[Donut]

I voted based on my high school team 498, which has had a pretty close tie to the athletic mascot most of their history. The school mascot was the Cobras and for the first few years the team was a couple random names (Mr. Roboto, Radio-Active Pajama Monkeys, R.P.M.) but we made an effort in 2004 to try to fit more closely with the school mascot. That year we were the Armor Plated Serpentines and one of our students created a robotic (or armored) Cobra logo that we used on our shirts. After too many questions of "what is a serpentine?" that year we changed the name to the Cobra Commanders in 2005 and have had that name since. We fit the main school color of columbian blue into our team colors of blue, black, and yellow.

I think that having a closely related logo and team name helped with keeping visible in our school, and probably led to a little more recognition from people who may not have known the school had a robotics team. Having our own variation of the mascot though helped to keep the original touch that many FRC teams are looking for. It also helped that Cobras is a pretty uncommon mascot in the high school athletics world.


My more recent team 167 has always been a multi-high school team so there has been a conscious effort to avoid using any of the high school's mascots or team colors, especially because the two main high schools are the only public ones in the city and are arch-rivals in athletics. The team has always had the same name dating back to its founding in 1998, since they were the only team from Iowa the lead mentor suggested "Children of the Corn" to pay homage to the state. It has stuck and no one really talks of changing the name since it has been that way for so long, though the logo and team colors are in a pretty constant state of flux. I think this is the way to go for multi-school or community teams, finding something clever about the region or team history to use for the name.