Re: spirit award
 

I'm going with you on this...nobody needs noisemakers to win a Spirit Award..its cheering for your team when u win or lose, cheering for a rookie team that does well or bad that day, cheering for a team whose prospects were looking down one day but worked hard to compete again, your opposing alliance...anything that shows true character is spirit...not noisemakers (except your lungs of course:] )


Make your team realize why they're there..to have fun no matter what's going on down on the field. They need the mindset that every team competing is having its ups and downs and that they all need support. Support a small team who doesn't have a large cheering section perhaps. It all shows through the true character of your team and not by how loud you are.

Re: spirit award
 

Also "not encouraged" ...30 foot pit towers with blinking lights and digital displays. Oh well. Safety beats spirit just about every time.

Re: spirit award
 

A better choice would be to carefully read what the spirit award is about, and use that to plan your strategy. Team 1676 was pleasantly surprised last year when we won it in Toronto. I feel that our relentless offers of assistance (real offers, too, not just lip service) to all other teams helped. We sent squads around looking for people to be helped, we responded to every request announced by pit admin (when we had what they needed) and walked fast (no running!) to get the item to the other team. That and just being friendly, and cheering everyone (not just 1676) probably helped too.

Re: spirit award
 

My crotchety old person opinion is that it should be illegal to try to win the award. Do things because you like doing them or because it helps others. Don't do things to win awards.

Re: spirit award
 

I agree. Even though the awards are very good motivators to try and excel in all aspects of FIRST, many participants realize after the first event or two that having fun and winning awards are mutually exclusive. Success shouldn't be measured by how full your trophy case is; it's about having an amazing experience which you can keep with yourself forever.

Re: spirit award
 

Not quite mutually exclusive... You can have fun without winning an award, but if you get an award (especially if you didn't try for it), you have even more fun!:D

Re: spirit award
 

Oh, definitely true. Perhaps fun and winning awards shouldn't always have to go hand in hand, but both can certainly be a great way to end a competition!

Re: spirit award
 

While I personally agree with you sponsors like awards, students like awards. But, teams can often focus on something because they feel passionate about it and end up winning an award for it. I think this is a good thing.

As a joke, we all like awards cuz they are shiny and who doesn't like shiny?

Re: spirit award
 

To concur with this (I think: I haven't seen any 30 foot towers in the pits. Maybe 3 foot ones?) -- One year the team opposite us in the pit had a couple of those blinky safety cones, the ones with the flashy red lights, sitting in the front corners of their pit. Which, when sitting at our programming laptop, would blink-blink-blink right above the laptop screen. Very distracting, and I'm not sure very safe either.

Re: spirit award
 

I agree with the above posters that the team spirit award is about more than who has the most people/makes the most noise in the stands. When 558 won the award at the CT regional in 2007, it was to recognize the extraordinary efforts that the urban team members had to undergo just to be a part of the team, like walking and biking to meetings in all kinds of weather, as well as their willingness to help other teams.

Re: spirit award
 

I believe at least one team at SVR used PVC pipes to "claim" all the 3-dimensional space they were allowed... but a 30-foot tower? Has anyone seriously done this?

Re: spirit award
 

I got a safety token for sweeping out our pit when the robot left. It's nice to get small recognition like that for something that needed done anyway. Y'know, if they gave those out at work I might clean my desk more often!

I'm still wondering about that 30 foot tower with blinky lights. Maybe they were landing airplanes? I suppose in the "old days" it was possible there was one, but in the past couple of years isn't there a rule of nothing over 10 feet?

Re: spirit award
 

MOE 365 had a 20 foot tower a few years before the 10 foot tower rule was put into place. I know a few other teams had towers over 10 feet at that time, too.

Re: spirit award
 

Here is a pic from 2004 of MOE's 20 ft tower before it got downsized. It sure made it easy to find them in the pits!

Re: spirit award
 

Yeah because the bright green make you SO hard to find.

And you know, in 2007 RUSH was called many things, one of those was an aircraft carrier, something about a ramp the size of a truck bed. And based on the number of teams who didnt manage to get up it (9 degree incline) we coulda used some lights to guide them.