Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

Team Spirit is contagious on your team, so what you have to do is make things fertile for infection.

Find someone who wants to be the spirit leader - someone who the students will follow because they're slightly (or more than slightly) kookie. It's especially effective if you can get one of the "cool" people to do this, so everyone sees it's cool to be spirit crazy.

Practice a few cheers at team meetings. Add motions, simple dance moves and not just verbal cheering. Add "marginally prohibited :rolleyes: " rhythm instruments (we beat on coolers, totes, etc.)

Get ALL the mentors to join in. Nothing is funnier than a bunch of 40 year old engineers and 60 year old grandmas doing hip-hop moves - the students will look forward to each cheer just to see us make fools of ourselves.

Don't just cheer when you do well - cheer just for the sake of cheering.

It took us a couple years to build up, but it's worth it - we definitely have more fun at competitions.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

I loved the heatwave band - we were putting a band together in 2003 when they came out with the "no live band" rule. I disagree with that rule - I think the live bands did more good than harm in contibuting to the atmosphere.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

I was in awed of the spirit of SPAM. All the students were doing the insanely silly SPAM cheer, and then I turned around and saw that the parents and mentors were doing it too! :yikes:

The members of my team have little spirit themselves, they whined about yelling, wearing our awesome hats with ears, and even how the shirts looked. However, my team happened to have the president of the art club on our team, and she assembled a few friends to make us a chinese-dragon like bulldog. I also recruited 3 of the JV cheerleaders to come with us to the UCF Florida regional. Both seemed to be a hit and went over well. My friends said it would be impossible to get cheerleaders to come to a robotics competition. ;)

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

In Newton the team that stuck out most to me was SPAM. The had awesome spirit and really got alot of the crowd cheering.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

On a scale from 1-10 on a cheering scale, 10 being the best, i would haveta rate my team a 3.5-4. My team lacked in cheering this year. Like at the awards ceremonie like 3/4 of our team didnt even stand up and cheer for the other teams. Nationals out team spirit was pretty good. but the other competetions that we had this year, wasnt too great with the team spirit. I hope that next year everyone from my team will get into it and cheer like no other haha.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

My team cheered well, but during the semifinals in Newton we were told to sit down because we were blocking the field. The thing that bothered me by that is that it was our alliance partners telling us to sit down. They wouldn't even cheer for their own alliance in the semifinals.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

Well I can record all the episodes of "cheers" off nick at night, but I may need some help on the plasma screen!

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

Some teams just don't get it. :(

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

true, but i need to find something MOE green that has a little more energy, if anyone knows of something, that would be awesome.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

Personaly for me team spirit has always been one of my favorite areas of FIRST. I can remeber in 2001 when 461 went to the midwest regional, our robot was doing horrible and we were extremely downtroden during lunch on the second day. Although after a few rousing speeches, we went back in and cheered like there was no tomorrow and won our first of several spirit award.
The next year our team was able to develope several 'cheers' and became more advanced in our noise makers and what not and once again were a very loud spirited team. I still remeber 461 in binary, due to cheering it entirely to often, and when i see my old team members around i always give em a "LEts all Go NUTS!" and wait for the response of "ROBOTS! ROBOTS!"

PErsonaly i've always been very impressed with teams like Moe, and team 65, and The Thunder Chickens when it comes to spirit. Team 71 was always really into cheering for their team and alliances. Though one of my favorite experiences in the team spirit catagory has to been when many of the Indiana teams began bonding within the last few years and all cheered for each other, regardless of who was competeing. Chants of "Indy-An-A!" and cheering for indiana alliances always warmed my heart and reminded me it was all about more then robots.

I dont think the number of people cheering really has alot to do with spirit. Because spirit is more then just volume and cheering. ITs an attitude, a spirit, a drive, and a state of mind. There is something strangely gratifying about cheering so loud and so hard and believing in what your cheering for so much that you nearly cough up blood and cant talk for a week.

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

So yea the Free Hugs thing that started last year......thats all me so i would like a thank you from everyone who used that and got hugs...

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

This year we have JV and Varsity cheer squads with brand new cheers we are going to spring loose on Finger Lakes.
We're bringing the noise! :D

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

I think cheering definitely is one of the most important parts of the FIRST competitions. It makes it fun even if your robot is losing, because you can just cheer for everyone else and still have a freaking awesome time :-D.

Cheering definitely has to start with a leader. It's tough to beg people to like start cheering when they think its dumb, but if you have fun cheers that aren't super complicated, people will join in when they see how much fun you are having. If you come up with fun cheers that you can catch on to easily and are kinda kookie. You can collaborate with others teams also at regionals and nationals to make it even louder and more fun.

Another thing I noticed helps with cheering thats not even under your control is the regional/national facility. If it is like kinda small so its totally packed like it was at the Wayne State University for Detroit, then it makes is like 10X more fun! Everyone gets so excited and when you have like mass cheers it echos through the place and you can hear the cheers better. Its hard to cheer in Ipsylanti because teams are super far apart and you are like shouting out into nothing (or a big huge open space) :ahh: So it makes it more fun to cheer if you are in a packed small arena.

Thats my 2 cents on what makes cheering extra fun. Its one of my favorite parts of regionals. Cheer on guys! (and dont forget to cheer WITH other teams, its super fun)

Sarah (yes, the girl lisa said cheers with her for 573 !!!) :cool:

Re: Smells like Team Spirit
 

Swampthing can put up quite a cheer :cool: