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...