Jim Lamb wonders when has the Competition Committee has been instrumental in securing meaningful promotional help, or helped organize a Regionals?

Jim has a point. For the most part the Competition Committee is just a gatekeeper, and pretty much operating on automatic. The USHPA Competition Rulebook hasn't been changed since 2006.

It is only when it steps outside its normal role of just approving USHPA-sanctioned GAP-scored competitions that it gets into trouble or starts trouble, as the latest brouhaha about the King Mountain co-Nationals so amply illustrates.

The USHPA Competition Committee has been pressed into this role of supposed promoter of growth for the USHPA and competition (hasn't seemed to accomplish this yet) by the USHPA leadership (well, Lisa Tate and Riss Estes), and Lisa's vision of the Strategic Plan.

My call for two USHPA Competition Committees (one just focused on NTSS-based competitions) is an attempt to keep the NTSS Competition Committee focused on its gatekeeper role (for GAP-scored meets), and let another competition committee focus on promotion and growth, if that is the desire of the USHPA leadership.

It would be perfectly fine with me if the NTSS Competition Committee was as low key as it was under my administration, just helping folks get through the USHPA sanctioning process.

The center of attention in competition is the meet organizers and the competition pilots. They are the people that make things happen. It would be nice if the USHPA BOD could help them out, but I wonder if it is capable of doing so.

The competition community is really quite separate from the USHPA BOD, officers, and headquarters. Really, we want to have as little to do with the USHPA BOD as possible. Maybe if we saw something positive coming out of the USHPA Competition Committee, we would have a different opinion.

Right now, I am in a defensive mode. The leadership is pushing for big changes in the competition system, and I am trying to get that diverted to another committee, so that the changes to the NTSS system are minimal and actually helpful to competition. I will publish my proposals soon.