The Betsy Woodward Cross-Country Participation Award recognizes the woman who flies the most flights that earn at least 50 points in OLC-Plus or WeGlide-Free distance.  This award rewards steady growth in soaring and frequent attempts at achieving soaring distance.  Consequently, this award will reward the number of flights in which you fly a task – even a relatively small triangle – rather than total distance flown.  Counting flights with goals instead of distance balances out the differences in soaring conditions between different parts of the world as well as the differences in glider and glider retrieval capability available to our members.

We named this award for Betsy Woodward (1928-2019), the first U.S. woman to earn a Gold Badge (National Soaring Museum | Soaring Museum – Hall of Fame – Betsy Woodward).  She also participated in the original Sierra Wave Project, and was one of the first six recipients of the Lennie.  She set National and World records.  Just as important, she was an author and a world-renowned meteorologist who aided Paul MacCready in researching convective storms.

Past Winners

2024 CarolAnn Garrett

2024 featured a close race for the first award.  CarolAnn Garratt edged Cathy Williams out with 30 qualifying flights to Cathy’s 29 flights.  Julia Karasinski and Kristin Farry tied for third place with 17 flights each.  Eileen Youngblood was very close with 16 qualifying flights.

Rules for Betsy Woodward Cross-Country Participation Award

To be included in your individual total toward this award, your flights must be uploaded to either WeGlide or OLC (or both) within the period of October 1st-September 30th for each year’s award.  These platforms give points for your basic distance, plus bonuses for a triangle course or out-and-return distance, corrected for glider performance.  Thus, you can fly a triangle around your home gliderport without risking a landout while developing your skills in navigation to waypoints with up-wind and cross-wind challenges.  In addition to the use of any glider, your minimum equipment requirement is a means of recording an IGC-formatted record of your flight.  This does NOT require an FAI-certified recorder — pilots can use a smart-phone app to record your flight in this format.  The two platforms score flights slightly differently; however, these differences should not be a deciding factor in this award, given the emphasis on frequency of soaring flights instead of distances.

  1. This award will be presented to the female WSPA member entering the most flights with scores above 50 points on either OLC or WeGlide during the scoring period.
  2. Pilots enter flights by uploading IGC-format flight records to one or more of these online scoring platforms:
  3. The flight recorder does not have to be FAI-approved; however, it must be approved by the online flight scoring platform used.  Flights uploaded to both OLC and WeGlide will be counted only once, but participants are encouraged to upload flights to both platforms to increase visibility of women soaring pilots on these platforms, increase their soaring knowledge, and increase their personal soaring networks.
  4. Platform scoring will be done by the platform according to:
    • OLC Scoring will be per OLC-Plus rules (weighted combination of raw distance, FAI triangle distance, and longest leg) and glider handicap.
    • WeGlide scoring will be per WeGlide-Free rules (weighted combination of raw distance and largest of FAI triangle distance and out-and-return distance from airport of origin).
  5. Scoring disagreements must be resolved via protests by the pilot directly with the scoring platform within the platform-specific time limits specified.
  6. The scoring year begins on October 1st and ends on September 30th.  (Note:  This aligns with WeGlide’s scoring year, but OLC’s scoring year window opens 11 days prior to the first Saturday in October and ends 12 days prior the first Saturday in October of the following year, raising the possibility that the number of flights shown on OLC for its year may not equal the number of flights counted for this award.)
  7. Only Solo flights by women are eligible.  Contest, badge, and record flights are eligible.
  8. Contestants may fly conventional gliders, motor gliders, and FES gliders in compliance with OLC-Plus and WeGlide rules. The glider performance handicap embedded in the OLC-Plus or WeGlide-Free Distance is the only handicap applied in the scoring.
  9. WSPA Members must send their OLC or WeGlide identification information to trophy@womensoaring.org by October 31st of each year to have their flights considered for this award.  Participants who use the OLC platform exclusively must also identify any of their flights on OLC that fall between:
    • The beginning of the OLC year and October 1st
    and
    • The end of the OLC year and September 30th.
  10. The award judges will provide the WSPA Board with the participating pilots’ flight count, whether they have won the award in the past, and a recommendation for the winner or winners.  In case of a tie, all pilots with the winning number of flights will receive the award.  After the first year, those who have not been a past winner will also be eligible for a second award (called the “rookie” award) if and when past winners repeat.
  11. Awardees will have their name(s) engraved on a plaque at the National Soaring Museum and receive a certificate.  Ranking of women by level of participation as defined by flights will be published in Hangar Soaring each year.