Building just isn't a priority anymore

[Colin P]

I'm not a big fan of teams going too far out of their way to win the spirit award or chairman's. I usually feel like it defeats the purpose of the Chairman's award to make it your primary goal. I feel like teams should be doing the work for chairman's first and writing a submission second, not tailoring team actions to win an award.
I kind of feel the same about the spirit award. It's a fun award, but it shouldn't be a goal to win it. You should be more worried about showing spirit than winning at it, you know what I mean?
My team won a spirit award at the Waterford District this year. We only had 10 students and four cardboard cut out numbers. Somehow we managed to win the spirit award with about 10-20 people cheering maximum. A similar situation happened at Troy district, a small team with fun imagery won the award. I think the judges are looking for students who are genuinely excited about engineering and their team. I know when my students were talking to the judges they were smiling and carefree, eager to talk about the robot. On the field my drive team wanted to do silly dances when we were announced, just for fun. I don't think judges care too much about who's the loudest and most noticeable any more. The nature of the award has changed, and for the better.

After all, it's not a "cheering and looking nice" award.