[FRC Blog] The Woodie Flowers Award and Two FRC Championships

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

This.

We are going to split the Champs, Split the Chairman's... WFA? No... better not do that. Seems kind of weird.

The WFA, as I understand, is an award endorsed by FIRST but not regulated by FIRST. It's not contradictory in that light.

[escime]

Speaking solely for myself, I think it would be helpful to remind everyone at this point that the key point from the WFA perspective is that teams at championships (single or plural) are not competing for the WFA. In fact, there is no relationship between which teams are at championships and who receives the WFA. This is fundamentally different than a regional or a district event where the teams with nominees are all present. Not having a District Championship WFFA winner at the District Championship event will no doubt happen soon and when it does, there will be a WFFA ceremony without the recipient present. When the same thing happens at World Championships, it will be no different than what will be happening at District Championship events around the country. So whether or not the awardee will be at the event cannot be the basis for how the recipient is selected. The idea that the awardee will always be present to receive the award was destined to end no matter what.

Having a single WFA across two World Championships is also consistent with having a single WFFA at a District Championship. WFFAs are not given out at each district event. Because the WFA selection process is very different than the Chairman's award where all the teams competing for that award are at the event and interviewed by the judges, the WFA selection process (which gets to see all the nominees across all the events simultaneously) doesn't depend on the number of Championship events. Therefore, just as single WFFA is awarded at a District Championship, the decision was made to award a single WFA across all World Championship events.

I hope that these additional comments help to clarify how the single WFA decision came about.

[Ginger Power]

The Woodie Flowers Award is one of the few things that I wouldn't mind being split... so many mentors that have so much time into the program. There's no way we can honor them all, but this seems to be a missed opportunity to honor more of them.