Imagine if our "US Junior Team" had a US Junior Development program to train within. Better yet, imagine if they had a strong junior culture like Britain, France, Germany, Australia or Poland in which to bond, train and practice together within. For two of our three Jr pilots, this is their first experience with FAI rules! Thrown right into the fire of a highly competitive Junior World Championship! Despite this lack of support and practice relative to other junior gliding nations, they are somehow still performing admirably. Impressive for sure but much more a statement on their individual talents and great determination than the SSA's support or focus on developing US junior soaring. I'll go into the SSA vs other national organizations in more detail later.

Imagine if our US Junior team (and coaches) had even half the support of the other top junior soaring countries. Even Australia has 3 separate weeks of specific junior team training camps annually (coaching, etc) and even sent some junior pilots to Europe to train with the best in the most competitive events (makes great sense to me). Going to a US rules contest and flying HATs, Timed Area tasks and virtually ZERO Assigned Racing tasks has limited value when an FAI Junior World Championship podium is the goal.

Australia, like the USA, has a very large country geographically to cope with. Regardless, Australia has developed an extremely strong junior team development program and its paying off. Australia is currently winning Standard Class overall (by a large margin) and many of their pilots (6) are doing very well in both classes overall. They even have a young female Jr pilot!

It is also impressive how many strong Junior pilots are coming out of countries like Poland, France, Britain, Germany, Australia, Italy, Czech Republic, Netherlands, etc, etc vs the USA as a baseline. A 21 yr old French kid just won the FAI Sailplane Grand Prix and beat Sebastian Kawa (and most of worlds other top pilots)! There are many other European junior pilots in this league or closing in on that level! There is at least on Australian at this level (currently winning standard class by a month).

Dozens and dozens of of kids are competing for the privilidge of making these teams in these countries. All of these kids from countries with junior development programs are learning and excelling at cross country at a very young age (15, 16, 17...). And behind them are literally hundreds more in each country working towards the goal of cross country and FAI junior competition. Meanwhile, in the USA...we don't really have any focus or energy on Junior soaring at all.

Who was #4, 5, and 6 US Junior Team pilot again? Hmm? How many are trying to make the US Jr team? Do we even know? How many Jr pilots competed tasks at SSA contests in 2015?

We are very lucky to have Boyd, Daniel and JP. They make us look very good! We are all amazingly proud of them! But we need to start putting some real effort, organization and dollars behind them (JP and Daniel have 2 more worlds that they can qualify for...) and behind developing others. I don't think we have too many other US Junior cross country pilots on deck for the next Junior World Championships. Do we? When is the next Junior World Chamoionships going to be hosted by the USA? Has it ever been in the USA? Junior soaring is foundational to the future success of US soaring. But we really don't have Junior soaring at all in the US to be honest. Harris Hill is trying hard. But we need a national program with leadership, goals and series focus and attention.

Despite the great moments our current US Junior Team are providing us (despite all odds), let's not kid ourselves. US junior competition (and even cross country soaring) is not well... If we continue neglecting it the consequences will be far greater than a decline in results in future Junior World Championships...

Video on the Australian Jr teams training program. Just a few days old. They describe their training and you get a sense of the strong junior culture they have created: http://youtu.be/xY9FiqQBYAU

Sean