I heard what you said. No worries.
What you got was my mind dumping and sorting ideas that feed into the mix of this issue which I feel is complex and undervalued.
To clarify, my response is that the "Pros" haven't been developed yet because the actual matriculation of managing and developing teens is still under development. The current model for handling these talents is only useful once we get the kids to a certain level of development. It is like the racing we see in the Tour; the payload model. The athlete is nursed within the Peleton to preserve energy and be safe until things get to a point where the hardest racing is and then they are launched off the front. At that point the kids are too fast for the rest of the group, are pretty highly skilled and disciplined, and need special coaching and much less support from people like me who need to manage an overall team.
Much of this development is done within the Team framework which embraces the social dynamics of teens. One doesn't just assign rides and send them off. Samples being what they are such methods are very supervision-intensive as ability levels range widely and safety margins are critical within public institutions. The Rider/Ride Leader ratio is maxed at 6/1. A Team of 24 needs 4-5 such leaders and sweeps, depending upon the nature of the group. A large team ride can have 8 adults in support, especially if travel to more fun and varied places to ride is in the mix.
Coaches are trained within the League in Wilderness First Aid, sports physiology and sports psychology, teaching teens, reaching and teaching girls, riding and racing techniques, running teams, race production, bike fitting, handling special athletes, safety, mechanics, all by people who specialize in these things. These instructors come way enriched by our fund of knowledge too, as our experience cannot be denied, and this synergy benefits us all.
This is a pretty new model and develops all sorts of talents. Sometimes in there you find great racers. Sometimes you just find gems who will not go on to race. Yet what is effective separate from producing a few great racers is that through outreach, support, and development we build a lot of great mountain bikers and imbed them into the community. These are the seeds of future mountain bikers and racers. And the cycling community grows.
As for being paid? In a nascent, not-for-profit endeavor, money is a chimera. We are fortunate to live in an area where adult riding talent is at a fairly high level, more at some schools than others. The nature of this work and the large amount of support staff needed makes paying people a challenge. Still, Head coaches can get paid, though less than traditional high school coaches. Everyone down the line, in a sport not funded by California high school athletic departments, does have some opportunity for compensation. Financial support comes in the form of sponsorships, standardized donations from families, and gifts. As such few coaches opt to take money for their work. In some cases the coaches are forced to take a stipend which generally gets laid on the counter of the local bike shop and everyone is happy. It is akin to fighting with a friend over the dinner check at a restaurant.
Much like other sports the families lend a hand and cooperate with transportation and Race Day production, fundraising and such. At a time when kids would rather not be around their parents they don't mind being around other talented and helpful adults. This provides a fertile soup of mtb culture and the community grows again.
In the end we have a much broader base from which to draw future riders and a sport which achieves an ever widening recognition in the general community. An expression of this is the emergence of the YMCA MTB program I have lead for the last 4 years. It took the exposure of our sport in the community for 5 years to develop the critical inertia to support a program in such a traditional institution as the Y. It failed to field enough participants in its first year to support a class. That says something about the community and mountain biking. In the next year we had 6 kids, then 7, then 10. The first successful class brought out nascent mtb talent I was ware of and fed through the mtb community. 4 of the 6 have gone on to race and two of them spend time on the Podium. Subsequent classes have been gathered from a more general community and yielded 2 racers, 1 girl, though her involvement in softball......arg!!!!
Next year we will introduce MTB 1, to bridge the gap between what is needed to ride around your neighborhood to what is needed to ride a mountain bike; a very different and more demanding thing. MTB2 will be harder riding, plain and simple. This brings the toe of the ramp-up down to age 11.
My original point was that developing talent to fill race rosters has to start early. Moms and dads who ride give their kids the bug. These kids and adventurous types have filled race rosters to this point. We have seen the limits of this method and I have heard people talk about it for the last 5 years on this forum and they keep saying that that beating the bushes, more money, and special support for adult women is the answer. And I have to say that these solutions do have merit but it is extremely limited. The last man standing, survival of the fittest method has tapped out. What is needed is to increase the sample of available talent through outreach, opportunity and development.
I have read with interest about the programs in Australia and Canada and they point to the effect of systematic support of racers. Government financing doesn't hurt, either. In the absence of either we have developed the undeniable fact of NorCal High School Racing. In the process of that we have matriculated hundreds of young riders. Currently The NorCal League alone had 487 racers last year and a whopping 22% of those riders were girls. Each year their ranks swell at the Freshman level and the fields continue to grow. Will they race into their adult life: who knows? I do know that being a great racer takes more than being a great mountain biker and something unique between the ears. I do know that they race at the Collegiate level, are key in administrating such programs, return to support their high school teams, start riding groups, and go on to create mtb workshops for women. And that grows and enriches the mtb community yet again.
Let me offer a model from my own athletic life. Dad played Baseball and established himself as a pitcher of considerable skill. I have a photo of me throwing a ball at the age of 3 and a half and it is a bit unnerving as this little kid has great form already. When it was time for me to play in high school at 14, 8 years of baseball later, I showed up to the early camp for pitchers. I had my Rocky Colavito 32 bat, my Rawlings Lou Burdette glove, my kangaroo leather spikes with a pitchers plate on the right great toe and my Athletics hat from Babe Ruth League. I ran with the other guys and we threw every day. Some guys were throwing hard but I knew to toss for a week. Their arms were hanging off of their bodies by Thursday and they were barely able to throw the next week. About Wednesday I started throwing hard. It was really cool. Dad had trained me well. He was the best coach I ever had.
In my 9 years of coaching over 100 riders I can count on one hand the freshman kids who show up on day one on-time, in full kit, bike clean and tuned, helmet straight, gloves, camelback, with a snack in their belly and spd shoes. When you see it you just marvel at that kind of presence and count yourself lucky. It doesn't matter that I knew of them before they ever showed up. What matters is that these athletes don't happen by accident but by intention and understanding. Expressing this sort of intention is the key to the future growth and success of mountain biking in our country.
I amazed at the admirable and powerful women I see racing at all levels. Perhaps this is because I have an inkling of what it takes to get there. I, too, see the small ladies fields. Short term solutions focusing on extant adult female talent are marginally effective. What I am saying is that by growing the mtb community through the development and enrichment of programs for kids and there will be a whole a lot more more of those ladies out there.
My IMBA Kids ride, through the Bicycle Trails Counsil of the East Bay will be on October 3 at Pt. Pinole at 10 am. Training wheels and push bikes welcome. Oh yeah, and free Race Plates.