Award winning year streaks

[MysterE]

I do have a question in regards to this topic. Is it possible for a team with fewer years of participation to upset a team in the middle of a RCA streak?

[MARS_James]

Originally Posted by MysterE

I do have a question in regards to this topic. Is it possible for a team with fewer years of participation to upset a team in the middle of a RCA streak?

Yes. actually leading up to the 2008 Florida Regional Krunch or Pink had won 4 of the last 5 chairmans and plucky little 1523 came and got the award

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by MysterE

I do have a question in regards to this topic. Is it possible for a team with fewer years of participation to upset a team in the middle of a RCA streak?

This question sounds familiar. See http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...50&postcount=1

Notice what team made the post.

[Wendy Holladay]

Joe you are pretty amazing to either remember or find that post. yes that was me, I felt I'm sure the way Daniel does now.

I will say this, we work very hard every year to "beat ourselves" and continue to innovate. When we write our awards (they are on our website, thank you 1114 for posting yours and helping us) they are really on the focus of this year, other than our repeat events. We look good, but when I look at the CMP contenders, I know how far we have to go.

My observation is that most team do thru phases, based on the interests and talents of their students and mentors. The truely great teams manage to always do great, no matter what.

When (not if) 3337 wins RCA at the Bayou, no one will be happier than my "family". We have known their lead technical mentor and his family and many of their members for many years. We mentored them in 2010 when they won Rookie Inspiration. They are family to us.

Wendy Holladay

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Who cares about trophies and awards and winning streaks? What of the students who missed out on a year of inspiration?

There is a different way to view trophies / awards.

We have two major viewpoints.

1) most obviously, they recognize the work that we do and we like to do these things, award or not.

2) the use of trophies / awards / recognitions, etc as weapons.

Consider the of the theory of Sun Tzu, The Art of War, applied to cultural change goals of FIRST. Awards creates energy (chapter V) and and builds substance (chapter VI).

The 1st award we ever won was a heady experience but not really put to good use for a while. The 2nd through the nth award has been loaded into a "cultural change artillery piece" and put into action. We have been able to create a loud echo of student impact ranging across the region.

Impact is great, collecting awards is okie dokie, but using awards to leverage cultural change and a lot more impact is even better.

Getting the award is only half the battle, what you do with it is really important.

IMHO

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by ebarker

There is a different way to view trophies / awards.

We have two major viewpoints.

1) most obviously, they recognize the work that we do and we like to do these things, award or not.

2) the use of trophies / awards / recognitions, etc as weapons.

Consider the of the theory of Sun Tzu, The Art of War, applied to cultural change goals of FIRST. Awards creates energy (chapter V) and and builds substance (chapter VI).

The 1st award we ever won was a heady experience but not really put to good use for a while. The 2nd through the nth award has been loaded into a "cultural change artillery piece" and put into action. We have been able to create a loud echo of student impact ranging across the region.

Impact is great, collecting awards is okie dokie, but using awards to leverage cultural change and a lot more impact is even better.

Getting the award is only half the battle, what you do with it is really important.

IMHO

You took my comment out of context. Awards are great and they have a lot of uses for outreach (said as I just got back from one of said cultural outreach events in which we leveraged a few of our shinies to catch attention). What I was remarking on was the inference that 188's streak breaking was the biggest downside to them not competing this year not awards in general. To set the record straight, I like shiny awards!

[MysterE]

Originally Posted by Wendy Holladay

Joe you are pretty amazing to either remember or find that post. yes that was me, I felt I'm sure the way Daniel does now.

I will say this, we work very hard every year to "beat ourselves" and continue to innovate. When we write our awards (they are on our website, thank you 1114 for posting yours and helping us) they are really on the focus of this year, other than our repeat events. We look good, but when I look at the CMP contenders, I know how far we have to go.

My observation is that most team do thru phases, based on the interests and talents of their students and mentors. The truely great teams manage to always do great, no matter what.

When (not if) 3337 wins RCA at the Bayou, no one will be happier than my "family". We have known their lead technical mentor and his family and many of their members for many years. We mentored them in 2010 when they won Rookie Inspiration. They are family to us.

Wendy Holladay

I found the earlier post that you made heartening. Gracious Professionalism is such an odd thing - in one way you want your team to win because of their hard work. In another way, you are excited when a team you are close to wins because of their hard work.

I am proud, in many ways, that the one of the monolith teams of the Bayou comes from Louisiana. I'll be the first to say that we took more than one look at Combustion's previous entries as we were penning our own. I did the same thing when I was writing our Dean's List entry for this year. One of the things that amaze me in Combustion's writing is the ability to add so much action into it. I feel like I'm reading a movie trailer at times :-)

If and when our team proves able to win, it will only be by using the shoulders of great teams like Combustion and Fusion, and Simbotics, and so many others that we stare at with awe.

To tie it back to the overall topic at hand - teams that consistently win awards prove something to the whole FIRST community - you never get there. You never reach the point where you can stop inspiring and stop growing your team. A team streak is merely the result of a group of people who has learned to never stop being FIRST. We'll get there one day. Hopefully we will all be able to have that experience.

[Rich Kressly]

I may be a little biased given my history, but FRC103 has done pretty well over the years in terms of award consistency.

The "general awards streak" for FRC103, dates back to at least 1999, so 14 years at least (as others have stated the FIRST database has incomplete information prior to 2000) and counting. During those 14 years of the current streak, 103 has attended 45 official FRC events, 32 of those events being regional/district.

Of those 32 regional/district events, 103 has:
- won at least one award at 30 of them
- won two or more awards at 19 of them

Of the 12 Championship events, 103 has:
- won 7 awards, two of them in 2003

As to the post about WFFA Awards, FRC103 mentors have won 3 in total, 2 in FL:
-2004 NJ Regional Dave Beck
-2010 FL Regional Cathy Beck
-2011 FL Regional Jack Tusman

As for Sean's question of "same award" in consecutive years, for 103:
- Entrepreneurship Award 8 consecutive years
- Autodesk Visualization 5 consecutive years