Team Captains
 

How does your team pick a team captain?

Do you have a team captain?

Re: Team Captains
 

Yea we have team captains...we have a student vote. But u have to be qualified which means you have to be a senior and you have to have been on the team 2 or more years

Re: Team Captains
 

All i know is the Yankees Team Captain is Derek Jeter. He was appontied by his manager and owner. Hope it helps you out with answering the question.

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My team hasn't really thought about team captains, but probably the team captain will be the main driver. So whom ever of the three of us isn't a human player or co-driver is the captain I guess.

Re: Team Captains
 

This year as we are a second year team the captain (me) was chosen by a teacher and some senior student. Though i think it should be done by student vote, with a set rules for qualification. THe nice thing about our team is that we have these sub team leaders and a board like thing, but every sub team leader has to approve his decision by his team through a vote and than he tells us what his team wants.

This works pretty good, most of the people are happy and involved. For decisions that whole team cannot be involved in mostly management decisions the board or the sub leaders and captain can decide through voting.

In my opinion democracy is always the best, but make sure your team doesnt go on the wrong track.

Re: Team Captains
 

We have an elected team captain, chosen at the end of the school year, of the previous year that they will serve.

Re: Team Captains
 

We have an elected Team Captain who handles inner-Team relations/questions and a Team Coordinator who handles things in the community for the Team. Under these two leaders, we have 5 division leaders.

All of these 7 leadership positions require 1 year on the team among other requirements. We have elections in the spring.

Being a 5th year Team, we have a bylaws document which we use to run the Team.

Re: Team Captains
 

we actually call our team captains CEOs, with heads of different departments as well. the students apply for the position of their choosing before the start of the season, and they are chosen by the adult board.
also, during the past few years we've tried having several team captains, with so-so results.

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Doesn't the FIRST yearbook page require a Team Captain? Is this important in judging (like judges go to this student first)?

Re: Team Captains
 

For MOE, the team mentors nominate individuals based on leadership, charisma, knowledge, competence, etc. Someone who really defines what a Miracle Worker is and is dedicated to the team. Afterwards, the team decides in open elections, simple majority wins. Our last three captains: Chris Wilkens, Brian Gattman, and Jake Warren, were all chosen this way. And there is no better way to pick, because you have the confidence of the mentors and the support of the students.

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Do you think being a senior (grade-wise) is important? Or does seniority in the team and competence matter more?

Re: Team Captains
 

In my opinion and experince seniority in team matters more. But also you wana keep in mind that you want an individual that people of all ages are comfortable around. Who has great passion and communicates effectively. In my opinion a captain should know about all the different aspect but he doesnt has to necessarily the most knowledgeable person in the team.

Re: Team Captains
 

i agree with this .. and the person should also be respected by the rest of the team, making age important, but not extremely important (i am 15 - making me the third youngest on my team)

i am the team leader of my team because i am the one who started the team up ... i will be team leader next year as well for the same reason ... when i leave, i am not completely sure how the new team leader will be decided.

Re: Team Captains
 

No judges never go to students and they never go to specific students..You got to wait until you spot one..ususually wearing a certain color of shirt, blue last year. And all the students spring forth baraging him with knowledge from how the intricate control systems work, why you did a certain thing, explain your budget/fundraising/sponsorship, tell him what you have done with other team and other people to spread first, and when you finish he will be so dazed that he can't see other color and read other number and he's sure to only remember you when it comes time to make decisions. It a team effort. Captains are for chairman's award when you can only have so many and it looks bad to have multiple people speaking at a time.

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our captains are the team mentors son and his friend.... :mad:

Re: Team Captains
 

862 has a student vote for our President which is the same as a team captain. There are nominations before hand. Usally students who will be Seniors and Juniors are the ones nominated. And for the past two years its been a senior who has been our President.
We hold our elections at the end of the school year so the new President is in office for the summer before the Build and Competition seasons that they will be in office for.

Re: Team Captains
 

I was the team captain of 522 the way i got selected to be one was the coaches watched me cafefully. they acknowleged me helping them with paper work and visually saw me getting the team members to do some much needed work around our room. they all said to one another that short kid might have some potential in leading the team to some sort of success :D which i in no doubt in their minds did. one of the coaches came up to me and asked if i would be interested in giving it a shot. said yes and led the team for about a year and 1/4. And just so that there was no fight over whos boss of who there are 4 coahces. (1 programmer, 1 electrician / machinist,
1 designer <-----hes the official team captain , 1 machinist / welder.) The student captain just relays info to the student body and helps the big captain out with his tasks let alone lead the team in the right direction.

They have since then selected new team captains since i graduated using a slightly different method but with the same idea. usually students really don't have much of a say on who chooses to be a captain b/c anyone of us could call ourselves a captain. it really should be up to a coach to decide who leads the team for the simple fact that they know what to look for in a captain. however the student body has and reserves the right to make complaints about the captain and what how he is leading the team.


AS far as judges going to students first thats true at most competitions b/c they wanna see and hear what the student has learned and done for the team not what the coach has learned and done. espicially for the rookies that have come in. I think thats how a teams should get some awards. Design awards should be given to teams who have the team members talk to the judges about the insides and out top to bottom about how their robot works and has been designed. coaches can add a few words but not enough to throw off the judges vote. The FIRST competition is about teaching the younger generation things they never knew or improve their current knowledge of certain aspects.

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There is a meeting during off season that we hold where we discuss captainship and how we want it to be addressed each year. Both last year and this year, we decided to go with co-captainship and a vote is taken, private ballot and with two votes per person. This year, I was elected as one of the co-captains. Being a Senior in my oppinion is not key, but having experience with the competition and having people skills and leadership skills are very important in my oppinion ;)

Re: Team Captains
 

I am technically a captain this year. Only, we don't call them captains (okay, so our advisor doesn't call us captains... everyone else does).

Either way, our advisor selected three of us last year and put us in charge of 1)Chairman's and Marketing, 2)Webpage and Animation, and 3)Robots. The kids just kinda went along with it. I am a junior, and so is Krystine, and Brenton is a senior.

Age shouldn't matter. We were picked because of what ee brought to the team. That should be all that matters.

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I completely agree. Whoever is the hardest working for the team should be the leader...

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The team captain isn't something that sould be voted on. It kinda bothers me that some teams vote on it.

Here's my take: The captain just for practical purposes has to be one of the operators, If they are to act as the alliance captain they have to be on the field. That immediately narrows it to three (or four in some cases) people. If one of the drivers is not obviously the team captain then it should be the main driver.

If a captain does not ooze captain qualities in their every action then what is the use of electing someone? and if they do so obviously ooze, then why should you have to give them a title?

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me too. age has NOTHING to do with it. i'm still a sophomore and a captain. at least everyone on my team can say i have done the most... tho still not enuf...

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Our team's been around since '95 or '94, I forget right now, but our managemtn structure has evolved pretty well.

Right now I'm Dillard High's Student Team Leader. We have two schools invovled in the team, Dillard and Taravella.

From Team Leader, we branch down into subdivisions of:
-Electrical
-Mechanical
-Software
-Animation
-Graphics
-Marketing / PR
-SOAP

Each subdivision has a Manager and a Co-Manager. They share the responsbilities of running each subdivision. It works pretty well usually.
(Especially when you've got somewhere around 60-80 students on the team).

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Our team is structured kind of like a pyramid:

It goes from The advisors to the captains, to the committee leaders, to the rest of the team.

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We leave the candidates in alone in a room, with a 1.75 liter jug of cheap vodka. Last man standing gets the job.

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This is the first year that 818 has chosen student leaders for the subteams.

The titles mean almost nothing, though. The engineers and teachers are still the people who keep everything running.

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Our team works off a very simple system. There are the first year members and then there's everyone else. First year members usually don't know much about FIRST so its hard for them to become team leaders(although we always have one or two who move to that position very quickly). For the second year members, it's never actually decided who the leaders are. Everyone is able to figure out who to turn to for a leader. Of coarse, we only have about 14 people this year so everyone knows everyone else pretty well.