Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung
What does the Spirit Award mean to you and to your team? Is it valued? Is it important? How does that impact the team experience? Why do you think FIRST would have a Spirit Award? (Please share photos if you would like... not huge photos, reasonably-sized photos.)
Yup, a lot of questions. 
Jane |
Spirit used to be just cheering on our team, while they were on the field at Regionals. That was 6 or 7 years ago.
Now we are much more spirited about FIRST and the entire Regional. It is an energy that the Regional generates to make a competitive, yet fun atmosphere. It is not just about yelling and screaming as loud as you can for your team. This year we won the Spirit Award at Chesapeake and there were many key factors. One was the fact that even though we were not performing well on the field, we made our presense known. We got up and did the dances and brought a positive atmosphere to the competition. The real main issue was our work and commitment in the pits. As the snow plagued most of the teams attending the regional we set up and ran a table in the pits that matched teams that needed help with people (students, mentors, and volunteers) that knew the request area of help. For most of the regional we had more people working on other robots than our own; and we had a lot of work to do. I think the final number of teams we helped was 31 teams. That was more than half of the teams there.
I think the Spirit Award is not/should not be given to the team the cheers the best for their robot (that would be hard to judge, typically); but awarded to the team that brings the best atitude and enthusiasm to the Regional. Afterall, this is what makes the Regionals so much fun.