Quote:
Originally Posted by PayneTrain
Could there be any consideration to recognize the year's WFFA winners at their respective postseason events as a substitute for awarding two WFAs?
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This seems like a decent way to bring in the "mentor celebration" aspect of the event, without a WFA award at both late-April-FRC-mini-world-split-champs.
Paul,
Thanks a ton for the explanation. I agree, recognizing WFFA nominees at each district event is a great thing. I hope the practice can be standardized further for the 2017 season.
When I said "holding onto a failing architecture", I meant failing in my terms of success for the future of the WFFA and WFA. Obviously, we have different thoughts on a successful outcome for these awards moving forward. Ultimately, I think the group of individuals evaluating WFFA winners will need to grow beyond its current limits (apparently, the individuals that choose winners are past WFA's, and Woodie, and maybe Dean? Please correct me on this), in order to properly recognize the growing population of mentors involved in FRC.
Here's what I see looking forward:
Assuming the number of districts will increase, and the number of teams will increase, it seems that the US will eventually be broken up into 20-25 districts, with maybe 3000 domestic teams (just guesses here). If one WFFA is given out at each DCMP, this results 1 WFFA winner per 120-150 teams, on average.
This ratio is even greater in a district like Michigan, where one WFFA was awarded out of 400 teams in 2016. However, a total of 9 Dean's List Finalists Awards were given at the same event in 2016. Makes me wonder why the Dean's List Finalist Award is able to scale appropriately, where as the WFFA does not scale similarly. It seems odd to me.
I'd suggest considering awarding multiple WFFA's at the district level, perhaps at some ratio to the size of the district, similar to how it appears the Dean's List Finalist Award is handled. I'm sure I'm not the first person to recommend this, so I'd like to know if this option is a no-go for the WFA's.
Thanks,
-Mike