Should FRC Team name = HS athletic team name?

[cbf]

Our name was inspired by the athletic teams.

There are two high schools in our town, simply called Newton North and Newton South. Newton North calls its teams Tigers, and South calls its teams Lions.

The robotics team may be the only team/club/activity that spans both high schools. So when the club was formed six years ago, Ligerbots seemed obvious.

[mrnoble]

I think Shaker is an awesome name for several reasons. The Shakers made world famous designs of outstanding quality, simplicity and durability in their buildings and furniture that are a high mark even today. That is a tradition that any robot builder should be proud to shoulder. And, even if folks aren't aware of the history of the name, "shaker" can instill awe. As in, shaking the ground, or, making one's opponents shake. So wear it proud, 2791!

[Abhishek R]

Originally Posted by JohnSchneider

Gonna go the whole thread without mentioning 624's original team name?

Ok ok, you got me. Time for a story, though this is before my time so everything may not be perfect.

So a long time ago, we were originally the C.R.E.W. The Cinco Ranch Engineering Wizards. Oh boy. That didn't stick around too long, so after a trip to championships one year I think someone decided it was time for a change. I believe we were inspired by Team 180, SPAM, and their superman theme. We thought that would be cool, so we ended up with a superman theme as well, except based around his weakness, Kryptonite, in which we substitued the K with a CR, for Cinco Ranch, to make CRyptonite. Now we go around with this punk superhero style with the spiked hair and radioactive green on everything, from our clothing to our hair to the lights on our robot. That's all I know of our imagery history sadly : /

[cbale2000]

Since our school is a half day career center that students from many schools attend, the school itself doesn't have a mascot...

However, after redoing the display/trophy case in the front of the school (and sticking our logo prominently in the middle), we have started discussions in regards to making our team name the school mascot.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

I think Shaker is an awesome name for several reasons. The Shakers made world famous designs of outstanding quality, simplicity and durability in their buildings and furniture that are a high mark even today. That is a tradition that any robot builder should be proud to shoulder. And, even if folks aren't aware of the history of the name, "shaker" can instill awe. As in, shaking the ground, or, making one's opponents shake. So wear it proud, 2791!

That's a really cool way to think about it. I like the name a lot better now! Hopefully we can also develop a reputation for quality, simplicity, and durability... (Need a bit of work on that last one I think!)

We always just made jokes about "building robots by candlelight / without electricity".

[jpetito]

How many Spartans and Tartars and Saxons and Warriors are out there? Looking over the list of FRC teams nation/worldwide, it gives a sense of distinctively to name yourself something a little unhinged from the school.

Go TorBots!

[AmiableVariable]

Our team name, ShockWave, is very loosely related to our schools mascot, the Crimson Tide. Our logo is rather different visually from the Tide Guy (attached below) or the G that most of our school uses, but our color scheme is similar besides the fact that we have yellow, a brighter red, and we use a lot more black. Another logo idea that our team considered was a red-filled version of the Tide Guy, clutching a lightning bolt, and an alternative idea for our name was the Crimson Capacitors, both of which are much closer to our schools mascot.

I missed this discussion rookie year, but personally am glad that we went with something as different from our school mascot and imagery as we did- even though our school mascot is already pretty unique. It has helped to make our team highly recognizable within our school, and the vast majority of the feedback has been positive.

[Amy33Amy33]

Our team, the FireBears, has nothing to do with our school's athletics department, which is the Roseville Raiders. In hind sight, it might have been useful to be the Raiders so that we could reasonably claim to be a sports team, and get the perks of that, but the Raiders isn't a name that stands out at all. FireBears? That stands out. Also, fun fact, the name was voted on, so if FireBears hadn't won the election, we would have been the Electric Bananas.

[rebelreyek]

Originally our team was run out of Case Western Reserve University, even though all of its members came from our school (HB). At that point we were called TeamHB (super creative, I know. Not sure about mascot or colors back then though...).

Fast forward to the fall of 2010 and we lose the space at CWRU, which is when we moved back into our school. However, that same year we ended up changing our name to have no relation to our school whatsoever and we've been The Fighting Unicorns ever since, with blue and pink as our colors.

[Pendulum^-1]

When founded in 2006, McKinley Tech HS in Washington, DC was known as the Phoenix, as McKinley Tech was shut down, remodeled, and reopened in about 2004. Evidently, the alumni complained about changing from the original name for athletic teams, the "Trainers," so the "Phoenix" was abandoned by the school. The school colors were silver and maroon through out this period.

The robotics team was already known as the "Phoenix," which, we thought, fit the robotics team, as we were always rising from the ashes of the previous season. We altered this to "Firebirds," got official, written permission from GM to use the Pontiac Firebird logo for our team materials, and changed our team colors to red and black, adding in orange, yellow, and white where necessary to add flames to our logos.

[DonRotolo]

We have 2 schools and the team names are only vaguely related to the athletic team names.
We have the Cowboys, and the Indians.
We are the Pi-o-neers. Kinda sorta in the same old west theme, but with geek cred.

That being said, the athletic department gives robotics team members a varsity letter if they meet the criteria.

[JackN]

The town of Goodrich likes to tout that we are the only school in the country to use our school's mascot: The Martians. We are named after the soldiers of Mars, the Roman God of War and Agriculture. The school's choice dates back to the early history of the 1900s when Goodrich was a school in a farming community and wanted to recognize the Mars.

The team name was chosen long before I was on the team, but the reason it was chosen was because of the relationship the school has to the name. The logo with the grinning Martian head that we have used since our beginning and the green color is unique to the robotics team and were chosen and created to give the team a strong brand and a unique color that stands out among all of the teams in our competitions. The school's mascot is a helmet with the word Goodrich incorporated into the helmet and has recently became a constant fixture on the team's robots.

[GeeTwo]

I posted a few days back, but there was a new development today, almost certainly NOT prompted by this thread...
During our penultimate pre-reveal build session this evening, the mentors were seriously discussing the possibility of team JERSEYS, in addition to the t-shirts. We went so far as to suggest that each team member be given a large natural number for his/her jersey. An offline discussion I was in even suggested giving coaches and mentors fractional, irrational and/or complex numbers. I doubt that we'll actually follow through with any of this, but we really are intent on branding ourselves as a "real team" of our high school.

[Billfred]

We play pretty tight to the identity of our school...where by "school" we mean "the University of South Carolina".

Past teams I've been on have varied on this--where it's been one school, they stuck with the school's identity. When it was multiple schools, they did something else.

[Donut]

I voted based on my high school team 498, which has had a pretty close tie to the athletic mascot most of their history. The school mascot was the Cobras and for the first few years the team was a couple random names (Mr. Roboto, Radio-Active Pajama Monkeys, R.P.M.) but we made an effort in 2004 to try to fit more closely with the school mascot. That year we were the Armor Plated Serpentines and one of our students created a robotic (or armored) Cobra logo that we used on our shirts. After too many questions of "what is a serpentine?" that year we changed the name to the Cobra Commanders in 2005 and have had that name since. We fit the main school color of columbian blue into our team colors of blue, black, and yellow.

I think that having a closely related logo and team name helped with keeping visible in our school, and probably led to a little more recognition from people who may not have known the school had a robotics team. Having our own variation of the mascot though helped to keep the original touch that many FRC teams are looking for. It also helped that Cobras is a pretty uncommon mascot in the high school athletics world.


My more recent team 167 has always been a multi-high school team so there has been a conscious effort to avoid using any of the high school's mascots or team colors, especially because the two main high schools are the only public ones in the city and are arch-rivals in athletics. The team has always had the same name dating back to its founding in 1998, since they were the only team from Iowa the lead mentor suggested "Children of the Corn" to pay homage to the state. It has stuck and no one really talks of changing the name since it has been that way for so long, though the logo and team colors are in a pretty constant state of flux. I think this is the way to go for multi-school or community teams, finding something clever about the region or team history to use for the name.