Should FRC Team name = HS athletic team name?

[jvriezen]

Assuming the majority of FRC teams are associated with a single high school, it appears that most such teams do not name their team the same as the high school's traditional athletic teams (Or else the athletic team names have gotten pretty quirky and bizarre!)

I'm interested in people's thoughts about whether matching the H.S. athletic team name (i.e. Panthers, Chargers, or whatever) is a good thing, bad thing, or not that important either way-- and why.

[DylanJG]

I always thought it was cooler to not go with the school mascot/name, though I don't have much say as my team is district wide so we don't have a set mascot. The basketball or volleyball teams kind of have to be the panthers or cougars or chargers but it's cool to have your own identity as a team, though I can see why someone might want to go the route of the same mascot or name.

[Ginger Power]

I'm not a fan of the names being the same. When the name is different it forces the team to be creative and establish their own identity.

[Abhishek R]

Our school is Cinco Ranch High School, so the capitalized "CR" in CRyptonite stands for Cinco Ranch.

Our colors, theme, and mascot are completely unrelated to the school however.

[1452-Leo]

My school's mascot is a Wildcat and our FRC team is the "Omnicats." Also, all our VEX teams (5 currently) have cat related names that change from year to year. I think it's nice to be tied to the school in some way, and I would be fine if our FRC team was also the "Wildcats," it helps get school spirit up.

[Peyton Yeung]

My high school team was the Technokats formerly the Sciencekats. That name was related to our high school mascot the wildkat. Our colors were blue and red just like the the high school. I enjoyed being the same style as our high school because it made it feel more like we were another sports team.

[rhinobot]

Im a mentor of a rookie team from Bishop Ryan CSS whose athletic team name is the Celtics. We have *finally* come up with a team name, CeltX (like spaceX) which is a variant of the HS athletic team name. Our colors will be green and white like the athletic teams are. Name picking was not an easy process however, as some students wanted the team to have a name associated with the school and some did not (we had a name list of approx 40 names and finally were able to narrow it down!). In the end the majority of students/mentors/parents wanted it affiliated with the school indirectly, including myself an alumnus from a community team with no school affiliation. In my opinion a team name related to the school name OR athletic team will promote school pride within the students, which is a very important thing for them to have, as their FIRST experience and diploma will both be coming out of that school! Also it will make them feel more connected to their school, their peers, and other athletic teams. However, with a robotics team, naming it should not solely be a mentor/parent choice, it should ultimately be what the students want, within reason of course, as it is their team! So no the team should not be named after the school athletic teams unless that is the general consensus at picking time!

[Christopher149]

Our team (857: Superior Roboworks) began downstate as 221: Michigan Roboworks (and that's far enough removed that I don't know the source of that name). So, we're now named after our region but not the school (I consider us generally a one school team since we meet only there, but we have students from other schools).

The school's mascot is the gremlin (with no commonly agreed upon depiction) and the colors black and orange; the team has a yeti and the colors blue, black, grey, and white (more or less). Historically, we've not been very tied to the high school, with the stronger association being with the university. Because of this, it makes sense why our name is what it is.

As to the topic thread title: so long as your team name is distinguishable from other teams at your event (four teams named "The Panthers" would be confusing), I don't think the name much matters.

[Nyle]

Although I wasn't around for any of it, from what I understand here is a brief history of our team (The Mech Tech Dragons):
We were originally The Mech Techs, a name adopted temporarily for our first year for a need of a name, with the intention of figuring out the final name before the next year. For on reason or another, the name got stuck and didn't get changed. The team didn't have much in the way of consistent branding branding (or even colors) during it's first few years. Eventually (not sure when) someone from the administration asked if the team would consider branding themselves more in relation to the school (green dragons); after lengthy team discussions it was decided to change our name to The Mech Tech Dragons. I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but at some point along the way we also adopted green and black as the team colors.

There are a few people on here who would probably be able to give a more detailed/accurate description than that, maybe one of them will correct me if I got something terribly wrong.

Although we share a mascot and primary color with the school, our branding is still quite different and does differentiate us from the school. Being able to have a separate branding from the school while still maintaining a link gives us the best of both worlds. We are able to both keep a link to the school and easily fit in to the school environment, while also developing an independent and strong brand identity for ourselves (and managing to avoid the rather poor/nonexistent branding of our school)

[Bryce2471]

My prule pic is of one of my teas logos. (2471 Team Mean Machine)
Our team has students from three high schools and is only loosely afiliated with one of them. When we started though, it was closely afiliated with ththe high school, and didn't have students from anywhere else. The name is related to the school theme, and we have the same colors as the school, but it has nothing to do with the sports teams' name.

[blazeflipper]

My team, 3184 Blaze robotics has had an identity crisis in its past, for the first year we were the "pyrotechnics" the next year we switched completly to the "Roborunners" (I have no Idea why I wasn't on the team yet.) Then, for our third switch we actually made a plan and decided on Blaze robotics to match our High School, we still made our own identity, by having a different mascot and team colors(we are orange, our high school is black and gold). We figured that it is hard enough to be accepted by the school, ask for money, get kids to join the team as it is. Just having the name gave us something our local community knows and recognizes this has only helped our team brand and recognition. We walk in local parades and people don't have to ask who we are, we skip that and move into the important stuff, what we do.
To the people who think associating with a high school is unoriginal, we have enough things to be creative about in trying to build a robot in six weeks. This is one less thing to fight upstream. And don't think of it as us and them, athletics and robotics, with that attitude you could lose out on some valuable team members. About half of Blaze is made up of varsity athletes from our high school, who found robotics because it was easy to identify with and would not alienate them.

*one thing to note however, Blaze is not a very common name, if your high school is a little more generic spice it up a little if nothing else to make sure no other teams have the same name. We compete with 3 teams named simply "Tigers" at 10K lakes in MN.

[EricH]

I've actually got two stories...

My H.S. team is actually the one and only team the school directly fields (non-traditional school), unless you count FLL teams on occasion. We used a variation of the school colors (which are blue/white--team uses yellow instead of white), but the name was picked way long time ago, and trying to change it now would cause mass confusion. Actually, the colors took a while to lock in.


The team I currently mentor has students from multiple high schools, uses a name that references all of them AND the district, and uses colors that aren't really used by any high school in the district (one school is close, but maroon != red).


My opinion... the team should decide whether to have their name be close to or far from their school's name, or some combination of names for multi-school teams. Ditto for colors. Any WildStang members want to comment? I seem to recall hearing that they had an interesting choice.

[GeeTwo]

While there are certainly some great names out there that certainly aren't the school team name, at 3946 it was generally agreed that one of our goals was to change the culture of the school from the inside, and another was for robotics to be recognized as a school team, not just a club. Many of our teams and organizations are called "Tiger <something>" (e.g. our Navy ROTC's PT uniform reads "TIGER NAVY"), so "Tiger Robotics" was the perfect name. Our team shirts are a shade of green which is about halfway between the football and baseball team uniforms, as well.

[Chief Hedgehog]

I think that the two should be the same. It has worked well for our Becker Bulldogs...

Err wait. We are not the Becker Bulldogs? What the heck does CIS stand for and who picked this ridiculous name that has no tie to our school or robotics team? Does ANYONE know what is going on with this team? Seriously - who chose this name? Mandatory large group meeting tomorrow.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog

I think that the two should be the same. It has worked well for our Becker Bulldogs...

Err wait. We are not the Becker Bulldogs? What the heck does CIS stand for and who picked this ridiculous name that has no tie to our school or robotics team? Does ANYONE know what is going on with this team? Seriously - who chose this name? Mandatory large group meeting tomorrow.

I always thought your team name meant that you didn't have any mentors. I was actually a little surprised when I realized you did in fact have mentors.