Discussion: JTESC

ensuring that the JWOC team is composed of members of the US orienteering community (not necessarily residents)

Not sure what is meant by US community. Is this suggesting they're looking to prevent what happened this year when kids many of us didn't know showed up at team trials and were selected to the JWOC team?

I'm not sure the requirement to be on JDT as a condition for being on the JWOC team - as proposed - is the right approach

Was that really in the proposal? I keep re-reading the proposal posted here and I don't see that. Was there a later version presented to the Board?

That Orienteering Community line looks so dodgy. It would be a great way to help maintain a status quo.

Agreed. I'm just curious where it came from. I don't see it in the written proposal, but I also didn't hear the discussion on the conference call.

I'm paraphrasing the characterization of "within the community," based on remarks from the phone call, and I agree that this needs to be exceptionally well defined. It would be better to say that a goal from JTESC is to have the Juniors involved with the national team throughout the year.

Suffice it to say, the Board and the rules committee were not satisfied with the current wording of the rules change. We also want more time with the proposal available publicly to invite feedback, thoughtful review, and commentary from the community. JTESC should have a proposal next Monday, giving a week for people to review it.

Thanks, Ian. More time for public review of a proposal sounds good. Asking JTESC to include some sort of intro stating what goal their proposal is looking to achieve would also be helpful.

I have asked JTESC to do just that, Mitch. They are including a justification for each rules change.

Awesome. Thanks, Alex!

Just want to emphasize, again, that the juniors we had on the team in 2016 who live in Europe have been active participants in JNT. Moreover one of them in particular, along with their family, provided an enormous amount of logistical support and financial savings to the official training camps in the summer. I think the concerns raised about kids competing for the USA at JWOC who do not live in the USA are counter-productive -- in fact, we gain a lot from those connections. If we really want to exclude those who live abroad from making the team, the best approach will be to develop strong junior programs in the USA.

Thanks for adding that, Barb. Just to be clear I am not looking to raise a concern about kids who live abroad. I'm only trying to understand if that is part of the motivation for this rule change. Including a justification as requested by Alex will hopefully help make this more transparent.

I agree with barb that we shouldn't discourage nor prohibit from junior or senior teams people who live abroad. Many top orienteers live where they can train best. Eligibility for national teams is normally by citizenship not residence. As barb says, Americans gain a lot by having fellow Americans abroad who can help a bit with training and other logistics overseas, maybe even insights or experience with terrain types or other matters that an ear to the ground can help with.

These athletes also often set an example. It takes a lot of hard work to be good and it helps to see that in action by teammates or club mates.