Quote:
Originally Posted by mrnoble
As head coach I struggled with this one. We have not submitted for Chairman's for years and generally it was because we were simply too busy. Last year and this year we had more students, more time and energy, and ample things that we could say to demonstrate we met the requirements, but again decided not to. Right now, we're striving to be the best examples we can be of what FIRST can do for students and the community because it's true and it's the right thing to do. We felt like Chairman's might lead us away from that mindset into doing things so we could win an award. That didn't feel right. Notice that I am only speaking for myself and my team; I am not saying that other teams have the same issues or should reach the same conclusion. But this winter, we had just come off a successful run in a different competition (unnamed here) in which we took the opposite tack and we ended up feeling a little icky, and we definitely knew we were angling our efforts in community service to win an equivalent award.
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I said this in an earlier thread on why 422 submits for Chairman's every year.
"Our goals aren't just finishing the robot on time or maybe getting kinda close to winning a blue banner once every Martian year, but it's to change people. It's to see it in the eyes of kids who thought they had no future, it's in the eyes of a politician looking to build a legacy, it's in the eyes of a parent who realizes this program can send her kid to college, and as cheesy as it sounds, it's in our hearts. When you sign on to submit a Chairman's Award, it's important to think about not only how you yourself affect the team, but how it affects you, your family and friends, your colleagues and teammates, and people you may not remember meeting even if they sure as sunshine remember you.
But we come together to build a robot, an object brought to life and made greater than the sum of its parts. Our brains, our hearts, and our lungs come together to give us life that not one of them could sustain on its own. People come together to form a team that is greater than the sum of the individuals that comprise it. The team then acts like a boulder falling from the highest mountain and crashing into the deepest ravine, making a powerful, awesome impact that cannot be questioned, cannot be diminished, and cannot be defined by check-boxes on a list or trophies in a case.
Working on Chairman's in a meaningful way is hard. You have to constantly evaluate not only what you're doing to change the culture but how and why you do it. It's not to take home the hardware, it's not to gloat or show off, it's to make an unmistakable and historic impact on the community and world around you. Doing what everyone else does is easy. Doing what comes easy to you is easy. It's about finding who you are by challenging yourselves to do nothing short of creating the best culture. It's not about swimming around the lakeshore and waving to your friends, it's about diving down to the bottom of the inky deep and coming back up with diamonds in the rough.
When you sign up to submit for a Chairman's Award, you commit yourself to the mission that is bigger than you. The banners you win will fade and the trophies will go ignored, but you will always remember when you sat down with your team and decided to become something greater than yourselves."
When it comes to the "Gracious Professionalism" on and off the field, for 422 it is nothing more than paying it forward. When the team was trying to find its way again in 2010 and 2011 I remember teams who went out of their way to help us. That's why, no matter what state we're in, someone on 422 is always helping someone at competition. It inspired us to help others and we hope it does the same for them. We don't stumble on the award; a lot of time goes into the documentation of what is done on the team. A very smart, talented, and inspiring group of students put a lot of time in this year to make a submission they are very proud of. Our pursuit of the award is not something we embark on to take home the hardware, but we make this journey to reach our ultimate goal of becoming the best team we can be. The Chairman's Award is FIRST's highest honor, earned by, without question, the best teams ever. We strive to become one of them by seeing what they do right and wrong and adjusting it to our own experience, situations, and needs. Submitting for the Chairman's Award is just a part of that.