We have a committee (made of volunteers or people who are in the right place when I’m looking for volunteers) who select recipients of the local awards based on their applications. This committee meets on Saturday afternoon of districts.
For World Schools, we have an application, and students also have to prepare a sample affirmative case that they present in a video. We do have some preference toward students who either qualified to nationals in a previous year but did not qualify in the current year OR who are alternates to nationals in the current year.