Each year, the SCCA® Hall of Fame honors the Club’s brightest stars. From international racing superstars like Carroll Shelby, Bobby Rahal, and Roger Penske to those whose roles were instrumental in the Club’s underlying successes, like William C. Bradshaw, Bill Johnson, and Fred Schmucker, the SCCA Hall of Fame celebrates those who made the SCCA what it is today. But how are those honorees selected? And more importantly, how can you nominate a worthy candidate?
The short answer is that any SCCA member can nominate someone for the SCCA Hall of Fame, with those nominations being considered by one of two committees – the Legacy Committee for nominees whose largest impact on the Club came prior to 1961, and the Nomination Committee for all others. Those committees choose nominees to submit to the Selection Committee, which then determines the following year’s inductees for the SCCA Hall of Fame.
The bottom line is that it all starts with you and your nomination letter. So what makes for a good nomination?
How to Nominate
How does a candidate stand out from the crowd and catch the eye of the committees? That’s a great question.
The first step, after identifying a candidate, is to pen a letter describing the nominee’s qualifications. A list of facts is a great place to start, but wins and losses for a race driver may not be everything. Ask yourself, how did that person positively impact the Club on a National level?
“We see quite a number of nominations that simply say, ‘I nominate John Q. Racer for induction into the SCCA Hall of Fame,’” explains Dennis Dean, Chairman of the SCCA Hall of Fame Steering Committee, which oversees the foundational practices of the SCCA Hall of Fame. Dean himself was inducted into the SCCA Hall of Fame in 2017. “Such a nomination is very unlikely to be successful. The committees want to know why the nominee should be inducted rather than other potential inductees. The committees do perform independent research, but it is unrealistic to expect them to start with just a name and then put together a complete case for a nominee’s induction.”
This is especially important for SCCA members who may not be household names. Sure, Roger Penske’s motorsports accomplishments are front page news, but not everyone is a headliner on the world scene. In fact, while most SCCA Hall of Famers are prominent figures, they are so in their SCCA Regions and Divisions – which is what the SCCA Hall of Fame is mostly about. Because of that, a nomination needs to spell out why this member was crucial to the SCCA.
“Committee members are drawn from all over the country and also from across the broad spectrum of programs that the SCCA supports,” Dean says. “Nominations need to tell a nominee’s story to someone who may be totally unfamiliar with even the name of the person being nominated just why that person should be inducted. While there are many online resources that can be used to flesh out a few details in a particular nomination, the more distant in time the accomplishments of the nominee are, the harder those details are to locate. In some cases, they simply do not exist online.”
Drawing Attention
So that’s it? Just send a letter, kick back, and wait for your candidate to earn their honor? Not exactly – at least not for most candidates. Nominations stay in the SCCA Hall of Fame files until a candidate is selected – through the years, that file has grown to several hundred nominations. So how do you stand out?
The first is not to rest on your laurels. If you truly believe your candidate deserves the honor, then others likely do too. Ask other members to write letters to the SCCA Hall of Fame. But don’t just have them copy and paste your nomination, or add their name to the bottom of yours. If you received a form letter 10 times, or 10 individuals each made distinct cases for an SCCA Hall of Fame nominee, which would be more effective? Obviously, it’s 10 unique nominations.
Beyond that, it’s important to understand the structure of the committees. By default, committee members are some of the most passionate members of the Club. They are also volunteers, which means turnover occurs, both due to personal reasons and because of term limits for members of those committees. And again, with hundreds of nomination forms in the file, there’s a lot of data for a new committee member to comb through, especially if the nomination doesn’t include a lot of detail.
“My personal recommendation is that such nominations be reviewed, updated where possible, and resubmitted each year by anyone and everyone submitting a nomination,” Dean explains. “By resubmitting a nomination repeatedly, the submitter guarantees that every member of the current year’s committees will see the nomination, while at the same time demonstrating that they still have the passion to ensure their nomination is considered and approved.”
Diligence combined with persistence is the answer to getting a nominee thoroughly considered for induction into the SCCA Hall of Fame – which is not a secret, as it’s likely the key to success at any task.
Final Thoughts
The more detailed and the more specific the nomination, the better the picture the SCCA Hall of Fame committees will have when narrowing their list of highly qualified candidates to the final group.
For a specific nominee, there are likely individuals with roughly comparable accomplishments in the SCCA Hall of Fame and some that are not in the Hall of Fame. A nomination should show, with as many detailed specifics as possible, why the nominee’s accomplishments rise to the level of those already in the SCCA Hall of Fame and are perhaps superior to those who have not yet been inducted.
To that end, nominations from those close to the nominee are often the most impassioned.
“No one knows a given nominee’s accomplishments better than their close friends and family,” Dean notes. “Details supplied by such friends and family paint the total picture of an individual’s SCCA accomplishments far better than someone unfamiliar with them is ever going to find based purely on their research.”
It’s Your Turn
Is there someone who is not yet in the SCCA Hall of Fame but should be?
The SCCA Hall of Fame nomination deadline is June 15 each year, although nominations can be made any time. The Nomination and Legacy Committees then consider all submissions, making their recommendations to the Selection Committee by the end of August. The Selection Committee then makes its final determination by Oct. 15. From there, inductees are notified, SCCA makes an official announcement, and the nominees are inducted during the SCCA Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony during the following year’s SCCA National Convention.
The first step, however, is yours to take – so click the button below and get started.
Photo by Michael Duval
