USAC will process auto-renewal memberships on December 30, 2019. This slides the originally published deadlines for WSBA 2020 number allocation to the following schedule.  
UPDATED TIMELINE:
​
The WSBA will allocate WSBA numbers in two waves for the 2020 season.
(1) Renew your WSBA membership by January 5, 2020, to receive your numbers by the end of January.  You may RENEW your WSBA membership during the online USA Cycling renewal process, or JOIN the WSBA when you sign up for a new USAC membership.  The first shipment of numbers will be sent to teams and individuals starting January 20, 2020.
If you are on the USAC auto-renew program, your auto-renew will automatically add a WSBA membership to your purchase for 2020.
(2) If you renew your WSBA membership between January 6, 2020, and January 25, 2020, your numbers will be shipped after February 10, 2020.
WSBA membership is $25 for 2020.
 
TIPS:
(1) Before you renew, please check that the mailing address in your USAC account is current.
(2) If you purchased your 2019 WSBA membership via PayPal or other methods, you will need to manually purchase your WSBA membership through USAC or via this link: http://www.wsbaracing.org/ membership.html.
(3) If you aren’t renewing with USAC for 2020, if your USAC account doesn’t show WSBA as your Local Association, or if you’ve never had a USAC membership, follow this link: http://www.wsbaracing.org/ membership.html.
(4) WSBA race numbers will be sent to each team for members whose USAC accounts indicate membership in that road team.  Team leaders will receive an email confirming the address on file for their team.  Please update the team information within the USAC database no later than January 1, 2020, to insure proper delivery of your team members’ numbers.  Numbers for members without a team affiliation will be individually mailed to the member’s address in the USAC database.
(5) Renewals received after January 25 and before February 25 will be shipped in mid-March.  For memberships purchased after March 1, allow at least 3 weeks to receive race numbers.  After June 1, new and renewing members should email joinwsba@gmail.com to indicate membership purchase or the membership may not be processed due to so few new members in this time frame.
(6) Numbers returned due to incorrect addresses will be resent after all new memberships are processed. Any member whose numbers are returned for an incorrect address more than one time will be subject to a $5.00 handling fee.  Please verify your address on file with USAC is correct when you renew. 
 
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Good news!  The WSBA annual membership continues at $25 for 2020.  Please review the timeline and important tips below to make sure your numbers are delivered on time and to the right place.
TIMELINE:
The WSBA will allocate WSBA numbers in two waves for the 2020 season.
​
(1) Renew your WSBA membership by December 18, 2019, to receive your numbers by the end of January.  You may RENEW your WSBA membership during the online USA Cycling renewal process, or JOIN the WSBA when you sign up for a new USAC membership.  The first shipment of numbers will be sent to teams and individuals starting January 15, 2020.
If you are on the USAC auto-renew program, your auto-renew will automatically add a WSBA membership to your purchase for 2020.
(2) If you renew your WSBA membership between December 19, 2019, and January 18, 2020, your numbers will be shipped after February 10, 2020.
WSBA membership is $25 for 2020.
 
TIPS:
(1) Before you renew, please check that the mailing address in your USAC account is current.
(2) If you purchased your 2019 WSBA membership via PayPal or other methods, you will need to manually purchase your WSBA membership through USAC or via this link: http://www.wsbaracing.org/ membership.html.
(3) If you aren’t renewing with USAC for 2020, if your USAC account doesn’t show WSBA as your Local Association, or if you’ve never had a USAC membership, follow this link: http://www.wsbaracing.org/ membership.html.
(4) WSBA race numbers will be sent to each team for members whose USAC accounts indicate membership in that road team.  Team leaders will receive an email confirming the address on file for their team.  Please update the team information within the USAC database no later than January 1, 2020, to insure proper delivery of your team members’ numbers.  Numbers for members without a team affiliation will be individually mailed to the member’s address in the USAC database.
(5) Renewals received after January 18 and before February 25 will be shipped in mid-March.  For memberships purchased after March 1, allow at least 3 weeks to receive race numbers.  After June 1, new and renewing members should email joinwsba@gmail.com to indicate membership purchase or the membership may not be processed due to so few new members in this time frame.
(6) Numbers returned due to incorrect addresses will be resent after all new memberships are processed. Any member whose numbers are returned for an incorrect address more than one time will be subject to a $5.00 handling fee.  Please verify your address on file with USAC is correct when you renew. 
 
Don’t forget to support our Number sponsors Absolute Mortgage and Tandm Real Estate.
$1000 closing cost credit with Craig Walker of Absolute Mortgage
click here: www.ApprovedbyCraig.com “APPLY NOW”
cwalker@absoluteloans.com 206.999.5600
#approvebycraig
#AbsoluteMortgageCraigWalker
#AbsoluteMortgageCraigWalkerGreenlake

TandM Real Estate
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Discounted listing fee and 20% credit to Sellers.
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The WSBA 2019 annual meeting will be held on:
Saturday, December 21, 2019
4:00-6:00 pm
Cascade Bicycle Club offices
7787 62nd Avenue NE
Seattle WA 98115
2019 BARR Awards will also be handed out at this meeting. ​
​
Kelsey Erickson, USAC's Director of SafeSport and RaceClean, will present information about both programs. More information about USAC’s SafeSport Program and who is required to take training (including staff and board members of any club with minor athletes) is available on the USAC website: https://www.usacycling.org/resources/safesport/safesport-faq

The WSBA Board of Directors has approved an updated draft of the WSBA bylaws that will be presented to membership for approval (one vote per USAC club in Washington, North Idaho, and Oregon who are present at this meeting). The draft of the revised bylaws may be found here. 

The Board of Directors has endorsed a slate of candidates for the open board positions:
Oregon representative: Paul Bourcier
Eastern Washington/North Idaho representative: Ted Chauvin
USAC Officials representative: Mike Sirott
NW region/Seattle representative: David Hills
Track representative: Eric Johnson
Cyclocross representative: Kevin Raymond

Directors on the Board are elected for three-year terms by a vote of the membership (one vote per USAC club in Washington, North Idaho, and Oregon who are present at the meeting), conducted at the annual meeting.
The current WSBA bylaws allow additional nominations from any two directors or ten individual members, "by written petition addressed to the Secretary of the corporation at least 10 days prior to the date of the annual meeting." If you have anyone else you would like to consider for a director position, please send the written petition described above via e-mail to the secretary at wsbainfo at gmail.com.

The Board of Directors elects officers of the WSBA Board. If you are interested in being, or know of someone who is interested in being, an officer, feel free to contact the WSBA secretary (address above). Officer positions are President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer and may be held by individuals who are not members of the Board of Directors.

​Taking a page from the Tour de France, the WSBA is excited to offer a trophy for the top WSBA finisher in each category at Cyclocross Nationals 2019 in Lakewood WA. 
The highest-placed WSBA rider in each championship category will be awarded a trophy after the official podium presentation.  
 
Whether the top WSBA rider is a newly minted national champion, in the top 10, top 20 or 87th place, there’s a WSBA trophy on the line. 
 
All participants from Washington, Oregon and North Idaho are eligible to win this award. The WSBA will be on site at each championship podium presentation* to award these trophies! 
Make sure you don’t leave the venue prior to checking your result vs the rest of the WSBA riders in your field. 
 
* The WSBA presentation will occur immediately after the daily USAC podium session.
 

USAC CX is coming to town Dec 10 to 15 and Volunteers are needed.  lease share this link far and wide and mention it in as many conversations as you can. Post it to social media everywhere you can. The URL is not memorable but it's linked on both the USAC and MFG Cx Nationals web pages so just point people there and they can follow the link.

It's really helpful for teams to commit to a block of volunteer slots. The volunteer coordinator (jflogel[at]hotmail.com can update the signup page to reserve them and that lets me know that block of volunteers is committed even though individuals haven't populated the slots yet. Regardless, any level of commitment is helpful and appreciated.

Weekdays are toughest to fill for obvious reasons.


Mentioning the need for volunteers every couple weeks is helpful. I find some people will commit early and prioritize it around other things in their lives. Other people need to wait until close to the event to commit. Others won't sign up until the very end, or are the heroes who fill last minute volunteer slots regardless of what else they could have done with their day. Communicating at each phase will yield some volunteer support.

Thank you for whatever support you can provide.

Email jflogel[at[hotmail.com for more information. 

There has been some confusion about CX racing age since Nationals were moved up from January to December beginning last year.  Here is the USAC general regulation for determining your CX racing age:

1C. Rider Classes
1C1. Age-based Classes
All riders are classified according to age as shown below. All ages are based on racing age, which is the year of the event minus the rider’s birth year. A rider’s racing age in Cyclocross is his age on December 31st of the year that the Cyclocross season ends. Cyclocross season begins on September 1st of one year and ends on the last day of February of the following year. 

​
What this means for is that for the upcoming CX Nationals in December, 2019, your racing age will be the same age that you will be on December 31, 2020.
That’s simply because, while Nationals will be held in December, the CX racing season will not end until the end of February 2020!  
Happy Birthday! 

Mark your calendars for December 8, 2019 at Fort Nugent Park on Whidbey Island for the 2019 WSBA Cyclocross Championships.  We are grateful to 53Eleven for hosting this championship event as part of its 2019 NW CX Cup Series!
 
http://www.53eleven.com/nw-cx-cup.html
 
Like the other races included as part of the NW CX Cup Series, the WSBA CX Championships will be USAC sanctioned “points” races.  The championship races could be a great run-up to the 2019 Cyclocross National Championships being held at Fort Steilacoom Park in Lakewood the following week, December 10 through 15. 
 
The Fort Nugent Park course always has something for everyone.  Race course conditions vary a lot depending on the weather conditions, but expect there be plenty of tight turns, single track, grass and sand, and off-camber sections.  You can probably also expect some short punchy climbs and spots to go but full gas. Riders seem to like this course a lot.
 
Thanks to the generous support of Absolute Mortgage and JLVelo, all category winners will be awarded a champion’s jersey at the face finish.
 
As part of its partnership with the WSBA, Absolute Mortgage offers the following discount to all WSBA members:

$1000 closing cost credit with Craig Walker of Absolute Mortgage
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cwalker@absoluteloans.com 206.999.5600
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​Hello Cyclocross Racers!
 
You may already know that the 2019 CX National Championships will be held right here in our own backyard – December 10-15 at Fort Steilacoom Park in Lakewood, Washington, just outside of Tacoma.  This is really exciting for racers in our region, and it’s not too early to be making your race plans!
 
Starting positions at CX races are important – you want that “hole shot,” and even if you can’t get there first, you want to try not to get bogged down behind a bunch of riders that are stacked up in front of you!  Your starting position at Nationals is based on your ranking, which in turn is based on your average “points” in recent USAC sanctioned races.  It is a little counter-intuitive, but a lower points average is actually better than higher points average.  So, the goal is to earn the fewest points possible in each sanctioned race.
 
How the USAC calculates points is a little complicated.  If you are interested in the mathematics, the WSBA website has some information here:  http://www.wsbaracing.org/home/cyclocross-usac-rider-rankings-explained
 
But the bottom line is that your points are based on the average of your five best results in USAC sanctioned races over the most recent 12-month period.  In addition to racing well, what can you do to maximize your chances of getting “low points” for any given race?  Here are some general “rules of thumb”: 
 
First, choose races and categories where there are other racers with low points.  For example, you might choose to race Open Cat1/2 instead of Masters Cat1/2 or Open Cat 1/2/3/4/5 rather than Cat 3, the theory being that the presence of Cat 1/2 racers (or younger Cat 1/2 racers) might bring some stronger racers with lower averaged points totals.
 
Second, choose races that have bigger fields.  More participants (because of the math) usually results in a yield of lower points overall across the field.  You can review the previous year’s results for a given race to get an idea of how big the fields have generally been and also to get an idea of the kind of points that are likely to be available at this year’s race – recognizing, of course, that it all depends on who shows up!
 
Third, if you can afford the time and expense, consider traveling to out-of-town USAC sanctioned races in other regions that have large fields with low points riders, such as Colorado and the East Coast.  UCI World Cup events in particular are known to attract low points riders, and there are a number of UCI vents held in the United States.  This is a great way to lower your points total quickly.  You can find information about these races on the USAC and UCI websites.
 
https://www.usacycling.org/events
 
https://www.uci.org/cyclo-cross/calendar
 
Racing locally sanctioned USAC events will also help your rankings, but based on the population size of our region the impact on your ranking isn’t a quick process.  With that said, there are at least three regional opportunities to get after points in USAC sanctioned races:
 

• NW CX Cup:  http://www.53eleven.com

 

• Inland NW (eastern Washington): https://www.emdesports.com/inland-nw-cyclocross.html

 

• Cross Crusade (October 5 and 6 Oregon):  http://www.crosscrusade.com

 
(Note: some of the sites will be updated as CX season approaches!)
 
Some of the most competitive or largest fields in Nationals limit racer eligibility to Categories 1-3.  This is true for the Elite (Categories 1/2 only) and U23 races and also all of the other Master age-group for fields until you reach a racing age of 45+ if you are a woman or 55+ if you are a man.  In the latter two cases, Nationals allows racers of all categories. 
 
For Juniors, there are no category restrictions for girls between the ages of 9 and 18 or for boys between the ages of 9 and 16.  For boys between the ages of 17 and 18, you need to be Category 3 or higher.
 
If you have questions about your what category you need to be by December, check out the USAC Rules here: 
 
https://s3.amazonaws.com/USACWeb/forms/rules/2016_USAC_Rulebook_Chapter_7.pdf
 
If you are new to CX, it’s important to know that upgrading to Cat 3 from Cat 4 or Cat 5 (if necessary for your national championship race) before December is very achievable.
 
The move from Cat 5 to Cat 4 generally requires just a little experience in cross races.  Moving from Cat 4 to Cat 3 does involve some success in your Cat 4 races, but the WSBA will consider competitive, non-sanctioned races as part of an upgrade request.  Here are the WSBA CX upgrade request guidelines: 
 
http://www.wsbaracing.org/cross-upgrade-guidelines.html
 
 
To move from Cat 4 to Cat 3 (or higher depending on your current category, you’re looking for a couple of wins or the equivalent of 10 points in whatever combination of races you compete in.
 
The CX season begins the first week in September, and there will be at least one and often two or more races every weekend in the PNW throughout the Fall.  So, look for USAC sanctioned races for sure, but don’t hesitate to call out your good results in other races as well when you make upgrade requests.  Upgrade requests are normally processed within just a few days from your on-line application to USAC.  You will find the USAC upgrade/downgrade request link on the computer screen right after you log-in.
 
Good luck with your upcoming season. I hope to see you at the races and Cyclocross Nationals in December!
 
Kevin Raymond
WSBA Cyclocross Director
Kmraymond1@gmail.com