[Doug G]

I think if its a goal of your team to get an award - you stand a good chance of it. This year we thought we built a decent robot - but were unsure if it would be good enough to win a regional outright. So we put a little time and effort into making our pit area look nice, printing up literature about our robot and team, made a display board about our control system, set up a video playing some highlights of our robot and team, and then making sure the captain's of the team stuck around to have nice long conversations with the judges. Finally we earned an award, the Motorola Quality Award. We also finished 2nd to get a Finalist Award as well. It felt real good to finally earn an award. In 2002 we got Finalist at SVR, but we're broke and it was really our alliance that earned it. In 2004 we got the Sportsmanship Award in Sacramento - I'm still not sure how or why we got that one. Winning a regional is unfortunately overblown I think, it takes almost a perfect robot and/or some luck along the way. 114 is a great example - their robot is awesome and they've proven it by going 10-0 at SVR and winning records at Portland and Davis as well - but they have an a lot to be proud of this year.