[NSRCA-discussion] Advancement System

[John Pavlick]

Personally, I think we should do away with the mandatory advancement scheme. I understand why we have it but I've never seen a need to "force" someone to move up. More times I've seen people who WERE "forced" to move up (per the current rules) either lose interest or quit all together. In reality, I think most guys want to get to Masters or FAI as soon as possible. I don't know of anyone who would prefer to stay in a class which they have become very proficient at only to take home lots of first place trophies. 
If you look at auto racing, it might help. Nobody is forced to move out of Street Stock or SK modified until they're ready. Why? First of all it could be dangerous. Second, it could be VERY expensive. In any competitive event, the people who succeed will naturally rise to the top. The people who have limited resources and / or interest will stay in the lower classes and they won't finish in the top of the class very often. New people will come in and move past them all on their own. That's just the way it is. But at least everyone stays in the game. :)
 
John Pavlick

--- On Thu, 5/7/09, Earl Haury <ejhaury at comcast.net> wrote:

From: Earl Haury <ejhaury at comcast.net>
Subject: [NSRCA-discussion] Advancement System
To: "Discussion List, NSRCA" <nsrca-discussion at lists.nsrca.org>
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2009, 2:24 PM





In the discussion regarding the Masters sequence / length a few competitors mentioned that increasing the difficulty would cause them to stop competing. Folks, this needs to be addressed! We can't tolerate a system where folks are forced to a level where they can't enjoy pattern and/or chose to quit. 
 
There are generally two views of the current system. One is that it is cast in stone and needed to force the "trophy hound" to move to the proper class. The other is that peer pressure alone will result in proper classification. I think that there's a third possibility, some folks prematurely move to a higher class for the "prestige" of that class. There's likely reality / unreality to each view which supports that some process is needed. While there have been some changes to smooth the advancement process, nothing has changed for a person who finds themselves in a class that exceeds their skills. I know - there's a process to petition for dropping to a lower class, but it's intended for hardship cases rather than being uncompetitive.
 
OK - going back to the first paragraph - how might we fix this? My suggestion is to change the rules so that folks who gather points in the lower percentile of a class for X number of events (or rounds, or time span?) have the option to stay where they are, or move back a class. The current advancement rules would be applied to folks in the upper percentile. It seems that this would provide an option for the casual competitor to seek a comfort level and retain a reasonable advancement process for the serious competitor. Of course there are administrative issues, probably best to simply use data within each district, as most already track points for district championships. A district based data set would also best weight performance within one's local peer group.
 
Just my thoughts - how about the group discussing this some.
 
Earl_______________________________________________
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