Train Wreck

I qualified 5th I think and was fourth after the voting.

They did ask me after Gary Ittner (brilliant pilot) declined to go this year and 5E (best team player out there) elected to go in the 18m class with his spiffy new V3. Unfortunately, I had already bid my vacation time in other months. I didn’t anticipate being asked. We have a very structured vacation system at work. I have already suggested they move the timeline up in future years and they agreed that would be better.

There will be more details about the process published. The document outlining the process requires it. I think they are being very careful about getting it right.

XC

Also since there was no public announcement about who made the team, you simply created a messy situation.

Geez Louise - ad-hominem-based ranting on Facebook by someone who failed to
make the US Team he self-proclaims he both wanted and deserved is NOT creating
"a messy situation"??? Facebook ranting isn't a "public announcement"?

My only direct involvement with sailplane racing is as a longtime soaring
pilot/aficionado...not a racer myself, know only a very few top-level racing
pilots, no Facebook account, no skin in the racing game beyond my generic
soaring-based interest in all things soaring, including RAS since the mid-90s.

Through RAS I've gleaned some insights to many soaring personalities I've
never had the pleasure of meeting...and to a very few I don't really care if I
ever meet, based on how they come across to me in print. In my view, the pilot
fundamentally responsible for this "train wreck" isn't the O.P. of this
thread, but the disgruntled FB poster, who chose a very public forum on which
to express his views. It was sufficiently public that - writing as one who
(noted above) lacks a FB account and never intends to get one - was forwarded
a (one of the?) rant(s) by an actual (as opposed to FB) friend, simply because
he guessed it would be of private, personal, interest to me (which it was).

I found it of interest at several levels, the most immediately obvious one the
overall inappropriateness of the expressional tone of the writer's
disgruntlement. I'm not a fan of bullying, self-centered "blinkerism,"
innuendo, generic character assassination, etc.; all of that reflects more on
the author than sheds light on substantive facts. (Sadly, none of that
surprised me, either, given 4+ years of RAS exposure to the author.) I write
that while simultaneously finding myself in questioning sympathy with the
man's fundamental aggrievement, and like (at least two other) previous posters
am of the opinion that the methodology of the Selection Committee (et al)
deserves "somewhat public" self-dissemination (and subsequent discussion). I
hope that comes to pass in a timely fashion.

Why? Having zero insight to the inner workings of the Team Selection
Committee's methods, but "open access" to its results (i.e. names of actual
Team pilots), Team pilot contest records (via the oft-criticized SSA website),
and - sometimes - even minor insight into individual contest activities (via
"the usual suspects"), it seems to me the nature of the selection beast is in
some ways "a kinda-sorta public affair." And as such, were I a member of the
Selection Committee or in some other way directly involved in the selection
process, I would feel a responsibility to publicly convey "rightful elements"
of the selection process...thereby somewhat alleviating the otherwise
predictable hue-n-cry/"bureaucratic cronyism"/etc. endemic to closed-door
decision-making. If that doesn't happen, my working conclusion will be that
someone(s) involved in the selection process have failed to perform at an
"A-level."

Respectfully,
Bob W.

---
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
http://www.avg.com

Sean (and I for that matter), would benefit from a Breathalyzer and Interlock attached to our computers. Or a "Wayback" machine a la Professor Peabody from Rocky & Bullwinkle.

On Tuesday, October 31, 2017 at 8:18:12 PM UTC-4, XC wrote:
Dang! Got drawn in again!

I’m ashamed to admit I have been following Sean Fidler’s “why didn’t I get chosen� rants on Facebook. It is hard to look away from a train wreck I guess. I am embarrassed for him. I've never seen someone take a decision so badly. So much misinformation and so little space to refute it!

For those who haven’t heard SF wasn’t chosen to represent the US in the 18m at the 2018 WGC in the Czech Republic. He was chosen to go Poland in the 15m class. Hardly an insult but his insecurities got the better of him, he ungraciously declined the 15m class and ever since the world has not been right.

Let me first say I do not represent the selection committee in any way. They have been working hard at this and deserve our thanks not attacks.

The selection process is different this year. This has been known to all the candidates for some time now. First, a pilot qualifies for consideration by getting a ranking of 90% or better by averaging various comps.

In phase two, the pilot’s fellow competitors who scored at least 85% of the winners score in a US Nationals in the last three years rank order the candidates based on who they think would represent the US best at the WGC. Listed below are the pilots who voted in the 18m class.

Fletcher, Robert W.
Leonard, David
Fidler, Sean
Ittner, Gary N.
Nelson, Erik
Clark, Robin
Alexander, Peter T.
Nichols, Steve
Sorenson, Kenneth G.
Indrebo, Rick
Nadler, David R.
Zimmerman, Sam R., III
Murray, John
Arnold, Sarah Kelly
Gawthrop, Bill
Linnekin, Dennis
Gimmey, Ray
Tyler, Allison H., Jr.
Roberts, Sheridan
Mockler, David R.
Cochrane, John H.
Lee, Jim
Welles, Gillette 'Tim'
Deane, Peter
Martin, David V.
Coggins, David L.
Keene, Mark
Franke, Sean

This is a pretty sharp group. In fact it would be hard to assemble such a good group of decision makers any other way. There was well over 90% participation rate I’m told and more details will follow from official sources. What was put forth was their decision.

After the vote the committee can make adjustments to field a good team. For example they may pair up two people who work well together or select someone with experience applicable to the WGC site. I am told that this was not implemented in any of the classes this year.

I can only guess at why others didn’t rank him well in the 18m class. I ranked him low in the 15m because he doesn't do well in a TAT or a MAT task. If he doesn’t have markers around him he tends not to do so well. MAT task aside, there are still quite a few TAT tasks at the WGC and pilot needs to be able to perform if they find themselves separated from the lead gaggle. On top of all that he doesn't work well with others and is an internet troll. Sorry, but we all know it to be true.

So all this talk about deficiencies in the US rules, MAT tasks being bad, flying primarily racing tasks, "true racing tasks", etc. is smoke and mirrors for one thing, wanting to make sailplane racing about following others around the course in gaggles and not making decisions on one's own, hanging back and leap frogging over the guys in front. The pilot who makes a bold decision is really taking a risk.

IGC racing is what it is. Yes, there is a lot of gaggle flying required but in the end we still need to send brilliant pilots who process a full set of soaring skills.

Sean Fidler didn't make the cut (in 18m) and is having a tough time dealing with the fact.

Sean Murphy

This is better than watching the Jerry Springer show.

A soaring friend of mine call me yesterday and asked me if I had been following the drama on Rec Aviation. The answer was no, because I really do not care about SSA drama. Here is my opinion. I do not pay dues to the SSA because I do not think the organization is a group I want to be a part of for a lot of reasons. I am not going to list those reasons on this forum or any other forum for all to see.
I still own and fly my glider(F1)and still enormously enjoy flying a glider.. I made a statement to Sean Fidler, a long time ago, the SSA has been run by a very small and select group (the good old boys) soaring pilots for a very long time. If you want to pick a fight with them, you will not win that battle.
So, to all soaring pilots, if you want to compete on a US National Soaring Team, you best not **** off the boys.

Bob Fidler

This thread shows the true colors of the SSA. Look at all you children fighting when you could be supportive instead.

The SSA keeps shrinking year after year! Is anyone surprised?

If the SSA was a business, the controlling shareholders would have everyone fired in management. Starting from the top down.

Seth Higgs

It's so sad to read this thread.

I do not agree with posters who suggest that there is anything fundamentally wrong at SSA or with the volunteers that are serving the membership. Yet in their efforts, one wrong decision has been taken. It needs to be reversed.

We need to return to objective standards for selection to the US team. The notion that a committee can predict international performance better than actual performance can predict performance, is flawed at the onset. The team committee should never have usurped authority to override the longstanding objective standards. I find it especially inappropriate when considering that the members of the committee are themselves all vying for positions on the various teams.

If the goal were drama and suspense, this would be the ideal way to achieve that. Just like on the TV show Survivor -- you empower the competitors to vote each other off the island. Anger, resentment and name calling are the predictable results. And so unnecessary.

Even if you are on the team committee and you really really believe that you are smarter than the actual contest results, I would urge you to reconsider whether the goodness that you can instill by overriding the objective standards is actually worth the damage that is done to the organization as a whole and the damage done to the credibility of the selections. I urge that we get the politics back out of US team selection?

Hoping we don't have to read a thread like this again next year...

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 9:28:14 AM UTC-6, Steve Koerner wrote:
It's so sad to read this thread.

I do not agree with posters who suggest that there is anything fundamentally wrong at SSA or with the volunteers that are serving the membership. Yet in their efforts, one wrong decision has been taken. It needs to be reversed.

We need to return to objective standards for selection to the US team. The notion that a committee can predict international performance better than actual performance can predict performance, is flawed at the onset. The team committee should never have usurped authority to override the longstanding objective standards. I find it especially inappropriate when considering that the members of the committee are themselves all vying for positions on the various teams.

If the goal were drama and suspense, this would be the ideal way to achieve that. Just like on the TV show Survivor -- you empower the competitors to vote each other off the island. Anger, resentment and name calling are the predictable results. And so unnecessary.

Even if you are on the team committee and you really really believe that you are smarter than the actual contest results, I would urge you to reconsider whether the goodness that you can instill by overriding the objective standards is actually worth the damage that is done to the organization as a whole and the damage done to the credibility of the selections. I urge that we get the politics back out of US team selection?

Hoping we don't have to read a thread like this again next year...

Steve,

Thank you for the best reply in this thread. As you said this could have been predicted before we even embarked on this path.

"Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it."

We learned nothing from the experiences of the 70's that led to the current system that was hard numbers.

In 2013, I had a conversation with Rick Walters at the SSA headquarters during the 15M Nationals. He was worried about any change to the system that would allow voting to select the team. I miss his wisdom more each year.

Tim

The whole reason the US team committee undertook the huge effort is exactly experience with the "objective" system. We were sending, time after time, people to the worlds who you could tell had no chance, either for skill, seriousness, preparation, willingness to adapt to the WGC environment, or psychological stability.

(Sean is actually pretty good on this scale -- he goes nuts behind the keyboard but you don't see him pulling the kind of self-inflicted disasters that bedevil so many others on US teams.)

The modal pilot went to the worlds once, and treated it as a subsidized gliding vacation. We prized "fair" and "objective" above "successful." We could go back to that... and to the predictable results. The US team committee, bless them, wants to win on occasion, not just be "objective" about who gets selected.

So, what do you think is more important: The US winning, or the feelings of people who feel they should have been selected? Experience has proven you can't have both.

Let's give it a try. Let the US team committee pick, and if pilot a or b is unhappy about the result, tough. Let them form good teams, of people who will work as teams. Give them a few cycles, and let's see if they can produce results.

John Cochrane

John,

I think you need to take a big step back and separate the goals/objectives from the execution. My suspicion is that many (most?) US competition pilots agree with the objective to send the most qualified team possible. If that requires some amount of subjective input over and above the numerical rankings, so be it.

What you're hearing is a lot of legitimate pushback on the implementation of the new approach. A couple of the fundamentals of organizational change initiatives are communication and transparency. This whole initiative scores a D- on both.

Here's what I sent to Team Committee back in early June and cc'ed to my Regional Director. Note that I got an extensive response from my Director. Crickets from the Team Committee (see a trend here?)

The rancor you are seeing today was 100% predictable (and predicted).

June 4, 2017

Hey Jim,

I was somewhat surprised to see that there is a new WGC Team Selection process; I don't recall much (if any) publicity or debate about this.

While I can see where the desire to "do something different" comes from, I'm not sure that a process that concludes with an opaque selection by a secret committee makes sense. In fact, that's what we USED to do up until about 1985, when the current ranking system came into play. The ranking system came about exactly because the membership was sick of back-room deals that depended more on relationships than pilot skill.

Rather than just complaining, here are my specific recommendations:

1. Ranking "boosters". If we want to give a nod to pilots who have already competed in the WGC, I think that makes sense. But other Category 1 events such as Pan American Events, European Gliding Championships, or Pre-worlds are just a way for the really rich/retired to buy their way on the team. Tighten up the verbiage to include only true WGCs.

2. Committee Selections. If we're going to make the Committee the ultimate selectors, then I would expect (demand) that the process be 100% transparent. Specifically: The votes of the Committee members must be public. The Committee members must document their rationale for selection using a standard form which is made available to the membership.

Feel free to pass this along to the Excomm or whoever it is that made this decision.

Note: I went back and read the minutes from the Spring 2016 BOD meeting. It appears that this was tabled on Saturday and supposed to be discussed on Sunday. But the minutes from Sunday don't reflect this. Seems suspicious.

Erik Mann (P3)
30 years of racing in the USA

On Friday, November 3, 2017 at 12:58:43 PM UTC-4, John Cochrane wrote:
The whole reason the US team committee undertook the huge effort is exactly experience with the "objective" system. We were sending, time after time, people to the worlds who you could tell had no chance, either for skill, seriousness, preparation, willingness to adapt to the WGC environment, or psychological stability.

(Sean is actually pretty good on this scale -- he goes nuts behind the keyboard but you don't see him pulling the kind of self-inflicted disasters that bedevil so many others on US teams.)

The modal pilot went to the worlds once, and treated it as a subsidized gliding vacation. We prized "fair" and "objective" above "successful." We could go back to that... and to the predictable results. The US team committee, bless them, wants to win on occasion, not just be "objective" about who gets selected.

So, what do you think is more important: The US winning, or the feelings of people who feel they should have been selected? Experience has proven you can't have both.

Let's give it a try. Let the US team committee pick, and if pilot a or b is unhappy about the result, tough. Let them form good teams, of people who will work as teams. Give them a few cycles, and let's see if they can produce results.

John Cochrane