Do any schools recognize their FIRST teams as sports?

[bigqueue]

Originally posted by Team384:JosephM
Our school refers to it as an extracuricular activity, but not a sport. I guess a sport is something where you have to physicaly compete and exerting some type of activity (running, jumping, throwing, etc.) other than mooving the robot and a joystick. But out principal and super intendent recognises FIRST as something bigger than a sport.

I don't know about your team, but I know that on our's, there sure is alot of sweat right about now with our design decisions just coming together now!

Pretty soon, maybe week 3, we will start the marathon sprint down toward the finish line....and all while powered by Coffee, Gatorade and Twinkies!

We have a playbook....we have offensive and defensive strategy. We have our team huddles, and we will even have team logos and uniforms. (Shirts)

I see plenty of teamwork happening, and we are certainly out to win, even if we are a rookie team.

It's not only like a sport, it is BETTER than a sport because things we learn working on a FIRST team can be used later on in our careers. (and I'm talking from the Engineer's perspective as well as about students! )

Keeing it real,
-Quentin

[team222badbrad]

The one day i happened to ask my friend what he thought a robot was and he said one of those guys that walks around! I was like yeah true but that is only one of the types of robots. He thinks I am crazy to be in this (Robot) thing! Also many others do. At the end of the 6 weeks we usually have a show off day before we ship and its amazing that some teachers bring there students. yay I guess we are all NERDS I dont mind that! And no I don't want robotics to be considered a sport, after all do we do any physical activities besides operate all the machines and tools!

And lose tons of sleep! I just wish we got as much attention as all those sports teams do!

Once in a while during the comps we get Robotics team mention that we placed ......

The thing that I do like alot is the teachers that allow me to get out of there classes because they believe in what I am doing I guess!

[Jan Olligs]

Team members in our team (#448 - Crandroids) get full sorts credit for the Robotics team. I guess that is because the school requires you to be involved in sports constantly and clubs don't count for sport credit. And it is impossible to be on both the robotics team and a sports tem at once - FIRST is just too time-consuming. Another non-sport that is sport credit given for here is Acting.

[Joe Lambie]

Earlier one of my teammates responded to this thread stating that many see FIRST as a club o nerds at our school. However i think that is what it is seen as more now than in years past. I know the earlier years i was in it, it was seen more as a time consuming club, where many people understood the physical and mental demands to be a part of the team, and they knew it wasnt for them. Now, this is my fourth and final year as a student member of my team, and over the years i believe FIRST is as much a sport as any other one. I believe this becasue i was a four year starter on our football team and i know what kind of work goes into a sport as physically and mentally demanding as that. And when i think and compare the two, i think FIRST equals or exceeds the demands of such a sport, and any other sports and in my mind it is the ultimate sport requiring more willpower and commitment than anything else out there. no sport asks you to sacrifice 6 weeks plus of time, often 5 hours a day or more, and even to pull all nighters to get the job done. I know no other sport that you can work or practice or build for 24 hours straight, and you make yourself do it cuz you know it needs to be done. No other sport has ever asked me to be there till 6 am, come back at 7am and work till 5 pm, and i do it because of the challenge and because i believe in it, thats what makes it a sport in my mind. To do that takes more physical and mental strength than any other sport out there. so if someone can tell me that all it takes is brains and to be a nerd to be in FIRST, tell me why some football player who is just as much a sport guy as the next, says FIRST is probably the biggest and best SPORT out there. The qoute says a lot too)

[mrobrien]

"You know what's sad? If someone from our school entered the Battlebots competition and got eliminated the first round, they'd probably get more attention than us. It's all a publicity thing."

I am a freshman in my school. I built a battlebot that competed in the most recent battlebots competition (November) and got eliminated in the first round. I wanted to try to start a first team when I got to high school and learned that a teacher was already getting it done so I joined. I am still asked without provoking anyone about battlebots (over two months after the competition), and yet not even once have I heard anyone ask or talk about FIRST. (although if we actually had an established team that could show off a completed robot it might be different)

[Ryan Curry]

Hey,
At my school, this is the closest thing you get to sports. My school is one of those specialized schools, and we are prohibited from having sports teams, because our students come from different area's all over our county. Where if they are playing for us, their home school is losing out on maybe a good sports player. My schools trophy case has many trophies and ribbons, but all of them are from chess, or TSA, or other academic temas. If you want competition that is as thirlling as a sport, you come to use. We arent considered the nerds, we are considered actually the guys who like to work on cars, and maybe arent as smart as some of the otehr kids, but we can fix just about anything . I love my school.

[Kit Gerhart]

Originally posted by JoeM121
We have a ton of trophies and we have no where to put them.. there are all these trophie cases in our school and the one time we actually got them in one they were there for about a week then they gave the case to $@#$@#$@#$@# chorus.

That sounds familiar. We have a bunch of trophies, including one for the '98 national championship, and the school has "no place to display them." The school's trophies are at our shop which is at a different location from either the school or the sponsoring company. As successful as our team has been over the last few years, it is sad that the school won't put us in the same catagory with sports teams which haven't done nearly as well, but that's the way it is.

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally posted by whooper94
[b]Earlier one of my teammates responded to this thread stating that many see FIRST as a club o nerds at our school. However i think that is what it is seen as more now than in years past. I know the earlier years i was in it, it was seen more as a time consuming club, where many people understood the physical and mental demands to be a part of the team, and they knew it wasnt for them.

Yea... the classes at our school seem to get more and more snobbish/anti-FIRST as they go... :::cries:::

I would rather be in FIRST and regarded as a 'nerd' or whatever than get a ton of recognition from my classmates for being the star of a sports team. I understand that FIRST is for me and sports are for others - too bad the converse is rarely understood.

(Then of course there are the cool people that belong to both sports teams AND FIRST!!)

- Katie

[Elgin Clock]

On the subject of labels aimed at a team, like the nerd club and such: The name of our team is the Sie-H2o-Bots pronounced See-Hoe-Bots, and I have heard it called it the Psycho-Bots which I pesonally take in stride. Then again I am a mentor on the team and not a student but considering how many of last years graduates that were on the team who recieved scholarships, awards or other benefits compared to the school's sport playing student graduates - Then I'm all for being Psycho!!!!

Also I'll throw in my favorite quote here on the Robotics-Sports issue.

"Hey, If cheerleading is considered a sport; then Robotics should be considered a sport. End of discussion!"

[Blinky Bill]

My school just sees us as a club, and personally i think robotics is better then sports. That is why i left the football team to join our team here.Oh and about display cases? I Belive we have never had an award in our school from our team. People here don't call us geeks or nerds....they call us computer freaks

[Jgreenwd1]

our school recoginize as not a club but kinda a sport. in our school we have to be reconginized as a sport it has to be a club for a certian amount of years then it will be recoginized as a sport.

[RoboGirll]

in my school, EVERYONE knows the students in first (the main ones), but its referred to as a club, not a sport. we are referred to as the smart kids, but not at geeks.

[Dave_222]

The fact that our school prides it's self in it's technial program and the fact that our team consists of athelites or ex-athlites, me being an ex-football player has earned a considerable level of considration among faculty and administration. however we are still looked at as nerds, geeks, and snobs by coaches and other studens. We defend ourselves by asking them if they could build a fuly functional robot in 6 weeks. to this the most common responce is "get lost nerd". Yeah we may be nerds but I will take that over being a jock any day.

[Mark Hamilton]

Somehow I doubt that its just lack of recognition that keeps schools from recognizing their FIRST teams. Our team has been around for many many years, won tons of awards and are still given almsot no recognition by the school. There seem to be two reasons for this. The first is the administration and staff are actually emotionally attached to our sports teams. When the football team does well, we hear about it for weeks. We could win nationals and still go completely unrecognized, because they just dont care about a bunch of geeks and their robot. The second reason is money. If they recognized us as a sport and not just a club, we would have a footing to lobby for funding like the football and basketball teams do. At our school, football is so a big deal, they get all their uniforms, equipment and transportation paid for. 1% of their total budget would probably pay for us to go to nationals.

[Kit Gerhart]

Could it be that part of the lack of recognition is because school administrators and/or school boards don't want to be seen as "supporting" the corporate sponsors that most of our teams have? I don't know if this is a factor, but I think it might be in some cases.