[wildcatsfive]

You may look at my team number and think this is a biased post, and maybe it is, but here's my honest opinion.

1.) The Chairman's Award is the greatest thing to happen to FIRST, period. By definition, the award goes to the team that embodies the spirit of FIRST and displays qualities that other teams should emulate. As the most prestigious award in FIRST it is the most coveted (or should be, in my opinion). The concept behind it is genius. You have 29 regional winners trying to catch up to the national winner and countless other teams trying to catch up to the regional winner. In the end, FIRST benefits. The Chairman's Award (and the concept of FIRST, of course) is the reason for the tremendous growth of the program. If teams really want to win the award, they will continue to do more to further FIRST, which helps get more kids invovled in the program, helps FLL, helps the disabled, helps the world, which is what FIRST set out to do. And if you look at the CA this way, the threepeat champs are good for FIRST. Teams will continue to strive to beat the perennial winner.

2.) Prohibiting the number of times a team can win the award goes against the spirit of FIRST. If these teams are continuing to win, it means they are continuing to improve. Why should a potential national champion be denied the opportunity to win it all just because they won a regional the year before? If this rule took effect, the eventual winner might not actually be the best in FIRST.

3.) Repeat winners are not just resting on their laurels. I can tell you from experience that there is no way we would have won a second or third Chairman's Award if we could not prove that we had done more over the past year. As the writer of our submission, I agree with the Canadian poster. Our 2005 and 2003 submissions are very different. We won in 2005 because of what we did over the past year, not our '02-'03 accomplishments. The body of work is impressive, but one must continue to build upon it.

4.) Winners are acting like pageant winners. I'm willing to bet that most champs are using their status to get more sponsors and give more presentations. Since winning for the first time, I know that our team has done so, and I think the others have to, because to win they must have the qualities to do so.


Sorry for the long post and sorry if I offended anyone.