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Originally Posted by itsjustjon
It's kind of disheartening for teams like us who can't afford trips to China, yet we do our hardest to change our community.
The Chairman's Award, at times, seems to have a price tag attached to it. And along with the price tag comes a sort of "number supersizing" where one team has to start/assist/mentor X amount of teams and reach out to X amount of people to be worthy.
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Rome wasn't built in a day. Outreach efforts are allowed to start small and grow organically over time. A team may not have a budget for outreach and they probably won't acquire a large one overnight.
When my high school team (1675 - UPS) won our first RCA my senior year at the 2011 Midwest Regional, I was ecstatic. I thought we finally made it. But when we went to champs and the questions asked were about our efforts on a totally different scale than we had previously thought, I was a little broken. I remember watching 365 win and hearing about their work and thinking that we could never do that. Maybe in 10 years with proper planning, sustainable growth, and continuous improvement, UPS could have a shot at being a serious contender for CCA.
But I don't think every team has what it takes to win CCA, in the same way not everyone has what it takes to win the Olympic Pole Vaulting event. Winning a CCA takes a lot of time and effort and a very solid group of motivated people that sustain their efforts over multiple years. I think CCA has a lot to do with a team having strong leadership that continues for many years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysterE
How has the image of what a Chairman's team changed over the last five to ten years? What was expected of a team in 2005 or earlier compared to 2010 and so on?
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When teams have been existing for 20+ years, it's not that unrealistic to see that the bar for winning chairmans is getting higher. If we assume that most teams' outreach has grown at a steady rate, a team that has been around 15 years will probably have a more impressive resume that a team that is 10 years old. In 2005, no teams were 20 years old and consequently didn't have the resume and growth of programs like a 20 year old team would have. Nowadays, a large number of teams are older and it's reflected by the large number of teams with very impressive programs*.
*which is not to say a younger team is incapable of being as impressive as an older team, they just didn't have as much time to grow.