Re: The Spirit Award - What Is Its Value?
 

I believe that the original purpose of this award was to provide an avenue for team members not directly involved with the robot specifically to get more involved in the overall competition. There are other awards that reflect this as well; Entrepreneurship, Website & Animation are 3 that come to mind quickly. In many cases the students responsible for the team winning these awards have nothing to do with the robot itself. They may have no interest at all in engineering or science or math and instead are looking at careers in marketing, graphic design or ????.

I have always thought this was one of the unique things about FIRST - creating an environment where students with many varied interests can work together. Students who in the past may not have even socialized with each other end up working side by side and sometimes end up friends. Breaking down the old social tiers or "caste" system that exists in school is one of the best things IMHO about FIRST.

In High School, College and professional sports there are the Fans of the teams, cheering on their favorites season afer season. Costumes , painted faces, Mascots, special cheers and yes - lots of noise. All in an effort to help their team to victory.

Well why not have fans cheering on their teams in a robotics competition too! It all adds to the overall experience.

Re: The Spirit Award - What Is Its Value?
 

This post shows off the value I see in the Team Spirit Award: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...451#post831451

and for those who tl;dr - Our team was going though massive issues with staying together as a team, it wasn't until a regional we got together, and the award called us a "Team".

Re: The Spirit Award - What Is Its Value?
 

I see those items as being part of the Imagery Award.
Unfortunately, sometimes it is. I don't mean to cause any offense to any team that makes an effort to win the Spirit Award. But long ago my daughter's FLL team scoffed at the Spirit Award as the "rah-rah" award. They wanted to compete for a "real" award. They wanted the judges to recognize their efforts in design, teamwork, programming, research - something that had to do with the program, not how much noise you could make. Now I admit FLL awards are different than FRC, because some awards count toward advancement and others don't; spirit is one of those that don't count.

The listing for the FRC award:
And for FLL:
There is a little bit of difference - FRC mentions partnership and teamwork. So maybe my impressions are wrong about "rah-rah".

Re: The Spirit Award - What Is Its Value?
 

I typically do too. But -apparently some judges do actually count that towards the Spirit Award. Our yellow diamond image and a bit of our team image history was mentioned in the award script for us at Detroit this year - something like "they've come a long way from their rabid squirrel days". I remember explaining that part of our history to a set of judges. Just goes to show how much those awesome people in the blue polos really collaborate, I guess, and how everything your team does has an effect on every award.

Re: The Spirit Award - What Is Its Value?
 

I've typically seen Team Spirit in the same way, but the two times we have won Spirit, the explanation for the award was actually not related to cheering at all. At the NJ regional in 09, we were awarded Team Spirit for our dedication to partnerships and teamwork through the East West Collaboration Project and also our commitment to FLL. We were a bit confused as to why this didn't come in the form of at least a judge's award, but after some thought I agreed with the judges about it going along with the spirit award's description of teamwork and partnerships. I have to be really honest here, I hate it when teams try to be loud and cheer because they think that will win Spirit. We don't "try" for awards like this, its just something that happens in the course of the competition.

The other prime example is our win of the Spirit award in Palmetto 04. Direct quote from an old post about the award- "The reason that they were brought up here for the "Team Spirt Award" the annoucer talked about all the hardships the team went through and how they still were able to show "gracious professionalism"." The 04 team endured a lot of hardships according to the judges and then went on to win the regional.

All in all, if judges and teams think this award is truly just about cheering and being loud, then they're really missing the point of true team spirit. No offense to anyone, but I personally sort of frown upon teams who are just loud and sometimes obnoxious and think this will win Spirit awards, especially when all they do is try to go for awards like Spirit and Safety. Overall, I only value the award when it is outstanding effort recognized by the judges, not flailing around some pompoms and cheering being the only thing you do.

(We never "try" for spirit, but we'll sure as heck always be one of the loudest and cheerful teams at the event; not for some award, but because we always support our team's efforts on and off the field no matter the outlook or the outcome).

(The above opinions are mine and mine alone, not entirely those of any of the teams I'm associated with).