Some points on team selection...

A long time ago I used to row.

I rowed a lot.

I wasn't the best...not by a long shot, but I was pretty good.

Rowing is, for the most part, a team sport...unless you're in a single. Some might say technically that's sculling...but whatever. Sculling can also happen in a team format. I did a lot of sculling, too, and I'm just calling it all rowing. So the two rowers reading this who are getting all twisted about nomenclature, chill out.

A team usually means more than one person. Generally, there is a process for selecting the members of a team. It can be as simple as two (or more) people looking at each other and saying, "Hey! Let's be a team!" And when there are the exact same number of people looking at each other as the size of the team requires, things are usually quite straightforward. Everyone makes the team!

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Happy, happy :)

But sometimes it gets complicated.

For example, sometimes there are more people interested in being on the team than the size of the team will allow. This situation requires an actual selection process. A selection process can happen in a myriad of ways, some of which are listed below...note: this is not a finite list:

1. Some of the people realize that the intensity of the other interested parties is greater than/less than their own, and they maturely recuse themselves from the mix.
2. Some of the people think they see these differences and immaturely start excluding the 'undesirable(s)' from team communications with no conversation.
3. A series of selection criteria might be utilized. The criteria could be closely related to the team event or could be completely seemingly inconsequential...or something in between.
4. A vote might be taken (a popularity contest, if you will).
5. Some might resort to bribery or blackmail (buying or weaseling their way onto the team).
6. A coach (or selection committee) might step in. 

In any event, once you get more people into the mix, someone is bound to get left out. It is never really fair. And feelings are almost always hurt. And no matter how determined one is to not take it personally, not making the team always stings. There has to be a reason. And you have to know it. It feels a lot like getting dumped.

In all those years of rowing, I learned some valuable lessons about team selection. The first is this: whenever you put yourself out there, remember you are doing it by choice...no one is making you do it. Number two...however the sh*t shakes out is how it is and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it this time. (Well, except some people do complain about Olympic team selection and take coaches and committees to court ...yes, coaches and committees do bogus crap sometimes). You can hope to be better prepared next time...if it is, indeed, what you really want. And if you're not interested in trying again, you might want to look at that and ask yourself as you're feeling pissed off at not making the team, "How badly did I really want it?" The third really important thing I took away from team selection processes was this: unless you are a superstar (not just in your mind but in actuality) or a favorite (yes, coaches and committees do play favorites), you have to get yourself in a position somehow in which the coach or committee cannot turn you down...you have to create such a strength of presence that in some way shows you are invaluable to the team. 

Or you could just go form your own team. 

It took being left off of a LOT of teams for me to learn all of these lessons. Getting cut two days before Nationals was no fun and was pretty demoralizing. Three and a half years of training to finally get to race for the first time as a senior in college was emotionally grueling. Being a member of the fastest boat in training and having it torn apart by the coach less than a week before the big race pissed us all off. There are so many stories I could share... remember, I rowed for a long time.

The bottom line is this...

A selection process comes with a certain amount of subjectivity unless it is set up to be purely objective. When there is a review, when the decisions are placed in the hands of individuals instead of based upon marks on a tally sheet outlining specific points to be rotely accrued or the time shown by the hands (or digits) of a clock or placement in a trials race, opinions and taste and entrant cohesiveness come into play. Team selection is rarely a random process. As with all areas of life, when you give it your best shot and you fall short of the mark, the best way to handle it is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take pride in knowing you did your darndest and start prepping for the next go-round.