If it is to be considered a legitimate sport, perhaps we should learn from other sports and provide students with mentoring and coaching, not just instruction. Explain to them all the steps involved and help them set realistic goals and create a plan for attaining them, and yes, help inspire them when they are discouraged.

That there, ladies and gents, is an encapsulation of a lot of the prior discussion.

I'm not sure that a passion for XC is "innate" - people often get the gliding bug only after their first flight. Similarly, the passion for XC often comes only after you've been shown the possibilities. It's a series of stepping stones with no true ending; some of the hops are bigger than others and sometimes the waters seem deeper and scarier than they really are. For those instances, friends, mentors and coaches will get people onto the next stone and the next challenge. Sometimes you just need to add more stones to lessen the length of the leaps.

DH