We started out this year with many goals for our team. One of them was to improve our team's spirit and to win the team spirit award. We did this by attempting to pump everyone up prior to competition by getting the student's more involved with the team including all sorts of non-robotics related activities. It worked. In year's past our team was perhaps the quietest team in the stands. We just kinda sat there until it was our match and even then we cheered only sporatically. Our efforts succeeded this year because our team was perhaps the loudest and most pumped team at the Arizona regional. We had mascots, we had a big rotating sign.....we were loud.....all of this helped us win the team spirit award. (Or so we thought)
Our next regional was at Philadelphia. We were even louder there and more crazy. However, we didn't get the team spirit award. We couldn't figure out why not? Then it hit us, the judges don't base it on how loud the team is or how much they run around being crazy during competitions or what kind of mascot they have. It's more how much is the team actively involved in the community and what types of team building type activities do they do to get the students involved.
Our third regional at Rutgers, almost our entire team was sick. We couldn't cheer if we tried. Most of our team had a hard enough time standing.
Needless to say we didn't get the team spirit award, however we did get the entrepreneurship award. (Again this was due to our huge community involvement effort to get our students AND community involved with the team)
And finally.....Nationals Team Spirit Award.
I guess the Moral of the story is....Team Spirit isn't just about having a spirited team only during competition time (though it is part of it) but it's more about bringing spirit to your team all year round.