We lost in finals in a tournament that said would give a tournament finals award, but the day after the tournament they removed the award from the event page. I know that the award wasn’t qualifying but after working so hard in an overfilled 38 team tournament we didn’t get an award that we earned. Is this allowed? They kept other non-qualifying awards, just not tournament finalists. 
The event page yesterday:
The event page today:
I don’t believe there are any rules preventing this.
It happens surprisingly often in my region that EPs want to give out a different set of awards on event day from what is listed in RobotEvents. I don’t know if they don’t bother setting the Awards correctly or if they just change their minds, but we end up having to edit the listed awards in RobotEvents before we can upload award winners from Tournament Manager.
Yeah this happens fairly often in my region too. Usually the judges’ award is the culprit, either it’s not listed on RE and the judges decide to award one, or (less commonly) it is listed and they decide not to.
The only required awards in VRC are Tournament Champions, Excellence, and Design. All other awards are optional, the EP can choose whether or not to offer them at each event.
Ok, so something to note - when an event is listed, the EP (like me), will list all the awards we give out. Tournament Finalist is usually recognized, certificate or hardware if team advances or championship event. Whether finalist advances to next level depends on spot allocations from the event to next level.
When EP uploads results from event, typically, they go a remove award listings that they did not give at their event.
I think there is no down side to not keeping Tournament Finalist in the event award, but if teams complained in the past that they got finalist and were not allowed to advance that might be where the EP decides to remove it from the listing - fewer misunderstanding and upset teams.
That said, you were the finalist at the event, the events show that.
Finalists don’t get recognized at some events, if you have questions you should contact your regional coordinator. Similar frustrating situation happened to us too, we were one of the finalists at an event last November, they listed our alliance partner (the other finalist) on award page but not us.