OK, how about this:

a.)each region get a proportional amount of entries per event (masters/elite women/elite men/juniors) - gives incentive to recruiting more riders
b.)each region picks its own selection criteria - so you folks can duke this out locally and vote on it at the ncnca meeting
c.)returning champions get entry spot if they want it

I know USAC was looking at options for qualifying riders for master's Nationals due to fields filling up so early this year. There is a chance that any qualification method selected for Junior Nationals might carry over to Masters nationals.

Casey makes a very good point. The Junior Points series is already on the calendar. Would we do the same for Masters and Elite riders? I don't believe the women's fields will be in danger of overcrowding, only the level of experience of each rider.

The only problem with heats at Nationals is that.

1) You will not know your exact racing schedule until just before nationals ( since heats, if needed will not be scheduled until Reg closes and they know how many riders they have).

2) You could travel all the way to nationals and then have bad luck in your heat and wind up not qualifying for nationals ( spending a lot of time and money to not even make it into the big show).

I don't think a single qualifying race is a good idea. I like having a series of races with the highest point earners going to nationals best. This eliminates bad luck in a single race knocking a deserving rider out of nationals. This would also give teams a chance to qualify multi riders. By having a series you would have several important races for juniors to go to leading up to nationals. This would help rider get use to pressure races which sohuld help them do better at nationals.

as a junior that has gone to road nationals and will be going again this year, I don't see a need for regional qualifying events, and I would much rather have heats at national championships. The current requirement of being a 3 to go to nationals as a 15-16 or 17-18 should be enough to weed out racers who do not deserve to go. Placing well enough in local junior races (some of the hardest in the country, looking at the way we perform when we go to nationals) to think that going to nationals is worth your time should be all you need to be able to go, along with being a 3. Making disctrict events qualifiers is hard on teams with good teamwork, as every rider would then need to place well to go on to nationals instead of being able to sacfrice their race for a teammate. Sorry if this post was scattered, but I just woke up :)

It needs to be a series of Qualifying raceS. One race leaves a bit to much to chance, sickness or family obligations.

Really depends on the region. Some don't have enough kids to have multiple Junior races. Would suck to make somebody travel 8, 10 or 12 hours just to get to a qualifying race...

How to get more kids? Hard to compete with local Soccer, Baseball, etc. leagues where they never have to travel for events.

One issue I see with the one race qualifier thing is scheduling. Do we juggle the schedule a bit to move current elite districts and masters road/crit districts up a bit? 4's are not eligible for most non junior mass start/male events so should not be in the qualifier either where applicable.

Another issue is making racers peak twice in a season and having a bit of chance (mechanical mishap?) play a part in the qual process and trying to make sure the time between events is fair, as opposed to a longer, consistency based qualification.

On topic 2, how about the equivalent of the NFL punt, pass and kick competition starting at the age of 5 and working our way up? Have elites ride a bit at each school to set the time standard. :)
The BCF does something sort of like this, at first with safety and basic skills and then adding talent identification tests as kids age up, but they are not operating on Steve Johnson's stakeholder model, either.
I suppose based on past results we are suppose to find funding for whatever we come up with from local sponsors and not rely on the USCF for anything except a pat on the back?

When I raced in Southern CA during the 80s, Districts were the qualifying event for Nationals. This meant RR, TT, and Track championships not only offered you hope for a District medal, but also a chance to race at the Nationals. The down side was Cat 4s could take your spot if they had a good day. The up side was the timed events had a standard you had to reach first, but then you must beat the best in your event. I don't think Time Trials should exclude anyone in the Master or Junior fields, but the Elite Natz should only have the best from each region, based on % of licensees.

Back when riders had to qualify for nationals the number of qualifiers from each district was based on the % of the total USCF membership in that district. Since Nor Cal was almost always the largest district we had more qualifiers. If a small district had say 10 qualifying positions then Nor Cal had 30.

Do regional qualifications tend to make some regions *much* easier to get out of than CA? Is there a way to balance that out (higher population/proportionately more qualifiers out of region or something)?

On the second topic, what do BMX and triathlon do?

I mention those because my perception is that BMX has a lot more children and females participating (could not find demographic data with a simple search), and that BMX pros make a lot more than the road cycling pros due to more sponsors due to more children participating( I talked to some kids at the Prunedale BMX track and their BMX bikes cost a lot more than my cross bike), and triathlon has a higher barrier to entry in terms of cost and training preparation and is doing better than we are doing with juniors in percentage terms and in the closer parity of the genders in the junior ranks.

http://www.usatriathlon.org/News_Info/demographics.htm

For BMX, a big difference in ability still does not amount to a huge difference at the finish line since the longest event is perhaps a minute for the smallest kids. For triathlon, for the m(iddle) o(f) p(ack), the b(ack) o(f) p(ack), they are trying to improve their time or beat whoever is close to them. In road cycling, it can be brutal and humiliating for those not able to keep up with the field, one can often end up paying a full entry price for a 1/100th of a race(yeah, it's only an entry fee but still), and when the field size is small, the range in ability can be huge which is pretty discouraging for those who are behind on the development curve.