Quote:
Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery
No cash/refund/etc. should ever be given to a Champion of an official FIRST event. Period.
As for Scholarships, there are already a multitude available, including one that essentially is a prize. The winners of the Championship Chairman's Award select one student for the Allaire Medal:
If $10,000 isn't enough motivation for the students to strive to fulfill and spread the meaning of FIRST and the Chairman's Award, I don't know what is.
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But there's a difference between winning Chairman's and winning the Championship Event. Winning the Chairman's award entails years of hard work--for many over a decade's worth. Winning the Championship event results from your work over the course of that one year. Yes you can argue that from experience you become better,etc, etc, but regardless--it's based on that year's performance. In 2000, just our 4th season as a team, we won the Championships--but the Chairman's Award wasn't in our reach.
Now the Allaire Medal is something wonderful, but why not have a scholarship for one member of each party of the winning alliance? Or as someone said before--perhaps some kind of technological incentive. I don't think teams are going to cheat any more than they do (if (hypothetically) they do) because they might win a computer, software, etc. It's the thought of cash money that perhaps could drive people to doing extraordinary things. (and not in a good way)
**edit**
I agree with Libby's above statement but disagree with a certain point. You are getting a wonderful reward by just participating in FIRST, yes--but why not reward teams with stellar performance with an incentive or a means to continue. Let's say you get some kind of pass that gets you a discount next season or at some point in the future. Many teams go onto perform very successfully--but die out because of a lack of funding at some point. Why not give these teams that have performed exceptionally some kind of a break.