who only perform well in high profile competition, it a fact of life)
3. Selection was/is done in phases and way in advance of the competition, but with the coaches discretion should someone fall off the performance wagon - this minimizes surprises.

In ending I would say one thing - look at almost every Sport where selection happens....... The ONLY ones who get it right are the Last Years World Champions - everyone else is still struggling to get it right

WH

All good posts with insightful comments on how to get better team results. I think most all were modifications to the hybrid system of this year. Thank you, all.

Anyone out there think a more subjective or strict objective system is appropriate?

I can think of two subjective scenarios that would make our nationals about choosing a national champion only and get the weight of WGC selection out of contests. Contest flying might be more enjoyable for newbies that way.

1. We pick a coach and the coach picks the team - that's it. Accounts for things like building for future years. Allows best pilots to cross over to different classes.

2. All contest pilots vote their dream team, pure and simple. I suspect we all have an inking who should go. Are we getting there with these rankings? This system would account for those cases when a pilot can't string together a series of good placings in one class within the three years.

3. The above options are subjective. The strict objective numerical rankings of the previous several years is another option. I know there are some out there who believe this is the way to go.

Does anyone out there want to argue for one of these systems?

XC