I am going to immodestly suggest a new law of how things relaly work in the world, and even less modestly suggest the law be entitled: "Mikell's Law".

The law as I have devised it will state that US WOC results are inversely proportional to the length and complexity of the rules used to determine the WOC Team. That is, the greater the complexity, the worse the results.

See the USOF web site if you don't know what I mean.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), January 23, 2001

Answers

I'm not sure there is a cause-effect relationship. But, the best US men's WOC teams were generally selected under fairly simple rules. At least through 1989, the team selections were straighforward. Finish in the top three at a three day team trials and you're on the team. The next two places are discretionary selections (without any specific rules or guidelines given to the selectors).

I glanced at the US selection procedures posted on the USOF site (www.us.orienteering.org) and didn't bother to read them. I did notice that they looked long and complicated.

I did a quick analysis of US WOC results over time. Take a look:

http://www.geocities.com/okansas.geo/wocrelays.html

-- Spike (meglin@juno.com), January 23, 2001.

The selection criteria may look complicated, but they really aren't. 90% of the stuff in there is to cover cases that is quite unlikely to turn up. I can condense the whole thing down to three concise items:

1) If you want to be on the team, show up at the Team Trials and finish in the top five. The top five are going, unless one of them can't make it, in which case #6 will go (and after that, #7, #8, etc.) 2) If you have an incredibly good excuse why you can't make it to the Team Trials, you can send in a letter pleading your case, but only if you're one of the top few people based on last year's US Champs results and Rankings -- others need not apply. 3) If you get busted at the Team Trials somehow (like you get a misprinted map or something), see item #2.

That's basically what it boils down to. If nobody sends in a letter saying why they couldn't get there, and if nobody gets busted, then the results of the race determine who's on the team. Period.

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), January 23, 2001.

Well... the way the rules are written, the the process to pick discretionary spots still rests on the interpretation of the selectors. All a discretionary pick will have to have done is to obtained some reasonable results at one or possibly two events prior to the team trials, have a somewhat highish ranking, and have submitted a petition. The petition can say something as simple as "My shoelace came untied during the team trials". The selection committee can put a person on the team as long as a petition is submitted before the selections are made. We, as always, will be relying on the selection committee to make good selections.

The rules seem fine to me. There is of course the goofy bit about the start order for the team trials. The person with the fastest time on the first day will start at the end of the list on the second day! If running in the woods with other people around is supposed to be a helpful thing, producing a potentially faster time, it is strange that the top finisher on the first day is purposefully put at a disadvantage... not that it really matters. For a non-random start order, it seems best to put the people with the best times or qualifying standards close together so that changing weather conditions won't come into play as easily.

I still think that OK's relay team selection process is the model that everyone should adopt. Barring that, it is high time to put Mook in charge of the US team.

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), January 23, 2001.

Bear in mind that there's a lot less room for discretion than there used to be. A maximum of two men and two women could be placed by the review committee, as opposed to definitely two plus all the alternates, as was done in the past. And only a limited set of people are even eligible to petition. This will probably mean, for women: Pavlina Brautigam, Sandra Zurcher, Karen Williams, Peggy Dickison, Kristin Hall, and Erin Olafsen, and for men: Joe Brautigam, Eric Bone, Swampfox, and Mook (and possibly Greg Balter, Mark Voit, or Orlin Stanev, depending on some citizenship and rankings questions). That's it. A petition from the likes of James Scarborough or Sandy Tetreault will not even be considered. And the review committee does have wide discretion, in order to accommodate unexpected circumstances, but the way things are worded, I guess I wouldn't expect them to give much consideration to untied shoelaces (or even the old standby "I had a bad run").

Most of what's on that web page came from a special committee that did a review of the selection process (with input from the membership) over the past two years. Somebody added the chart, and the start list stuff must have come from the ESC or something -- it wasn't from the committee. Most of what's in there is to *restrict* discretion, and keep the list matching the Trials results closely, and also some protection stuff (e.g., the ESC can't decide to hold the Trials at Pawtuckaway, and then bar Swampfox on the basis of his having made the map).

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), January 24, 2001.

I finally took a (very brief) look at the selection procedures. In my short look, I didn't see anything especially stupid about the procedures. It does look unnecessarily complicated.

It appears -- although it is not stated -- that the rules are aimed to reduce the "discretion" of the discretionary selections. A risk in trying to reduce discretion but keep enough discretion to handle some circumstances is that the rules might allow for some strange interpretation. Essentially the more language to interpret, the harder it can be to interpret. The selection "rules" in the old days place more emphasis on process than on a set of rules.

It disappoints me a bit that the team/ESC/USOF board have not yet come up with goals for the team. Or maybe they have and the goals have not yet been announced?

-- Michael (mike_eglinski@kcmo.org), January 24, 2001.

Since the short and long champs will be held between now and the team trials, but more than a month before the trials, I think they will broaden the list of people who can petition, legally. In fact, if a new rankings list is drawn up before the team trials, it would be good. There would be some whining (not legitimate whining, mind you) if someone came in and swept both the long-o and short-o, piling up huge ranking points for the 2001 rankings, but that person was somehow deemed "undesireable" so the ESC or whoever decided that they were too busy to make up a new rankings list... I'm just trying to throw a monkey wrench in there! It would also be too bad if a person was ranked 1st in the country in the 2000 rankings came in and got 4th at the team trials, but then was rejected out of hand because that person piled up all those ranking points by running events early in the year 2000 and was not listed in the interim rankings (if interim rankings are in fact made). I'm sure that person can always say he got sick at the tt, and it whether it was a lie or not, it would be sort of sad, but then life is that way.

Because there are circumstances where the best person tries to train and orienteer a lot, does quite well, but falls through the cracks, I guess I would prefer a little more openness in selecting the discretionary spots.

I think a goal for the team should be to have an organization getting set up so that if the US sends a team to Finland, there is some place to stay, fees are paid, etc. There is not, to my knowledge, even someone who is charged with appointing someone to do this task. There is no ESC.

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), January 24, 2001.

There is still an ESC; what it is doing I don't know. I'm guessing Bruce Wolfe is still taking charge of financial logistics re. WOC (though he's one of USOF's biggest procrastinators...). Any volunteers to do a better job? Nah, didn't think so.

The way I read it, Sandra Zurcher is not (yet) eligible to put in a petition to make the team, as only the top 5 from the US Champs can do that and she was 6th. Her status may change after the Short and/or Long champs.

I no longer can let myself get emotionally involved in all these discussions re. team selection, but it's fun to read other people's thoughts! I'm still undecided whether I'll even try to make the team. The relays are much more important, of course.

-- Peggy (Pdickison@aol.com), January 25, 2001.

The relays are much more important, of course

No question. The relays are much more important than the WOC. Although, the WOC can make for good training for the relays.

-- Michael (mike_eglinski@kcmo.org), January 26, 2001.

Okay, I got a little bit of clarification from higher-ups. I had forgotten about the Long-O/Short-O in Ohio being before the US Champs, and I had been looking at last year's Long-O and Short-O results. However, the web page says that the rules as presented there are not the final version, and I've learned that there are three changes that were made between the version that's posted and the version that got approved (web page update expected soon):

1) Long-O and Short-O don't count. You have to be top-five in the US "Classic" Champs AND top-10 ranked (or be a superstar living abroad) in order to petition.

2) You have to be eligible (US-citizenshipwise) to be on the team by the date of the Trials in order to be eligible (i.e. you can't say "I'll be naturalized in July, honest!").

3) The majority of the review panel has to be people who are not Team- affiliated (team members, coaches, ESC, etc.)

So based on that, and re-reading things now, I think the potential candidates for petitions would be:

Women: Kristin, Pavlina, Karen, Erin, Peggy

Men: Mikell, Joe, Eric, Mook, Ken Jr.

This assumes that these people all make the top 10 in the rankings, which I think they all have a pretty good shot at, with the possible exception of Ken, whose position is something like #10 or #11, depending on some things like Greg Balter's citizenship status, and things could shift around with the spring season results. (Oh, and I guess Carl fey could send in his competition resume... :-)

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), January 29, 2001.

Whoops! I made an error. The actual criteria for being able to submit a petition are 1) top five at US Champs, and 2) top *five* (not ten) in the Rankings. Given that, it appears unlikely that Ken Jr. will be eligible to petition. Ditto for Peggy, if the 2000 Rankings were used. However, there will be a special rankings list done in April, and as things are tight near the top of the F21 list, it wouldn't be a surprise if Peggy were to move up a place (and in that shuffle, Karen or Erin might move down and lose her petitionability). Eric Bone is also on the edge, and if he were to slip a spot, he wouldn't be able to petition.

-- J-J (jjcote@juno.com), January 30, 2001.