|
U.S. Soaring Team Selection
To reach the pinnacle in any sport is
a remarkable achievement. This is especially true for pilots who are
selected to become members of the U.S. soaring team and go on to represent
the United States at World Gliding Championships.
|
U.S. Soaring Pilot and Team
Rankings |
IGC Official
Ranking System
The IGC ranking system provides an official seeding list
of competition glider pilots participating in International contests and
contests sanctioned for inclusion. The Ranking List has two components:
Pilot Rating and Competition Rating. A Pilots Rating is the result of
his/her performance in IGC sanctioned competitions. The Competition
Rating depends on the type of competition, the quality of the pilots
competing and the number of competition days. IGC ranking has no impact
on US team selection.
2007 Revisions to Club Class
Selection
There have been important changes made to
how Sports Class pilots will be selected to future Club Class world
championship teams. The Team Committee after a good deal of thought
and input from club class pilots proposed that to be eligible for
team selection a sports class pilot must fly a glider of a handicap
more similar to those allowed in the World Gliding Championships
Club Class. All gliders are sill welcome to fly sports glass! There
are a number of documents that can help you understand these
changes:
Team Selection
United States Soaring Team pilots are
chosen by the Soaring Society of America (SSA) based on recent performance
in National and World-level competition. After each of the US Nationals,
competitors' scores are compared to the winner's score. The winner of each
Nationals receives a score of 100, and the other contestants are ranked
relative to the winner's score. The pilot's current year and the best of
the two previous years' performance are considered when selecting U.S.
Soaring Team members with the current year being weighted more heavily.
 U.S.
Soaring Team rankings can be very close with only a fraction of a point
separating competitors. When U.S. pilots do well in world level contests
they earn bonus points that count toward their selection to future US
Soaring Teams. The number of team members who represent the United States
at a World Soaring Championships is ultimately determined by the World
Championship contest organizers and the SSA.
US Pilot Rankings
All of the classes now follow the same team
selection guidelines, with
a slight modification to use all of the nationals for the Junior and
Feminine Team selections. See links to the ranking
lists above.
How It Works
The ranking of potential US Team members is basically the average of this
year's National's standing and the best of the previous two years. The
ranking is done separately for each competition class. To favor recent
performance, this year's standing gets weighted a bit more than the best
of the previous two years, but that's basically all there is to it!
Example of 15-Meter team rankings.
| |
Score |
Name |
2003 |
2002 |
2001 |
WGC'03 |
WGC'01 |
| 1 |
98.8882 |
Butler |
0.9850 |
0.2564 |
0.9931 |
|
|
| 2 |
98.6703 |
Kiiha
|
1.0000 |
0.9723 |
|
|
|
| 3 |
97.9363 |
Seaborn |
0.9855 |
0.9604 |
0.9727 |
|
|
| 4 |
96.9288 |
Gimmey |
0.9582 |
0.8743 |
0.9813 |
|
|
| 5 |
96.0771 |
Masak |
0.9760 |
|
0.9442 |
|
|
| 6 |
94.3512 |
Mockler, Dave |
|
1.0000 |
0.9753 |
0.8914 |
|
There is a bit of fine print that comes up for pilots who have been on a
US Team within the last three years, and we'll get to that after we
explain what the 'standing' is and how a pilot’s current year's standing
gets favored a bit. A pilot’s standing for selection to a team for any
national contest is simply the pilot’s score divided by the winner’s
score; for example, if the contest winner’s score is 5000 and a pilot’s
score is 4000, then the pilot’s standing for the year is 4000/5000 or .80.
To even things out a bit from year to year, the selection process adds in
a pilot’s best standing for the best of the previous two years. So if a
pilot has a standing of .98 in 2003, .97 in 2002, and a win (a standing of
1.00) in 2001, their overall standing would use the .98 in 2003 and the
1.00 in 2001.
To give more weight to recent performance, the current year’s standing is
multiplied by 52 and the best of the previous years’ standings by 48 –
yes, they add up to 100. So you can think of the final result as
consisting of 52% from the current year’s standing, and 48% from the best
of the previous years’ standings. In our example, the pilot’s overall
standing would be 52 x .98 + 48 x 1.00 = 98.96.
For the entire selection (subject to revision) document
in Adobe PDF format
go here.
See the team calendar for championship
happenings over the next several years.
US Junior and Feminine Soaring Teams
The ranking of potential team members in
these two categories uses the same selection procedures as for the other
teams but their performance in any of the U.S. national competitions
counts towards team selection. To be eligible, Junior and Feminine candidates must have achieved a score equal to at
least 60% of the national winner's score in and nationals. The Junior Soaring Team is made
up of pilots under age twenty six.
|
