AWARDS HELP

[Freddy Schurr]

Our team is having a robotics banquet in a couple of months and I am in charge with the awards portion of the night. So I asking the FIRST community for some help. I was wondering if anybody has any awards that they give out and what they are called and if you could tell me a little bit about the award you give. I am open to all suggestions and I would greatly appreciate it.

[Beth Sweet]

Always a favorite: Put the name of each of your teammates on a sheet of paper. Ask each teammate to fill out mock awards for their fellow teammates. Pick the most amusing for each person and print off a certificate for it.

[ghansel]

The "Ghetto Fabricator of the Year" award is always a funny one.

[Bharat Nain]

You could create an award based on a mentor/parent who has done a lot for the team and call it something like "The John Smith award" or something. Create different categories like attitude and leadership, hardwork, amazing skill.. blah blah.. you can come up with so many of that sort. Just look at the awards FIRST gives out and get creative.
-Bharat

[slickguy2007]

Make a spirit award and make sure that the MC's keep making announcements about it. Make sure that its at a point where everyone wants it and I guarentee you the energy in the area will jump about 100 knotches. It becomes so much fun for everyone when you have spirit awards. You can even mention the award before the competition so that people get a chance to prepare ;) .


GO 1403!!!

[JackN]

You could create a hall of fame and induct some members into it.

[Joe J.]

Our mentors hand out several awards to students the include: Hardest Working, Most Improved, Rookie of the Year, Best Sense of Humor in Adversity, Most spirit, Gracious Professionalism, Sportsmanship, Most Innovative, and Creativity. They do change it up every once and awhile.

As for Mentors they deserve awards too, last year we started handing out our teams version of the Woodie Flowers Award we call it the Brian Graham Mentor Leadership Award, We gave it to the mentor it was named after and or Teacher Adviser who has been with the team since 2000. This year we will be handing it out to another mentor who has done allot to lead the team. We also have a Mentor Rookie of the Year Award.

[CraigHickman]

What our team did at our team's banquet was sned a dinner gift and a thank you picture to the wives of all of our mentors and the guys at the machine shops, thanking them for all of their husbands absences. Another idea is to just have a time where the team sits in a circle, and people just thank other for certain accomplishments and tasks that turned out well.

[Carol]

If you can, you should make sure each student gets an award of some sort, to avoid hard feelings.

Are you looking for serious or funny awards?

[SuperJake]

Our team is having a robotics banquet in a couple of months and I am in charge with the awards portion of the night. So I asking the FIRST community for some help. I was wondering if anybody has any awards that they give out and what they are called and if you could tell me a little bit about the award you give. I am open to all suggestions and I would greatly appreciate it.

Back in my day, we did all sorts of awards. Everyone got at least one serious award, and there was definitely TONS of silly inside-joke awards. It was great in that everyone got more than one award and you got to look back at all of the funny things everyone did. However, since we have 60+ people on the team including all the parents, engineers, alumni, students, and whoever else frequented the build area during the season, it took FOREVER... like 2+ hours.

The awards didn't have to be anything fancy, most of them were powerpoint slides printed on nice paper - sometimes there was a frame or something. The best awards tended to come from the engineers and boosterz (parent support group for the team) that had WAY too much free time on their hands. Often times they would get parts that were rejected because a student did something crazy during fabrication and would mount them on wooden plaques and call them funny names. My brother got 7 versions of his battery box design - the 7 before the one that made it on the competition robot - arranged on a little balanced dangly thing (think solar system models from elementary science classes).

The meaningful things that were given out included slightly used robot side panels signed by everyone on the team for the drivers and a nicely framed picture of the team signed by everyone for the departing seniors. Have fun with your awards, but don't take a long time presenting them.

[AmyPrib]

Just try to positively recognize every member on your team. Determine what ways each member contributed and recognize them for it with a plaque, a certificate, or something you make/buy, etc. Then you can also have the "silly" awards - funny things happen to people throughout the season, so you can make sure everyone knows about it with an award of some sort that relates to it.
Be creative, fun, but also positive. Try to recognize everyone on the team and find some way to reward them. It can be about parts they built, the role they had on the team, or how they help during competition or whatever else you come up with.

[Conor Ryan]

This is something that you MUST take full advantage of as it can turn into a Very Funny Event

Here are a couple of my favorites
-Least Likely to Run out of Energy
-Next Dean Kamen
-The "We're not Sure What award to Give you So Here You Go" Award
-Most Quotable
-And the "Best Idea of the Year" Award, this can be your teams highest honor or something like that.

[Stina236]

Team 236 has a tradition that at our end of the season party/banquet the seniors make "paper-plate" awards for the rest of the members of the team. They're personalized, funny awards for each person. The senior girls this year (including myself) have been looking forward to making them for the past few years lol. :yikes:

[Tamster548]

Our team is trying out Paper Plate Awards this year. The captains came up with awards for each individual that had to do with something they are known for or a good quality about them, and then decorated paper plates according to what the award was. They also based some awards off of real FIRST awards (engineering inpiration, quality... etc).

This is a good method because everyone gets a "custom" award, and awards can be serious or funny or both. Start some of the awards with "most likley to (become)..." or "least likely to (become)..."

[fancy013]

Yes! those really help. Thank you to all the teams that gives out Awards because it help to tell the other team that their doing a good job. And or it help to tell them (the team) that they should do more of that (what their doing!! =P) yeap. thank to the award givers yeah... :D

[Termite233]

we have a lot of weird awards...one is the best prank and i am not going into that...but theres stuff like the biggest hook-up (meaning the girl that spent a lot of time with other teams) and weird things like that. there is also spirit awards, awards for organizing scouting information for hours on end. a couple years ago one of the kids got an award for eating a ton of ice cream in houston i think. he ate so much he was bouncing off the walls and it was too funny to not bring up. so just think of some funny things that happened over the year and bring them into your awards. its makes things more fun and interesting.

[ClintDog]

I think you sould give a non-team spirit award to a member. Like to someone who always cheers for other teams. :) (I don't know who that could be on my team)!!!

[SirLancelot]

I welded 5" tetras and my team affixed them to oak bases that we had laquered and sanded down. The tetras were spray-painted red and blue. We bought little metal engraved name-plate thingys with adhesive on the backs and stuck those on the front. Those were especially cool because they had nick-names, too. Like "The Manipulation Czar," for example.It was a lot of fun, and each of them is different. There were 33 of them, though, so it was a ton of work. We even made a special one for our biggest sponsor--Chrysler--that was on the center goal, painted white. That one was majorly cool.

[Mike o.]

Our team gives out both serious and funny "gag" awards for things that happened during the season that were either very memorable or extremely funny. Some of our awards include Rookie of the Year, Rising Star, Team Mom, gifts to our Mentors and Officers, "Gag" awards (some from the past being the "Zip-Tie Awards", "Rock, Paper, Scissor Award" and many more), and recently added this year we will be giving all our seniors a lil token for their hard work and being their last year on the team.

Mike

[Freddy Schurr]

So we had our banquet and it when well and everyone had a fun time. I took everyone response for Awards and added my twist to them. So here there are.

Thanks for everyone awards ideas.

Least Likely to Run out of Energy Award-
This award is giving to the member or members who never, ever ran out of energy and always or to try always to get other teams members hype

Next Dean Kamen Award-
Basically, as this said, this award giving to member who has shown from this season that they are going to be like a Dean Kamen and lead us into future of science and technology.

The "We're not Sure What award to Give you So Here You Go" Award-
This award is giving to the member or members that have shown that they are valuable assets to this team and without their help or contribution, we would be no where.

Most Quotable Award-
This award is giving to the member/mentor who came up with the most creative lines or phases this season and that everyone will remember for years to come.

"Best Idea of the Year" Award-
This award is giving to the member or members who creative idea help save the team and lead us to victory in a regional or off-season competition

Hardest Working Award
This award is giving to the member or members who has from time after time, day to day, weekend to weekend, regional to regional has put in the most hours and has done everything for the team. To receive this award, the member throughout the off-season, built season, and competition season, has shown the above work to make this team known.

Most Improved Award
This award is giving to the member who from last year help in small tasks and that this year they improve on how to make a capable robot or help with the overall team. The award is giving to a second year member.

Rookie of the Year Award
This award is giving to the rookie member who exemplify a young but strong partnership effort, as well as implementing the mission of FIRST to inspire students to learn more about science and technology.

Best Sense of Humor in Adversity Award
This award is presented to the member who have demonstrated in the heat of the competition, that you need to have a little fun and laughter.They needed to help the team have some fun and laugh about the situation.

Gracious Professionalism Award-
This award is giving to the member who has shown GP, Gracious Professionalism to all teams and everyone on our team.

Sportsmanship Award
This awards celebrates outstanding sportsmanship in the heat of the competition, on the playing field or in the pits.

"Ghetto Fabricator of the Year" Award
This is award is presented to the member who has shown to get the job done, you basically use anything. This member must have shown through-out the build season, that any material could be use to solve the “ 6-week problem”

Rookie Mentor of the Year-
This award is giving to mentors who during they first year on the Robotics Team, made an impact and change the way on how we see science and engineering, On behalf of all the members, we appreciate all the time and effort that you put into this team and we are glad that you step on board to keep our Robotics Club at Eastern. So with out further a due, this Rookie Mentor of the Year Award, goes to Mr. Quinn and Mr.Berzansky.

Jack Friedman Award-
This award is giving to the parent or advocate/mentor or company who has helped the team demonstrate excellence in teaching us science,math,and creative design or who help the team in numerous ways.

Thanks again for everyone help