Award Eligibility and Judging

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

I'm pretty sure there aren't any judges that think a Friday award "disqualifies" a team from the big awards on Saturday. I've talked to Volunteer coordinators and Judge Advisors, and I haven't heard any of them say anything like that. Just looking at some of the big Lone Star and Alamo teams, there's several that have won a Friday award and gone on to win EI or RCA.

So unless you have some sort of actual evidence* that judges are actually following that process, I think this is a pointless thread that's only going to attract griping, rumors, and various posts in the line of: "We won team spirit, and we totally should have won RCA, but we didn't!".

*Actual evidence would be something on the order of a judge telling you "We didn't give a team the RCA because they'd already won Team Spirit." Think about how crazy and unlikely that sentence sounds.

My evidence is the judges that I have talked to and they have said just that. One judge, in fact, said that she had to convince the other judges that a team SHOULD be eligible for Engineering Inspiration despite the fact that they had won an award on Friday, which went against the whole panel of judges' mindset. This has happened at a couple different events. We have also had a judge tell us directly that we didn't win Engineering Inspiration because we won a tech award on Friday. On the other hand, we have won both at different events and different judges seem to think differently.

I'm not being bitter about it. I'm just asking whether or not people agree with this mindset. I don't mind if we don't win certain awards, so please don't take it in that direction.